This video is so quirky- I dig it. I dig the song too!

We're getting a doggy!!!

We don't know WHICH one is ours yet, but we are getting an Olde English Bulldogge at the end of August when she is going to be 8 weeks old. We already bought her a collar (pink with alternating diamond studs and silver spikes) and we are going to name her Stella- that way when she runs too far we can yell "STELLA!!" The full grown dogs are Mommy (brindle brown) and Daddy (white)! We are SOOO excited! I also bought her a chew toy- a bumble bee a la "Best in Show." Enjoy! And share which one is your favorite!

"Must See" list for NYC

My mom was in town this past weekend. We had lots of fun and so I decided to make a list for all you would be travelers to NYC. The following items are "Must See" (or "Must Do"):


Go see Wicked. It's worth any price!
Double Decker bus tour
Central Park- just walk around, it's fun.
Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge
What awaits you in Brooklyn, you ask?
- Grimaldi's famous NY Pizza under the bridge
- Brooklyn Ice Cream shoppe
- Great views of Manhattan
Empire State building, go to the top! Listen to the hand held tour! love it.
Juniors Cheesecake. Nuf said.
Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island- or the Staten Island Ferry passes right by Lady Lib (and that one's free)
Museum of Natural History
Times Square
Rockefeller Center
Bryant Park/New York public library

If I had a hammer...

I was talking to Momma Pinney the other night about our upcoming annual trip to Carpinteria (the beach town where she grew up in CA). Last year my brother-in-law Chris serenaded us all with his ukulele and folk songs. So this year, Mom thought it would be a good idea for the rest of us to be prepared so we can all sing along too! She suggested that I purchase the CD The Very Best of Peter, Paul, and Mary. So I did. And I listened to it. ALL of it. And it should have been no surprise to me when all day today I had a Peter, Paul and Mary song stuck in my head. The song was "If I Had a Hammer". All day long I was singing the hammer song, under my breath, at my desk, on the subway, tapping my foot in a staff meeting. SO, I thought I would blog about it. Here is a clip of the song below. But BEWARE! It sticks!

New York Garden...

I went out to sit on my hammock today on the terrace at 45 Wall 1617 (my old apartment) when I stumbled across this enormous weed growing 2 feet tall out of an accumulation of city filth and a mossy grate covered in, yes, cigarette butts (the people on the terrace above drop the butts on our terrace). I turned to Brenda and said "what is this nasty weed! You need to do something about that." To which she replied... "What, this? This is my garden!"

So I thought I would let you all know what a "New York garden" looks like, picture taken on my camera phone.

Chinese food in Battery Park

So last night some friends and I got together and headed to Battery Park for some Chinese food! It was a really fun night, we had lots of delicious food right on the Hudson River. We had a view of the statue of liberty and boats passing. Here we are:
From L to R: Rich, Sara, Mark, Courtnie, Brenda, Gabe, me

When they brought us fortune cookies, they came amidst a pile of freshly cut oranges... Here was an attempt by Rich and me to take a picture...
Here's when he suddenly tried to KISS me with his orangey mouth! I was laughing so hard...
We finally got an okay pic...

On the way home, we got caught in a torrential downpour! Literally, everyone ducked off the street and under overhangs. Luckily I brought my umbrella! I was still drenched from my knees down, and everything else was pretty wet too. Gotta love New York!

Pics from Harbor Cruise!

So, all the YSA's in the area recently went on a Harbor Cruise around Manhattan, and it was a blast! Here are a couple pics from the night...
Here's Heidi, me and Brenda! We're all in book club/pancake club together. Some other friends...
Back L: Plessie, Becky, Heidi, me and Alan
Front L: Ashley (my roommate) and Alicia
Funny story... Alan was friends with Courtney's husband Matt at BYU! Totally random, when Matt was in NYC he saw Alan in my ward and introduced us- and now we're friends. :) And PS, I'm totally standing on my tippy tip toes in this picture, he's SUPER tall!

Pilates is a girl's best friend...

So yesterday Brenda and I decided it might be a good idea to do some yoga! It's relaxing, and sort of exercise. So Brenda agreed we should do one of my Yoga videos. Only when we actually got to doing it, for some reason Pilates was the DVD we decided to pop in. WELL, pilates (or Pie-law-tees as I like to say though Shelby always corrects me that it should be pronounced Pill-ah-tees) it's a bit more active than yoga, especially when the intent is to relax. So for 30 minutes we tried to do this....

But probably did more of this...
I was alerted of our mistake today in an email from Brenda entitled "Bad Idea". It said, "My seat hurts. I think it is bruised. No more rolling on the floor - ever."

Marriage...

I would like to congratulate my dear sister Jana who just got married this past weekend to Jim in Utah! It was a beautiful wedding, and she looked absolutely stunning!

This wedding marks a unique event within my family, making my personal position quite the rarity. 6 out of the 8 kids have been married off! That leaves me and my brother Jon, the last remaining single Pinney siblings.

If you'd like to know more about Jon, his myspace page is www.myspace.com/jonpinney. He is an aspiring pop star, very talented, and an all around good guy. And, as I just mentioned, available. :)

Will you go out with me?

So last night, I had just been g-chatting with a friend of mine, Kyle, who is in the Philippines volunteering for the summer, and I was sitting on my bed, can't remember what I was doing, and I get a phone call from a "No Name" number. I answered it, almost by saying "this is Ashley" just in case it was work related, but I thought against it at the last minute and said "Hellllllo?" To which someone on the other end said "Hi, is this Ashley?" and I said "yes it is" and they said "Hi, this is Larry, I got your name from Brian in the ward, and he said we should go on a date together." ... !!! ... I was like, "who's Brian?" and I think the guy said "Brian Smith" and I was like "I don't think I know him..." and then the guy was like "well, he said he thought you and I should go on a date together, do you want to go out next Friday?" I have to tell you, the guy sounded very strange, and I was really nervous, and I didn't know what to say, and I was like, "uhh....?" and then the guy kept talking about why we should go on this date, and I really thought someone out there must hate me to give a crazy person my number, and then the guy's voice started to sound familiar, and as he rambled on and on, he finally asked me a question again, "what do you think?" and I said "Larry, you sure do sound a lot like my friend Kyle..." and the guy was like "I don't know anyone named Kyle, my name's Larry, so, do you want to go out next Friday?" And I thought for a second then said "I would love to!" To which Kyle burst out laughing, and said "you recognized my voice! I can't believe you knew it was me!" He played it so well. He got me good.

Who knew? I, Shelby, am.....

Take the Quiz here!

Fun in the city...

Here is me and Brenda.

So the past couple of weeks have been pretty fun here in NYC... hence, all the recent blogging. This past weekend my BF's cousin Garrett was in town, and the three of us had a blast hanging out around the city.


Here is Brenda and Garrett.

Brenda was the official photographer! Here is a pic of Garrett and me on the Brooklyn Bridge.


It was pretty hot, and maybe Brenda and I didn't wear sun screen and got really burnt... well, we at least had common sense enough to put some on our faces, so we didn't look totally like tomatoes...

On the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge, in the magical land "Brooklyn" there is this giant telescope that looks at the London Tower Bridge where UK tourists come and wave to New York tourists.
Here is me waving at UK tourists. The guy standing next to me was talking to a guy on the other end of the telescope on his cell phone, it was so random! The guy was like "uh-huh... uh-huh..." and then leaned over to the girl standing next to him and said pointing into the telescope "that guy said you have a very pretty dress on."
We finished up the fun weekend with a trip to Serendipity 3! We shared one huge frozen hot chocolate and some chocolate mousse.


It was cool too cause they saw Lance Armstrong and I saw Kate Hudson! She was walking out the front door of Serendipity, and turned around and smiled at the restaurant. It was like a movie where the famous person is over-exaggerated, only it was real! Crazy, right?

New York moment...

So, I was walking to meet some friends on Thursday, going from my building on 45th and 9th through Times Square to get to Bryant Park when I noticed a huge crowd of people standing at the corner looking up. I thought it was kind of weird, maybe just a group of tourists, so I kept walking. The next corner I got to there was another group of people standing on the corner looking up. I stopped. Looked at 2 other corners in that intersection, all were crowded with people looking up. I attempted to look in their same direction, didn't see anything and asked a woman "What's everyone looking at?" But she didn't speak English and ignored me, so I just kept walking. On the next street there were even more people, about 200 crowded along the street looking up in the air, and at this point some were even pointing! I looked up again and saw 5 helicopters hovering in a circle. I kept walking until I heard someone speaking English and then I asked them, "What's everyone looking at?" To which they replied, "There's a man climbing the side of The New York Times building!" Sure enough, there was a guy in red pants scaling the side of a skyscraper! I watched for about 5 minutes, and he finally reached the top of the 52 story building (that's what, around 600 feet?). It was intense, he was so high and you couldn't see any equipment, he was free climbing all the way. Then he was finally yanked off the wall by the police right when he reached the top. And everyone cheered.

The craziest part? That was the SECOND time someone had scaled the building that day. Crazy, right? The first guy was an actual famous climber speaking out against Global warming. The second was some guy from Brooklyn speaking out against Malaria (?). Go figure. Both were apprehended and taken immediately to a psych hospital for evaluations.

BYU Orchestra at Carnegie Hall

So on Wednesday night the BYU Orchestra played at Carnegie Hall, and a local member decided to buy out the ENTIRE show and give a bunch of tickets away to each ward in the area! So nice of them... AND the best part was, it got a bunch of YSA's to actually go on some dates. I was waiting for my date (yes, I had one too) and I saw a bunch of people walk by paired off. I was so impressed.

In true Ashley form, we accidentally chose a seat where the people sitting EXACTLY in my eye line were lovers, canoodling the ENTIRE performance... bleh... But that's okay, what happened next totally made up for it... One of the pieces they played was by the guy whose compositions were always used in Looney Toons cartoons, with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. I couldn't help but giggle at the part in the music where you can just imagine Bugs Bunny dancing on his twinkle toes towards Elmer Fudd! Loved it....

The Greatest Show on Earth!

Last night I watched the Academy Award winner "The Greatest Show on Earth" with some friends, and it was actually really good! Not that I thought it wouldn't be... but the story was pretty substantial and all the circus stuff was pretty neat. Jimmy Stewart played an heartfelt clown, and Charlton Heston was the tough circus boss. And I LOVED the cameo by Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, who in one scene were sitting in the audience watching the show intently. Hilarious...
Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey- brought me back to the days when I was in the circus... okay, so I wasn't really IN the circus, but when I was little I actually DID win a contest and got to be in the circus for one show, where I rode a train and hung out with the clowns. It was amazing.