Worth a Thousand Words

Here's some random pics:

You can't see just how bad it looks but this is my face
after having oral surgery last week.  I bruise easily and people
have been thinking I've been in an accident or a fight or something!

The kids love to tease Lyle about his afro!

One of my favorites of the kids when they were little.
How cute!

And because I'm a mean mom,
here's Annie's embarrassing bare bum picture!

Let's not forget Taylor's embarrassing
diaper cowboy pic!

Lyle and the kids (a dinosaur and an egg) on Halloween

One of our engagement pics!

Me in kindergarten.  Wasn't I a cutie?

This is me being a ham...big surprise!

Taylor helping me with a Primary project (he loves to jump in and help)

The kids on top of the church office building

Annie showing off her unique fashion sense

The little darlings a few months ago (don't they look angelic?)

Good thing I can laugh at what a dork I am!

Me and my  good lookin' hubby!

The Fam

In Memory of My Sister Amy

     Amy Jean was my older sister.  She was born on October 3rd to my parents in Las Vegas while my dad was still in the Air Force and they lived on the base there.  One year, ten months, one week, eight hours and thirty two minutes later (I know, pretty sad that I know that,) I was born. Amy was the oldest of a family of what turned out to be six children, three boys and three girls.  Because Amy and I were close to each other in age and were followed by two boys before another sister came along (then a final brother), we were pretty close.  But we were very different from each other.  We shared bunk beds in a room together until she went off  to college.  I remember sitting and talking to her at night.  She was a slow person; meaning she didn't rush anything.  She ate slowly and savored her food, she walked slowly and enjoyed the view.  She appreciated things.  I used to eat all my Halloween candy in a week and she would save hers all year long.  Yes, I was a bad sister and would eat some of her Halloween candy from time to time.
     Amy was always a very responsible person.  After our parents divorced and mom had to go back to work full time, she became a second mother to us all.  She would put us to bed and sing to us and take us on the bedtime train over the rainbow where she would ask us what kinds of things we would see and we'd describe sights or animals we could see from up on top of the rainbow.  She was a peacemaker and would try to solve fights.  Since me and my younger brother Mike fought like cats and dogs all the time, it was quite a challenge.  Amy was artistic and very talented.  She started drawing in childhood and developed this talent well over time.  She would think up stories and tell them to us or write them down an illustrate them also.  She got glasses in kindergarten and it wasn't until high school, I think, that she replaced what were then glasses of coke bottle thickness for hard contacts.  Amy got braces in her teens.  Honestly, she was a bit of a nerd, but was so extremely nice and loving to everyone that she was very highly regarded by everyone who knew her.  She was also very smart.  She got good grades and was a sterling scholar in high school.  She was, however, very uncoordinated athletically and never played sports, at least not well.  She was musical and learned to play piano and was in the high school Madrigal singing group her senior year.  In her junior year of high school she was chosen to play Oliver in that year's musical 'Oliver'.  She cut her long hair for the role and had an extremely fun time with the new experience of acting.  Amy developed her drawing even more in high school and started to work with watercolor and oil painting as well (she didn't care for the oil painting quite as much).   Amy was also a poet.  This was something I never knew until we found her poems while going through her stuff after she died.

     Amy went to Utah State University after high school.  While she was going there one of her best friends set her up with Reed.  I believe their first date was going sledding and Amy lost her temple recommend which was in her pocket (by the way, this is the same friend who set Lyle and I up on our first date!).  Reed found it and held it ransom for another date.  Reed was then going to BYU and he would go all the way up to Logan to take her out.  They dated and ended up getting married when Amy was 19 years old.  Amy ended up later transferring to BYU where she finished her degree in Elementary Education.  A week before Amy and Reed got married they found a small tumor on her bladder and she had surgery.  They biopsied it but the results were inconclusive.  Amy and Reed moved to the U of U housing for married couples (Reed had transferred there). Two years after they got married they had their only child.
     I happened to be in the delivery room with Amy and held her hand while she breathed through her contractions. She chose the name Joshua Reed for their son.  There was a very special spirit in the room when Josh was born.
      During her student teaching at the end of her schooling Amy noticed she had started to feel very tired and wasn't sure what it was.  They were trying to get pregnant with child number two and she thought maybe that was it.  Around this time, Amy first felt a hard lump in her abdomen.  She went to the doctor who didn't like the way it felt.  They ended up doing a cat scan which showed a baseball sized tumor attached to her stomach and multiple little tumors all throughout her liver.  She was 22 when she was diagnosed with Leiomyosarcoma (a soft tissue cancer of the abdomen).  Later we ended up finding out that her cancer was more like a branch off of Leiomyosarcoma and it was rare enough that they didn't even have a name for it, so we ended up referring to her cancer as a G.I. Stromal tumor which was the gastroinestinal tumor they found on the outside of her stomach which then metastasized into her liver.  They operated and took out the tumor on her stomach and now they had to treat the tumors in her liver.
     Amy went through chemotherapy and her hair fell out.  It didn't get rid of the cancer but it stalled it from growing for a while.  But eventually it started growing again.  Her abdomen got bigger and they tried another medication which didn't kill the cancer either.  During this time Reed threw himself into research.  He took her to Boston to see the leading doctor on Leimyosarcoma in the country and to a clinic in Houston which was the best overall clinic in the country for her kind of cancer.  Eventually they found an experimental medication that Amy didn't qualify for as an applicant in the study but they gave it to her anyway for what they deemed 'compassionate use'.  Amy and Reed went to Portland and stayed with an aunt and uncle for a month while Amy took this new drug which has since been approved by the FDA.  This medication had a dramatic effect in some people in the study, reducing their Leiomyosarcoma.  It didn't do anything to Amy's unfortunately.  But it did make her feel better than she had felt for most of the time she'd been sick.  She was able to do things like take a family vacation to Disneyland and spend some quality time with her husband and son.
     One of the weird things about Amy's cancer was that it seemed to feed on her blood.  She would have to get transfusions often because her blood was disappearing.  The doctors surgically inserted a port below Amy's skin which fed directly into the arteries by her heart so they could quickly inject any medications into the port instead of being stuck with needles so often.  That wasn't the only blood problem she had.  Because the chemotherapy had killed all of the platelets in her blood, if she got something as simple as a nosebleed she would have to go to the emergency room because she wouldn't stop bleeding and had to had medical intervention to get the bleeding to cease.  Her liver had been growing and she now looked 8 months pregnant (which was all cancer) and the disease had come back in her stomach again as well.  But this time the cancer tissue in the stomach integrated with the good tissue so there was nothing they could do to get rid of it.  It gave her horrid acid reflux which resulted in her losing her voice for a couple of months.  It also made eating extremely hard for her so she had a feeding tube inserted which attached to her colon and she would be feed Ensure at night so she could survive.

     Amy was the most Christlike person I knew.  And though she had a horrible disease that was taking her life, she was positive and had an immense amount of faith and hope.  She was a very compassionate person and was always looking for how she could help other people.  She served on the Relief Society Presidency in her ward as the secretary during her illness.  She struggled with the fact that she'd have no more children even if she survived the cancer and I certainly feel close to her now knowing how horrid that is all in itself.  She enjoyed being with family and friends and I remember she and I taking a blind friend bowling (incidentally even though Julia couldn't see the pins, we would tell her where they are and she'd throw the ball; she creamed us every time!).  I used to stop by Amy's house after work and spend time with her just talking or doing stuff with Josh.  We had some very special times together.
     Twice Amy was hospitalized and kept in the ICU because the cancer in her stomach burst blood vessels and she would throw up extreme amounts of blood.  The first time she ended up coming home after a week or so.  The second time, after 2 days, 100 pints of blood transfused into her, multiple endoscopies to find where she was bleeding from and some cauterizing of the places they could find, the doctors finally couldn't do anything more and took her off of all blood products.  Two days later, after bleeding into her abdomen continually, her kidneys and finally her lungs shut down and with her family surrounding her she died on a Sunday morning, which we felt was very appropriate.  The very same spirit which had been in the room when she gave birth to Josh was there when she died and it was a very sacred moment for those of us who were there to witness it.  She was 25.  Her son was 4 1/2 years old and she died 5 days before her and Reed's 6th wedding anniversary.  Though it was June, it snowed lightly on the morning of her funeral.  It turned to freezing rain and while we were at the graveside and singing Abide With Me 'Tis Eventide, the clouds parted and the sun shone down on us and we knew she was there watching us and she was okay.
     That was almost 12 years ago.  It's funny how time goes by.  Losing someone you love so much is horrible but I have learned to trust in my Heavenly Father and gained a deep, personal relationship with my Savior which has been drastically influenced by Amy's death.  I wish so much that I could share my life with her.  If I live a long life, most of it will have been lived without Amy.  She was someone I knew loved me, even when I didn't deserve it.  I will miss her every day and the influence she's had on my life will never go away.  She made me want to be a better person, just by knowing her.  Don't get me wrong, she wasn't perfect.  There were times she was a tad judgmental or self-righteous, but by far she was someone I am still proud to call my sister and I can't wait to see her again someday!  I love Easter time.  It reminds me of the resurrection and the fact that someday Amy will have a perfectly functioning body and she'll never die again!  So here's to the memory of my courageous sister.  I love you, Amy.



Things Amy Liked:

Mushrooms
Singing
Poetry
Being outside
Nature (she LOVED sunsets, flowers, starry nights, etc)
Being with her friends
Going on dates with her husband
Playing with Josh

Things Amy Didn't Like:
Marshmallows
Gummy anything
Conflicts
Being asked when she was due to have her second baby
Feeling sorry for herself

Here's some samples of Amy's artwork:

This is my grandparents.  Amy created this picture out of two separate photographs taken of them when they were younger.

Here's some samples of Amy's poetry:

Through the Tempest

Slipping- 

     The cancer grows,

     No doctor knows

     Just what to do for me.

Searching- 

     So many ways,

     But will my days

     Still fly like angels free?

Holding- 

     Your eyes embrace

     A peaceful place

     A vast, eternal sea;

Smiling- 

     Love knows no bounds-

     Here's solid ground

     Where we can always be.

Evening Poem

A longing pulls my heart

As the dusk filters out from the leaves to settle on the horizon

A golden crown

To bury itself against my chest

And drops of blue to smile up at me in simple wonder,

Tiny hands

That pull and reach are resting on someone else's lap now,

The light fades, the air rests.

As night falls, I miss my baby.

Untitled

I wish I could eat yellow roses

     long after their luster has passed;

I have inhaled their buttery petals

     and adore the aroma they cast.

I hope that, as onward I travel

     I can service each person I find;

To bring a cheer like yellow roses,

     and leave a sweet smell in their mind.

Nightmare

Locked in a cell

     of the prison of Hell,

No chance of escape-

     though my cause is so just.

When a sliver of knowledge

     drops to my feet

And I find myself running

     through dark and light halls,

Collecting friends all

     (of flesh and of stone)

While dodging the guards

     throwing fiery bone.

One is a sister,

     one a lost cousin

Who brought a few friends

     from his wilder days,

As I look at the jumble,

     I inwardly moan-

If I help their escape,

     will I forfeit my own?

And yet we press on,

     through the wild stony mess,

To right the world's wrongs

     With a prayer and a guess.

Untitled

There's a feeling I can't quite explain,

That I can't just dismiss or disdain

Like a bird in the night,

Or the last star in sight,

It goes on when my search seems in vain.

Though there's no one around me to say

That it's going to turn out this way,

Still it calls out so strong

Tell me, do I belong?

Will you give me the blessing to stay?

Another day?

Take my hand- for a lifetime

Keep my dreams next to yours to remain

And we'll work with our might

With our hope burning bright-

'Till forever is ours to claim

Take my hand- say that you love me

As your best friend and also your wife

And we'll pray with our hearts

That we don't have to part-

And thank God for a beautiful life.

The Ship

Underneath the cloak of heaven,

Yet upon the breast of sea

My ship rises over every wave's crest-

Like a wooden manatee.

My soul is housed within her hull,

My heart beats to the rhyme

Of the wind upon her sails

Which pushes the foamy brine.

My ship has never feared a tempest

An never will be penned-

She knows the way to set her sails

To calm and tame the wind.

And yet- there come those sultry days

When all of nature sleeps,

And my ship sits there in a daze-

Abandoned thus, she weeps!

She has no power in her,

And when all the gales are dead

She has no life to offer

And waits upon her salty bed.

Longing, needing every hour

To feel a breeze caress her sails

And erase the time gone sour

When the summer trade winds failed.

Suddenly, I feel the air lift

And my heart within me sings!

As, once more, my wind will bear me

High as on eagle's wings!

Barren and Thankful

     Today my husband and I had probably our last visit with the RE (fertility doc).  While we've been waiting to be chosen by a birthmother, we have talked about one last attempt at a fertility treatment.  We'd heard about embryonic adoption and went in for a consult.  Embryonic adoption or donor embryos come from other couples who have already gone through IVF and have embryos left over which they are not planning to use.  Most couples prefer to throw their leftover embryos away but a select few donate them.  They go through genetic screening (at cost to them) and donate the embryos with the hope of helping other infertile couples.  The embryos are implanted into a female recipient and if the procedure works she can carry a child, though not biologically her own or her husband's.  The cost for transferring donor embryos is half the cost of IVF due to the fact that the gathering of the eggs and the inserting of the sperm into the eggs has already been done.  Since my husband and I both have significant fertility problems, we felt this might be a good option for us; little did we know that there are already 9 couples on the waiting list and the clinic only gets 2-3 embryo donations per year.  This means that in 3-5 years we might possibly get a call saying they have an embryo(s) for us.  We put ourselves on the waiting list but we really don't know where we'll be in that amount of time.  And statistically speaking, it gets harder to get pregnant with every year that passes now that I'm at an 'advanced maternal age'.
     We don't have the 15k it would take for IVF and were told today that because my ovarian reserve is so low that we might not even qualify for it in the first place.  The other suggestion made was to use the donor (frozen) egg program which would give you 4 tries with 7 eggs each try (which means maybe 2 eggs that would survive and fertilize and be transferred into the uterus) and a money back guarantee at the end if you don't get pregnant.  Too bad we don't have the 25 thousand dollars to do it in the first place.
     Bottom line: without a miracle Laura won't be pregnant.  Ever.  And yes, I'm talking about myself in the 3rd person.

     Part of me is relieved to not have to wonder anymore.  Mostly I'm sad.  Yes, I know that some of you will say (and you will be in good company with my husband) that a miracle can still happen.  And you'd be right.  But the realist in me says that for every person who gets that miracle, there's 10 others who don't.
     I came home and cried.  And a funny thing occurred to me: I'm not angry anymore.
     There's a fair amount of anger that comes with the grieving process of infertility and though the anger has lessened over time, I was still prepared to feel it as I watch the door of child bearing close.  But it's not there.  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure I'll still have some angry days, but I think, for the most part, it's gone.  Without realizing it, it seems I've moved on a bit.  I also feel an underlying gratitude that's coursing through me.  Infertility has taught me so much.  It's been a hard journey, but a valuable one.  It's not a path I would have chosen for myself so maybe it's a good thing I'm not the one who has control of the overall plan for my life.

     What have I learned?  I've learned that my life is not only about the here and now, but the eternal perspective.  Heavenly Father loves me more than I can understand and He has crafted out a plan for my life.  This plan will give me the greatest chance I can have for happiness.  Its purpose is to shape me into the person I'm meant to be.  Shaping requires pruning, and pruning hurts.  Pain is never pleasant but I've learned a few things about it.  Pain does not last forever.  It can make you strong or become strength itself and can also become a part of you that you would never care to be without. Article: Whole Enough.  Most importantly, there is a kind of beauty that can only occur in those moments of great pain and great humility.  Blog: Sing, O Barren Woman.
     I am barren and may not bear fruit for quite a while; maybe not at all in this life, at least not in the reproductive sense.  But I believe that when I do bloom, now or later, in this life or the next, I'll be exactly the person Heavenly Father always knew I would be.
     I'm thankful for my infertility.  I'm thankful for the opportunity for learning and the choice it gives me of finding out more about myself and more about my God in a way I could not have anticipated.

I Dreamed a Dream

First thing's first.  There's something to celebrate!  No, it's not what you think.  Almost as good, though.  I got my first speeding ticket in 13 years today!  Yeah!  Isn't that great?  Thankfully the officer was funny and personable and not bad to look at (don't get me wrong, he's no Lyle but what girl isn't a sucker for a guy in uniform?) and he only gave me a ticket for going 5 over instead of 8.  What a guy!  Send any congratulatory presents (preferably cash) to me and I'll put your name on my blog under The Laura Speeding Ticket Fund donors list.   Donations can also be made to The Laura Needs a New Root Canal Since The One She Had 13 Years Ago Has Gotten Reinfected Fund since that was yesterday's fantastic news (what are the odds that my last speeding ticket and root canal happened in the same year and now I get to pay for new ones at the same time?).

     Okay, onto the real reason for blogging today.  Dreams.  Ever had a weird dream and you can't for the life of you figure out where it came from?  A couple of weeks ago I dreamed that I was chosen to play Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat even though I A) am a girl and B) didn't audition in the first place.  Wow, I must be really good for them to overlook those two big obstacles!  Broadway, here I come!
     This made me think of other dreams that I've had.  Unfortunately, I can't remember that many of them anymore, but I did come up with a couple of good ones.  I also collected a couple of Annie's and I remember a couple of my sister Amy's dreams that she had when she was a kid.  Hmmm...I haven't told you a lot about Amy yet, have I?  Maybe I'll blog about her next week.

Picture it something like this only bigger

     To continue, here's some fun dreams.  I'll mix them up and I'll let you guess who had which dream.  I'll tell you at the end who did which one.  That way it's a game too!

Dream #1: This dream starts out with a young girl waking up and going to school.  But this girl had way cool transportation.  She was riding to school on a giant rubber band.  Yes, you heard me.  Just bouncing along down the road on a giant rotating rubber band.  This young girl realized that she had the power in her dreams to change something so she changed the rubber band into a horse.  It only took her seconds to realize that riding a giant rubber band is way cooler and she changed it back.

Dream #2: In this dream, the young girl's parents were buying a new car and the saleswoman asked this girl's brother if he wanted to play a video game while he waited.  Of course the answer was yes.  She took him into the building and up in the elevator to the video game room without even asking this young girl if she wanted to play too.  So the girl goes to the elevator which apparently has many buttons to push and she has no idea which one to push so she just chooses one at random. Out comes an inflatable spaceship from the elevator shaft which starts carrying the young girl upwards to the video game room but before she could talk to her brother or the saleswoman (why wasn't this saleswoman selling a car instead of playing video games?  I guess we'll never know) the spaceship popped and down she goes.  Out of the elevator now comes a flying dragon which flies the young girl back down (why not up to the video game room?) where she pushes another button and this time a gigantic aerosol deodorant bottle flies out and carries the girl up to the video game room.  I bet you've always wanted to fly a deodorant bottle, at least almost as much as a gigantic rubber band.

Dream #3: In pencil drawing a girl and her sister and mom are driving in their car along the freeway.  On the sides cartoons are singing and dancing (kinda like toon town in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?') except there was no sound.  Then a big hole opens up in the freeway and the whole car falls into it.  Inside the hole sound and color are restored but the car has disappeared.  It's an underground cavern with a pedestal and a fishbowl with a fish in it on the far side of the room.  Out of a tunnel clunks a pirate, eye patch and parrot on the shoulder and all, who looks at the girl, and her mother and sister and says, "Argh, if you want to go on one of you must wrestle the whale, mateys."  He points to the fishbowl in which is swimming a tiny whale.  The girl's mom volunteers and the whale jumps out of the fishbowl, grows to huge size and the girl's mother starts wrestling on the ground with it.  As if this were normal, the girl and her sister leave their whale wrestling mother and go down the hall where a number of doors are attached.  In each room they become something different.  The first room is decorated like an old west saloon where the girls are turned into cowboys and have some sort of adventure before the leave and go to the next room which is blue and has lots of bubbles and flowers and they turn to fairies.  The last room is puke green with a mud floor and the turn into martians and run around the room (where they can walk on the walls and ceiling) as the mud floor rises and almost drowns them.  They escape the room and the dream ends.

Here's a drawing of a yogurt person and vampire

Dream #4: Black fades to pick and blue.  There were people in this dream...but not people like you and me.  They were yogurt people.  Half blue (blueberry?) and half pink (strawberry?) with a thick black line down the middle separating the two separate yogurt halves.  There were also vampires in this dream who sucked yogurt instead of blood.  The young girl runs away from the vampires into a room where she's followed by a yogurt princess.  The vampires find the pair in this room (they came to get the girl) and the young girl callously volunteers them to eat the yogurt princess instead.

Dream #5: In this dream the little girl was a little scrawny boy who lived in an orphanage which was yellow and in the middle of a muddy field with dead trees.  This little boy found out that the terminator was coming to get him.  In fact, he could see him coming down the road  (he must have been a John Connor type character).  This little boy tries to get away from the orphanage to save himself but there's too much mud and he gets stuck multiple times.  The terminator of course is not having the mud problem.  The boy gets out in the dead woods behind the house and is trying to get away and the terminator can almost reach the boy before the girl wakes up thankful to be alive with no terminator trying to kill her.

Dream #6: Burt and Ernie from sesame street are in this dream.  It didn't last long.  Burt was a vampire and was chasing Ernie all over the room to try to suck his blood but Ernie was running away.  This one scared the little girl a lot and she cried after she woke up.

Happy dreams!

Answers: 1- Amy, 2- Annie, 3- Laura, 4- Annie, 5- Laura, 6- Amy.

Let's Go to the Movies Part 2

Today's selections are from the action/adventure genre.  This really can touch on a lot of different subcategories: martial arts, fantasy, western, spy stories, suspense, literary interpretations and so much more.  Here are some of my favorites:

     1. The Mummy- 1999 Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah as the hilarious and slightly cowardly brother.  This movie, based on the 1932 film of the same name (starring Boris Karloff) is about a studious and clumsy librarian and her brother who join an adventurer and inadvertently wake a mummy named Imhotep who sucks the life out of those he meets in order to rejuvenate so he can perform a ritual and awake his long dead love.  Comedy, romance, mistaken identity, magic, lots of action, a handsome hero and a gross mummy.  Who could ask for more?
     2. Labyrinth- 1986 a young Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie as the goblin king.  Sarah is left watching her baby brother Toby who won't stop crying and says that she wishes the goblins would come take him away.  Bam!  King Jareth of the goblins, in love with Sarah, makes her wish a reality and in order to get her brother back she must get all the way through a labyrinth to Jareth's castle by midnight.  She meets different characters along the way: gentle giant Ludo, Sir Didymus the knight who aids her quest and of course Hoggle, the grumpy dwarf who ends up helping her even though he's been threatened by the goblin king.  I'll never forget the Bog of Eternal Stench, the oubliette, the goblin king's song and of course the line she finally utters to Jareth to break his spell: you have no power over me.  I first saw this one at a girl scout sleep over.  Loved the movie, hated the sleepover.  'Nuff said.

     3.Knight and Day- 2010 Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz.  Roy Miller is the coolest spy.  Good looking, saves people's lives, owns his own tropical island and knows how to dismantle a bomb in the pitch black with nothing but a safety pin and a Junior Mint.  A woman named June gets mixed up with Roy when she gets on a flight where she's not supposed to be.  While she's in the bathroom, Roy kills all the other passengers (don't worry they only number a few and all of them are bad guys) and accidentally shoots one pilot who shoots the other leaving only June and Roy alive.  Roy is required to land the plane and drugs June who wakes up in her own bed.  But that's not the end of the adventure, oh no!  I love how calm Tom Cruise's character is about everything.  My favorite moment is when June, having been drugged (again), wakes up just enough to see she's in a strange room and has been captured.  Roy is swinging upside down with his hands behind his back and is assuring her calmly that everything's going to be okay, he'll get them out of there.  And he's right.
     4. Adventures in Babysitting- 1987 Elisabeth Shue stars as Chris, a girl who instead of going out on a date with her "so cool" boyfriend Brad, gets stuck babysitting a teen who has a crush on her, his obnoxious best friend and a young girl, Sarah, who hero worships Thor.  Chris's friend Brenda calls.  She's run away from home and is at the bus depot downtown with a bunch of creepy people and needs Chris to come and get her.  They all pile into the car but on the way they get a flat tire.  A series of misadventures happens including getting in the middle of a gang fight, being in a vehicle while it's hijacked, a man with a hook hand who scares the kids in more than one way, singing the blues at a nightclub, escaping from a chopshop by walking an iron beam high in the air, seeing Chris's boyfriend two timing her, being mistaken for a playboy bunny and Sarah being stuck outside the window of a skyscraper.  Who knew babysitting was this hard?  It's definitely not for wimps.  Did anyone else memorize the song and dance that Chris performs in her bedroom at the beginning of the movie?  I bet some of you did, even if you don't admit it!

     5. True Grit- 2010 Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Hailee Steinfeld who does an amazing job playing Mattie Ross, a girl who's out for vengeance for her father's murder.  Based on the 1969 John Wayne movie, this one packs a lot of punch.  It's an emotional roller coaster as this determined girl hires Rooster Cogburn, an alcoholic and morally questionable Marshall to help her find her father's murderer.  They are joined by Matt Damon's character who is also on the trail of the same man.  Neither of the men are really happy about taking a child with them but Mattie is determined to see justice done herself and will not listen when they tell her what she can and cannot do because she is a young female.  Along the way the group finds a lot of obstacles and just when it seems like they'll never find their man, he kidnaps Mattie and tries to kill her.  She, of course, is rescued but not without injury.  It's fascinating to see the relationship of this hardened old guy and this strong young woman change over the course of their journey.  A warning: this movie is PG-13 but there is a few graphic violent parts.  Don't watch with young children.

     6. Pirates of the Caribbean- 2003 Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Kiera Knightly.  Who can forget the sight of Captain Jack Sparrow as he sails a sinking ship into the dock?  Or skeletons walking across the ocean bottom to capture a ship?  Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski bring us a new (well, maybe not so new NOW) swashbuckler.  Captain Jack and Will Turner search for the kidnapped daughter of the governor, Elizabeth Swan, whom Will is in love with.  She's been captured by the fearsome Captain Barbossa, Jack Sparrow's former first mate who led the crew to mutiny not knowing that they had been put under a curse and would need Jack's help to undo it.  Jack is only wanting his pirate ship, The Black Pearl, back in his possession.  He, Will and Elizabeth defeat the pirates, break the curse and kill Captain Barbossa.  Will learns about his pirate father and how to express how he feels to Elizabeth and Jack is saved from being hanged for being a pirate and sails away on the Black Pearl.  What a fun movie!

   7. Jason Bourne- Matt Damon.  The Bourne Identity (2002) started out this series of movies about a man named Jason Bourne who is pulled out of the water with two bullets in him and wakes up with amnesia and a bank account number in his hip.  Jason realizes that he possesses a very select set of skills.  He meets Marie who gives him a ride to Paris.  He is pursued by assassins and he finally finds out that he is a rogue operative that the CIA is trying to track down and kill.  Matt Damon stars in three Bourne movies.  The last installment, The Bourne Legacy, stars Jeremy Renner (who I really like) as an agent in a different program who is also pursued.  Action in these movies is intense and fast paced.  Lost of martial arts and car chases.  People die.  But not Jason Bourne.  He takes a licking and keeps on ticking!

     8. A Series of Unfortunate Events- 2004 Emily Browning, Liam Aiken and Jim Carrey as the horridly evil Count Olaf.  This film is based on the first three books of A Series of Unfortunate Events (go figure!).  The stories follow the Baudelaire orphans.  Violet, the oldest is an inventor.  Claus the middle child reads and remembers everything.  Sunny the youngest likes to bite things.  Their journeys are chronicled by the mysterious Lemony Snicket as they find out that their parents perished in a fire that destroyed their mansion.  They're sent to live with Count Olaf who turns out to be after the children's money and after he tries to kill them, they are transferred to the care of Uncle Monty who is a herpitologist, and then Aunt Josephine, who has so many phobias it's insane (I mean really, who would be afraid that if you stand next to the refrigerator it will fall and crush you to death?).  Each time they are placed in a new, strange home Count Olaf comes after them.  It's a strange little story and I absolutely love the absurdity of some of the situations.  There are some very profound lines which make you think as well.
     9. Avatar- 2009 Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver.  The planet Pandora has been discovered some who-knows-how-many millions  of miles away and the humans have found a very useful mineral/metal that they want which is only found on this planet.  Marine Jake Sully, a parapalegic, is recruited to go to Pandora in his murdered twin brother's place and is inducted into the avatar program with the understanding that he's to convince the native people to relocate so the mineral under their home tree can be mined.  In exchange he will receive the ability to walk again.  The native race, the Na'vi, are reticent to have much to do with the Skypeople, but Grace, the doctor in charge of the avatar program has found a way to create living bodies combining the DNA of humans with that of Na'vi to make the Avatar bodies that Jake and his fellow colleagues use to get close to the Na'vi people.  Jake ends up being accepted and trained by the tribe and finds himself falling in love with Neytiri, the tribal chief's daughter and has to decide whether to be true to his own cruel race or to accept his new family and save them if he can.  Stunning visual effects make you feel like you've literally traveled to Pandora with it's scary creatures and beautiful scenery.  A long movie, but worth it.
     10. The Italian Job- 2003 Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Donald Sutherland, Jason Statham, Seth Green, Mos Def and Edward Norton.  Based loosely on the 1969 movie of the same name, Mark Wahlberg plays Charlie Crocker, leader of a rag tag but very skilled group of thieves who have found where the traitor of their group currently lives.  Steve had stolen all the gold they took together doing the Italian job and killed their leader played by Donald Sutherland.  Now that the team and Stella, the murdered leader's daughter have found him, they want to make him pay.  Charlie is the idea man. There's a demolitions expert, a hacker, a safe cracker, and 'Handsome Rob' who supplies transportation.  This movie brought Mini Coopers back into style.  Wish I could drive like that!
     11. Sneakers- 1992 Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, David Strathairn, Dan Aykroyd, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix (could it be? yes it could!) and a cameo by James Earl Jones.  Dr. Gunter Janek has found a way to break down impossibly huge codes and has wired it into a little black box.  Too bad Martin Bishop and his group of misfit lawbreakers turned security specialists didn't know that before they got tricked into taking it in exchange for pardons for their past misdeeds.  Now they're trying not to get killed from a group of people headed by Martin's old buddy who he let take the wrap for their hacking into government websites and was consequently sent to prison and now works for organized crime.  They want the little black box, but so do other government organizations.  How do they get out of this situation with their lives?  This movie is 20 years old and technology has changed greatly in this time, but even though this movie is outdated, it's still good fun listening to Crease and Mother argue, hearing Martin get advice from Whistler who is blind about how to figure out (by the sounds he heard) where he was taken in the trunk of a car and laugh at Carl's desperate desire for true love.  Add in Martin's old girlfriend helping the group out and it's a recipe for a good time.
   12. Six Days, Seven Nights- 1998 Harrison Ford (hubba, hubba) and Anne Heche.  Robin Monroe, an executive for a glamour magazine in New York is taken on a vacation with her boyfriend to a tropical Southern Pacific island flown there by Quinn Harris and his trampy but sweet assistant/sort of girlfriend.  While there she gets a call from work to go to Tahiti and pays Quinn to fly her there.  They do not like each other.  And just their luck, a storm rolls in and they have to make an emergency landing on a deserted island where the airplane breaks a wheel and they are now stranded.  As they learn to stay alive and not kill each other, they end up falling in love.  Meanwhile, back at the resort their significant others have a search and rescue team looking for them and they finally give them up for dead.  On the island, Robin and Quinn have different adventures including a snake swimming up Robin's pants, meeting murdering pirates and working to fix the plane to get them mobile again.  They're able to escape from the pirates just in the nick of time but can they go back to the lives they led before now that they've changed?  My favorite lines:  'You're a lousy pilot!  I've flown with you twice and you've crashed half the time!' and 'Aren't you one of those guys?  You know, those guys with skills?  You send them out into the wilderness with a pocket knife and a Q-tip and the build you a shopping mall.  You can't do that?'