- We took a train to Chicago in April for Eric's birthday, and had a blast going to the museums, the aquarium, seeing the site of the 1893 World's Fair, and sampling different deep-dish pizzas!
- My sister had her first child, a little baby daughter, and my best friend Jenni had her second child, a little baby girl. Several of my other friends had babies this year, and so I am getting a lot of cuteness on Facebook.
- We got to visit Jenni and Jake in Colorado Springs, and had a lot of fun seeing them and doing outdoorsy stuff.
- I discovered a love of silent comedies. Me favorite movies are probably Charlie Chaplin's, the funniest guy is Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd has very likable movies and looks sort of like my dad when my dad was younger!
- I discovered that I really like the movie "The Red Shoes". Criterion released a great restoration of that firm, and I've probably seen it 7 times in the past 2 months.
- I have one semester left of the paralegal program. Woo!
- Sarah and Matt came for Thanksgiving, and we had so much fun spending time with them and meeting their little baby.
Highlights of the recent Christmas Holiday:
- Had very nice Christmases with Eric's family and my family.
- My little sister Laura came up to visit for a few days this week. Went shopping, to the Tiny Toy Museum, watched a lot of our movies here, played games, and more. We saw La La Land (great!), and Rogue One (all right). Eric had a great insight after La La Land (It's a spoiler, so I'll post it at the bottom)*
- Made some nice New Year's Eve food. Black Eyed Peas for Luck, Collard Greens for Money, and Ham and Swiss Rolls for deliciousness.
Trailer for La La Land. When the director first tried to make the movie, they told him to change the leading man from a jazz pianist to a rock star, get rid of the opening and to change the ending. Would have been awful!
Things I'm Looking Forward to in 2017:
- Reading more
- Writing in the blog more, and hopefully writing some hand-written letters (or typed because my handwriting is awful). My only regret is I don't take time (unless it's an assignment) to make the writing very good. There are usually a lot of typos and awkwardly worded things.
- Exercising a bit more (and getting thyroid issues under control!)
- Reading scriptures more
- Getting done with school
- Maybe, just maybe, learning a few songs on the piano
I hope everyone has a great 2017!
-Sannah
*SPOILER*
*After La La Land, Laura and I were sad about the ending. Eric and I have been watching a lot of classic films this year, both musical and non-musical, so we were picking up on a lot of references. (Top Hat, An American in Paris, and Singin' in the Rain for the few right off the top of my head.) Eric said that he thought the ending was symbolic. Mia didn't choose Sebastion. In a way, he represented the "classical" in art (at least Jazz and Film). He had been described as being "stuck in the past", because he saw that although audience taste may change, the audience is not always right, and sometimes their taste changes for the worse. He respected the "pure" Jazz, and recognized that the newly preferred pop-y style was an inferior art form. Mia imagined what life could have been like if she had chosen to be with Sebastian, and although it seemed romantic and possibly better than her current life, the reality was she hadn't chosen to be with him. Similarly, audiences can imagine what things would be like if we had demanded more classically-styled movies: they might be superior to most of the movies we have today, but the reality is we didn't choose that. Hello Dolly was one of the last big classically-styled musical movies, and it did not do well when it was released because audiences wanted the more gritty, realistic films at that time. La La Land hearkens back to the time of the great musicals, but lives well within the present. It invites the audience to reconsider the past without forgetting the things we have learned along the way.
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