Hey- I won't be writing here anymore, but you can find our new blog at: codyandwhitney.com

Remember when...

Remember when campus was really intimidating and you felt really young? Remember when you were afraid of getting lost? Remember when you had to share a communal bathroom in the dorms? Remember your first day of classes when all you could think was: "How am I gonna keep up with all of this?!" when now you wish you could have it as easy as your freshman year? Remember when all of your guy friends left on missions and you were afraid of dating RMs? Remember your first BYU football game? Remember your first BYU basketball game and they'd do the kissing screen and you were terrified it would land on you. Remember how wierd it was to go to church on campus (in my case- a science lecture hall?) Remember how weird it was to have a huge auditorium class?
Just remembering...after all, tomorrow is my last day of classes of my college career...and yes it is very odd. For the past twenty years, walking into and sitting down in a classroom to take notes has been a regular part of my day to day schedule. you get used to it and come to expect it, but now....the next time I'll walk into a classroom will be either to sub (i'm playing around with the idea) or to go to a parent/teacher conference for my kids-CRAZY!
some of the classes i've taken over the years:

Arts in Western Culture
Human Development
Physical Science
Women's Chorus
American Heritage
Biology
Geography & World Affairs
Marriage Prep
University Writing
Intro to Greek and Roman Lit
Volleyball
2 semesters of Latin
Audio-Basic Principles
Humanities of Asia
Spanish
Music Theory, dictation, sight singing
Music History
American Humanities (colonial-1876) and (1877-present)
Philosophy of Art
Interpretation of Literature and ARts
Cultural History of Russia
Phonetics and Pronunciation of Russia
Intro to Film
Humanities: the Spanish Baroque
Humanities: Theology in lit and film
Art History
piano

Clearly not all of my classes but a sampling...I think that by the end I will have over 150 credit hours and i'm just graduating with a bachelors-what can i say, i like to take classes for fun. You see now why i'm a major like humanities? One subject just isn't enough for me :)

you've had a bday shout hurray

hmmm...start studying for my music history final or blog....BLOG!

So I have some more pics for ya. Yesterday was Cody's 25th Birthday!!! Now for approximately 33 days I can call him "old man" and "grandpa". 25...wow, quarter of a century-now, no matter how much people may want to, they have to admit that we are "adults" (whatever that word means). Never mind the fact that we've been adults for well over five years now-shrug.

Ya know, I'm going to be excited for my kids when they are getting older. I'm not going to hold on and continue to see them as little kids-I'm going to celebrate their new found "adulthood" or whatever....cause I think it will be a lot more fun to see them as they really are-getting mature...r, becoming their own person etc. And knowing that I'll be that much closer to having some more time for me when they move out :) Plus let me tell you from experience, kids respond positively to those who take them seriously.

Anywho,so I hope yesterday was fun enough for code-despite that 8-9 hour stint of working all day long on projects-ugh! So in the morning I woke him up with some muffins with candles in them. He said it was kind of alarming to wake up with open flame next to his face but he got over it quick :)



His presents!



He got President Monson's new biography from mom and dad-thanks guys!



He got new racketball goggles that he can't WAIT to try out:



And the big gift-amazon's kindle!:



Along with that he got a 25$ gift card to amazon to buy "books" for it from me and his family in georgia-thanks guys! The other gift from the noldens hasn't gotten here yet but he's excited to extend his bday to today :)

He also got the first season of Lie to Me which we're excited to get our family in texas addicted to once we get down there :) and a deck of uno cards (shrug he really wanted this game :) and the German version of Ticket to Ride. Um....I think that was everything....
After our days working (me at the museum and him at home) I picked him up and we went to Shoga Japanese grill and sushi bar up on state and university pkwy. It was really good and a cool atmosphere and pretty cheap for sushi. Then we came back and opened presents and then we had some friends over for some coldstone mmmmmint choc chip icecream cake. The guys of course played some smash and that was our evening.

It was a good bday but I wish we weren't both so busy so I could have planned more/gone all out, but that's ok.
A good time was had by all.

"A little bit of Upper-Manhattan right here in Provo"

This was a quote from the opening of BYU Museum of Art's new exhibition: "The Matter of Words". Cody and I went by and checked it out real quick. It's contemporary but don't let that scare you away-it's pretty cool. The coolest part was the center piece of the exhibition-an 80,000 lb tower of books. If only it had been ready in time for me to prepare my final tour exam in, but oh well-3 Mormon Towns will be good too.









And to see the scale of this bad boy:







And a close up of the books and magazines that made up the tower:






Check it out-it really does feel like some sort of urban contemporary exhibit-pretty cool and a fun date night :)

The Super 18 State Summer Road Trip of 2011!!!

I know, catchy right? Now while this sounds like an AWFUL lot of driving it's happening mainly in the East so all the states are really close. In the end we'll drive a total of 1.5-2 days but it will be split up by stopping and staying at friends' and family places-just enough for us not to get burnt out or smelly on the road. In the next 24 hours we should get a call from Allied Vanlines who will be moving us to Houston. We already have our tickets out of here so this is the last step-figure out when they can come out to take a look at how much we have (not much) and schedule the day THEY will come and pack us up and move us out, hopefully we'll only be homeless one night :)

Things I'm looking forward to this summer:

-visiting family in Georgia!!!


also visiting brunswick to meet the Nolden grandparents and biking around Jekyll island-sounds fun huh?




-Visiting my aunt Cheryl and her family in Virginia while we tour D.C for a week! I can't wait to see all of the monuments, museums, and....D.C. Cupcakes!!!! (even if their reality show acting is a little forced)







-going on the metro in D.C and exploring on foot.



-Visiting my best friend Heather and her husband and for the first time her little emily!

-Possibly picking up Eric from his base and driving to Kansas to see my other brother Mike and his family!

-Eating at Braum's



-chillaxing in Houston with Eric and mom and dad until our apartment is ready on June 1st when Allied Vans will come back and move us in again-in the Barker Cypress Area!


(yeah, we totally don't have an apt. near the pool but still :)

the formal qualities of art...

So tonight in my docent class our teacher wanted us to practice having to talk about formal elements of art without much time to prepare to show us that it can save you if you're not as familiar with the subject matter of a particular exhibit. You can still create interesting discussion based on basic elements such as line, color, shape, space, and texture. Well one girl chose to speak about space in a few pieces and to open she used this question: "In art there are five formal elements: line, color, shape, space,and texture. Now which one of these is expressed in all art forms across the board: music, visual art, dance/theatre etc.?"
There was a pause and then after a few people offered their opinions she said: "space."

le sigh....ok, not that I'm being critical of her opinion cause she only had ten mintues and I don't expect the average person to have an in depth knowledge of music but.....come on! Not that I'm saying space is the wrong answer-sure it's right....of course she tied it to music by saying, "there is space between the notes on a page of music" tho i'm not sure if she was referring to the physical space left to right between notes in a melody line or if she was trying to reference what is called: intervals-distance between two pitches (up and down), but whatever. It works. It's just....

I don't know I was distracted the rest of her presentation cause I was just thinking about HOW incomplete her statement was. To be honest ALL of the formal elements in art run across the board in all artistic mediums-all of them not just one, though, again, I understand that this only matters to music geeks like myself but here we go incase anyone poses this philosophical question to you:
so...

-Line. I'm thinking I don't have to explain any of these elements' connections to art because it's frankly obvious in visual art. Music: ever heard of a melodic line or harmonic line before? whether it's stagnant or flowing due to rhythm/rests/pitches etc. and the chords themselves having certain structures that lead to the next chord and the next until a cadance (resolution) etc. totally applies to music. Dance/theatre- with choreography and physical placement of things this could also totally apply.

-Color. Again, art-duh. Music: there is such a thing as color in music but in music we refer to it as timbre (pronounced "tamber") which basically refers to the type of sound emitted by a voice/instrument-just think of how different a tuba sounds from an oboe-they have different timbres. A lot of times people will say how strings have a warm timbre and the winds have a colder/more sharp timbre-shrug i've heard some warm winds and some cold strings before-whatever, personal taste. but there ya go.
color in theatre/dance etc-duh.

-Shape. Music: there is shape in music...it's called dynamics and tempo as well as playing with personal feeling/playing musically-it's much more than notes on a page but the personal expression you give to it etc. Dance and Theatre-totally applies

-Texture. Now this is a tricky one for those who don't study music cause as opposed to the art world-music seems much more abstract or at least non-physical/hard to touch it etc. but texture is there too. texture in music refers to the simplicity or the complexity of the music. If there is just a simple monophonic line-one melody it's a light texture as opposed to a melody with a harmonized accompaniment-homophonic or fifteen different instruments playing all at once and all different melodies at once-polyphony. Either way, texture is a real part of music. Though I'm not an expert on theatre/dance-texture at least has reference to costumes and could, I think, be argued to be seen in how many people are on stage-one vs. a whole company or one person talking as opposed to a whole crowd shouting different things at once etc...

-Space. ok, space in music is relevent as far as intervals go (again ammount of whole and half steps between two pitches) as well as range or register-like flutes are obviously a high register while tubas are at a low register. space. But referring to physical notes on a page as music technically isn't right...cause that's not music is it? That's notation-a physical representation of music, but not what we hear which is what music actually is-finicky I know, but that's the nature of the beast-you got to be exact with it cause it's so abstract. and then theatre/dance-duh.

so you see? all apply across the board. That's why I love the humanities because we not only specialize in one thing but enable ourselves to see connections across the board that lead us to broader truths and realizations about a society,race,movements of thought/philosphies and humans in general etc. This semester I'm taking an art history class and music history class and they overlap in everything-sure there's different vocab words to describe the techniques but the background philosophies/mental movements/government influences/societal changes are all the same and their effects can be seen in music and art. It's cool.

and basically i'm so glad that I chose to specialize in music cause out of all the rest-no offense I think it's the hardest to grasp. I mean people hear it on the radio, they like it but that's pretty much where it stops for them. How often do people who like a song go buy a score to check out to really learn about it? But art you just look at what's infront of you and that's all you can do-look and think.

Dont get me wrong, the other fields in the arts are deep with rich histories etc. but they're just more tangible and therefore seem to be more accessible if one wants to learn more in depth about it where music is well...a little more abstract/mathematical/etc. you need to be able to do more than just see. You need to see, hear, feel/touch-if playing an instrument while doing critical thinking in your head etc. I dunno....

ok, geek session over now that I got that out of my system.

Last weekend...

So some things we've been up to lately: I interviewed my Grandpa Adams for a genealogy class and am now in the process of transcribing said interview:



Here's one of all three of us (yes I realize this is a HORRIBLE angle of me but it's the only one that Cody is in and he matters more to me than a bad angle-now that's love!


And of course a trip to Grandpa's wouldn't be complete without the dog:



In other news, we went to the Hogle Zoo this past weekend. It was pretty cold but we still managed to have fun. Of course being at the zoo I couldn't help but remember the last time I was there as a surprise bday activity:



(i was bored so Gavin played rock paper scissors with me while I waited to be able to take off the blind fold.
and this weekend:


It was fun but kind of depressing-I don't recall cement being part of any animals' natural habitat but they had a ton of monkies:










Then it just started getting depressing as we watched these monkies try to escape and pretty much climed themselves into a corner once they hit the glass.





There was also a tiger that was kind of freaky. He would pace back and forth and then all the sudden he hunched down and his eyes were lazored in on this kid that was running around oblivious-just following his every move. It was really freaky and really made you respect these animals-they are not tame by any means. That tiger wanted a kid sandwhich bad and it's amazing how little a fence can make you feel safe.
I learned that animals who are oblivious can be just as annoying as people who are oblivious to all around them:









i wouldn't leave you in suspense on whether or not the poor lil guy got out from under this oblivious tortoise: