song of the week

because ace of base NEVER goes out of style.

okay, maybe they do. but this song has been stuck in our heads ALL WEEK. and we've been playing it over and over again as a result. thank you, pandora, for re-introducing us to this gem.

and how classy is the video?

p.s. it's raining HARD outside--and thundering and lighting-ing--and i feel nice and cozy sitting here on my couch working for the next few hours. what a lovely day.

p.p.s. SO GLAD MARCH IS ALMOST OVER. now, as long as we can get through april, i will be carefree for three whole months!

i'm a nerd and i love it (and middle school stinks)

the fact that i am a nerd should be fairly obvious to everyone who has read this blog for any length of time. tommy and i don't own a tv, we don't have (or want) smartphones, we get most of our entertainment from the library, and we spend nearly every night doing homework.

but i like it that way. i am happy being a nerd. and i am proud of myself for being, finally, truly, reasonably comfortable in my own skin. i say reasonably because of course, i'm a twenty-first-century female with all of our inherent insecurities. (and really, the only reason i am comfortable writing about myself being a nerd is because i am deep-down-inside confident that i'm not REALLY a nerd. if i were, or if i really thought i were, i'd be too insecure to write about it. but that's besides the point.)

i was thinking the other day about how i used to feel about myself in high school--and worse, middle school. i remember painful, PAINFUL hours spent during PE being self-conscious about my legs being hairy because my mom thought i was too young to shave my legs. (remember that, mom? it was painful for my eleven-year-old self.) and then later, even more painful hours when i would forget to shave my legs once i was allowed to do it.

i remember being so embarrassed because my socks were showing. and because my shoelaces wouldn't stay tucked inside my shoes and would come out. and because my pants were a quarter-inch too short and looked like floods. and because my shoes weren't etnies and my shirts weren't from tilly's and my jeans weren't roxy. because i sat on the wrong side of the lunch area and didn't talk to boys. because i had braces later than everyone else. because after i had a huge fever my freshman year i got a fever blister on my face for a few weeks and it scarred (my face and my feelings). and because my hair was frizzier and curlier than everyone else's (i especially loved it when people would tell me, "i would kill myself if i had your hair." why, thank you! how kind.) because i was convinced my deodorant wasn't working or because my legs were too fat. because i wasn't wearing the right type of underwear and didn't pull my hair back in the right way.

how grateful i am to be PAST that stage! where i can sit and reminisce without bitterness (even about the hair comments) about those things that were so incredibly painful then. and wonder--why did i CARE so much? if my middle-school self could have seen what i would be like now, i'm sure i would have been astonished by what a nerd i am--and how much it doesn't bother me. i own basically 1.5 pairs of shoes, my hair is still frizzy and fluffy, and my legs are in an almost constant state of hairiness. and i could care less about it. i'm even blogging about it.

so there, sierra vista middle school. I HAVE GROWN PAST YOU.

i'm probably way less cool than i was back then--wait, no. i think way less about being cool than i did back then, but i love myself a whole lot more.

babies

in case i'm not the last person on earth to see this documentary, i just wanted to record publicly that tommy and i watched it last night and i. LOVED. IT.

oh, my gosh. i laughed and cooed and googooed the whole time. just--watch it. we borrowed it from the library, but it would have been worth it to PAY for it (that's how you know we liked it).

after you watch it, you'll want to adopt a mongolian baby like i do. AAAAHhhhhhhhhhhhh. maybe someday we will be able to achieve that dream . . . we'll have to wait until we have an income though.

a literary binge.

i have a bad habit of getting into the habit of checking books out from the library all at one time. i currently have 16 things checked out of the library and 8 more on hold. (mostly books on CD, but a few movies too.) whoops.

also, i drove past borders and, seeing all the "going out of business" signs, i couldn't help but stop by. and an hour later i came out with these:

whoops. again.

i have problems.

siblings

i have some of the funniest siblings in the world. no, really. i do.

first off, four of my five siblings have blogs. cole, the ten year old, just started his a few weeks ago. if you have never read the unedited thoughts of a ten year old published on the internet, you are missing out. the title of his first blog post was 'yeah, i've got a blog, "big deal".' unfortunately, unless you know cole, you can't read his thoughts, because his blog is private. i will share one of the best conversations i have ever had with him, though, which happened while we were playing scrabble over thanksgiving:

cole: dang! i wish i had a Y!

alyse: what do you want to spell?

cole: if i had a Y, i could do "ovary."

alyse: ...

cole: you know, "ovary." it's the part of the flower that makes the eggs.

alyse: right. a part of a flower.

but it was bethany's blog that had me crying (literally, crying) with laughter today. (sorry, it's private too.) she wrote some poems for my dad's 47th birthday, which was, appropriately enough, st. patrick's day (dad, your murphy is showing). bee is twelve and of all the kids in my family, she has the most similar sense of humor to my dad's. they laugh at all the same jokes, tell all the same jokes, and laugh at all of their own jokes harder than anyone else. so i bet my dad really appreciated these poems she gave him. here they are, copied and pasted straight from her blog to mine:

47!
Wow thats young.
Good thing you didn't step into a pile of dung.
This poem is from me to you
And with a little luck, you will get some stew.
Lock o' the Irish, if thats what they say.
And where do you work? Oh thats right, by the back bay.
Now what would i like to say again to your shoe?
Oh, thats right! Happy birthday to you.

Cinquain:
Father
Bishop, brown hair, fun
works very hard and coaches us
Funny, Smart, respectable, wise
Blake Murphy

Haiku:
Happy Birthday Dad!'
Fourty-seven is not old.
It is the middle.

don't worry dad. 47 is not old. it is the middle.

and while i'm writing about my siblings' blogs, i can't leave out the epic post dallin, my now-15-year-old brother, wrote about our wedding. dallin really pulled out all the stops in this dramatization of our wedding festivities. i appreciated knowing what he thought about all of the chaos.

Mom says that I need to talk more about the wedding. Hows this:

The wedding festivities began on May 8, 2009, when Tommy Jeffery Leininger decided that it was time to ask Laura Alyse Murphy to become his Eternal Companion. She said yes. All throughout the summer, the mothers were frantically searching for everything for the wedding. Clothes, flowers, ties, food, and many other things. The fathers did the same, but they had work so they could not do as much. The Aunts and Uncles helped out, and so did the cousins and friends. It all started becoming a reality that it was happening on August 21, when we had the Family Dinner. We had food from the Murphy favorite, Stone Fire Grill. Friends and family from all over came. As everyone filed out, the stress began to file in. Everyone was frantically running everywhere, well almost everyone. We drove to the temple at about 10:00. There were more cameras than at the Grammy's. Flash after flash, i felt like a star walking down the red carpet, and I wasn't even the main character. It all became good when at about 12:45, we saw them. The bride and the groom, smiling brighter than the noon sun, holding hands walking out of the temple. If a picture is worth a thousand words, there were too many words to describe this moment.

oh, man. i wish they all lived closer.

i have great aspirations

all i want in life is to make just enough money that i can go to costco and buy all the $12 containers of nuts and chocolate-covered raisins that my heart desires.

byu january 2008. we sure love us some costco hot dogs.

NCAA

i just filled out a bracket for the first time. what a momentous occasion. i bet my three minutes of time spent on filling out that bracket will beat many people's hours of deliberating and debating. sadly enough.

all i can say is, i only gave byu two rounds of winning. you KNOW they're not going to go any farther than that (if they even get that far).

(and don't worry, all you busbys out there, i think unlv will win at least one game.)