Disney on Ice

Disney on Ice… the ice… the music … the magic. I used to go to Disney on Ice every year when I was little. My wonderful parents would bring the whole family down to watch it in Salt Lake and I remember looking through the programs for years and years after and dreaming of being in the show… or just looking as pretty as Tiger Lily. It has just always had a certain sense of magic. Maybe it’s just that Disney really does create magic. So this year I heard I could get discount tickets through my work and I was ecstatic! I bought my tickets almost 2 months early (through the pre-sale when they weren’t even available to the public). I have been counting down the days just waiting with my 12 year old anticipation and the night finally came. Brook, David, Brody and I all went to watch the magic unfold of Disney’s 100 year celebration. All the characters had their turn in the spotlight.

I figured I’d share some picture of my favorite parts. Aladdin came on stage and pretty soon was dancing with a rink full of genies, they were so fun to watch.

I also loved the toy soldiers from Toy Story bringing out the present that contained Buzz Lightyear.

The finale was impressive with all the characters out on the ice and fireworks!!

One of my favorite parts was the little girls! Lots of little girls were dressed up as princesses and I found myself a little jealous I wasn’t. I was, however, sporting my bright silver glitter shoes… which I did get some compliments from the little girls next to us. They also complimented my necklace. I realized that my style really does probably impress a little girl more than the regular crowd. I have a certain fixation on shiny things and I fit into that world so much better than my own. These little girls were super cute too. When a new character would skate out that they really liked they would scream at the top of their lungs… “NEMO! NEMO! BELLE! BEEEELLLLLEEE!” as if letting their best friend know that they were there and cheering them on. It was adorable I couldn’t help but laughing every time these girls let out a scream. They were acting for real how I was acting in my heart! All in all Disney on Ice was a fabulous night enjoyed by all and all my dreams came true.

Nightmare on 13th Street

So along with Halloween comes the joys of haunted houses… as many of you may know, haunted houses scare me to death, no matter how lame they are. The lame-o Terror Ride at Lagoon still scares me every time. Our folk dance team went to Nightmare on 13th street a few weeks ago. We all got paired up with our haunted house buddy. Mine didn’t quite know what he was in for. :)

We were waiting in line and it’s like an amusement park where they have the line snake back and forth a whole bunch in this room while you’re waiting, but they have stuff there to entertain you/scare you. So we’re not even in the haunted house yet and some loud noise goes off or something to scare me and I end up freaking out, falling and laying flat on my back… in front of everyone in line. Awesome. The kid I was with, Brian, helped me up and he says, “Just try to keep a hold of my arm okay?” I think he felt silly for not catching me, which he shouldn’t cause he had no warning but it was pretty funny all the same.

So then we are in the haunted house for maybe 1 minute and we are walking down a hallway and this guy starts running at us. So without even thinking I start running backwards (still facing forward)… faster than I even knew was possible, with super human strength… dragging Brian with me, which was a feat cause he’s a tough guy. Eventually there is no more hall and I slam into the wall…hard… with Brian, and fell to the ground. I look over and… I BROKE THE WALL. That’s right I ran us into it so hard it actually broke. Awesome. Brian helped me up and says, “Man I’ve got to hold on to you better!” I think then he realized just what he was in for on this little trip. Ha ha. The rest of the house went as usual scaring the crap out of me but I didn’t break anything else. Brian was a good sport to stick with me too and try to keep me on my feet, he did say it was the best haunted house he’d ever been to… probably cause he was laughing at me the whole time.

Meeting New Friends

So as promised in my earlier post, I have moved to a new house... with the INTERNET, hooray!

As with moving to a new place comes starting a new life and making new friends. It’s seriously the pits! Don’t get me wrong I am totally excited to have new friends, just not to excited about the weeks ahead of sitting by myself and being totally awkward in trying to meet new people. The whole time I’m meeting new people and going to activities by myself, I’m thinking, “Okay be confident… so sit with those people they look nice…okay I can’t do it, I’ll sit here alone and hope someone sits by me.” Does anyone else do this but me? So here’s a story from my first weeks in my new place.

So I went to church for the first time… alone. I managed alright but definitely not my favorite day of my whole life. It was followed by going to the fireside…alone. At least I saw one friend there. But the following day we had a BBQ for family home evening and I decided I would be brave and once again go alone and venture out to start making friends.

After family home evening I reflected at the sheer awkwardness of meeting new people. One girl that I got to be sort of friends with actually told me that she, “Usually just likes to meet people to go on dates, but meeting other girls is okay sometimes.” Basically telling me she liked me, but would like me better if I was a boy and took her on a date. Awesome.

The awkward of other people can only take us so far though, the true gem is that of my own awkwardness. So now that I’m out of school and only working that’s really the only opening of conversation people can ask me about. The conversation usually goes something like this:
“Just working? Oh, so what do you do?”
“I’m a software engineer… “ (and because no one really knows what that entails)… “I write computer programs.”
Then one of the following statements:
“Whoa, I never would have guessed that! You don’t look like a computer nerd.” (This I take as a compliment but what they are really saying is, “You’re not a boy.”)

“So how do you actually WRITE a computer program?”

“Oh.” (That usually ends the conversation. They have decided that I am not going to be a fun person to start chatting with and they are best to end the conversation before getting locked in.)

If they are super polite and ask more about my job, the conversation does not end well. Either they get so bored when I am explaining it that their eyes glaze over or at the end, since they weren’t really listening they politely say, “I have no idea what you just said.” Followed by a nice smile and change of subject or an extreme interest in something across the room.

This all started last Thanksgiving with my own family. A few people asked me about my new job and in my excitement for working for a company that wrote software that saves soldiers lives I was all too eager to tell them about it. Well after the first few long descriptions of what I did, people stopped asking. I think behind my back they were spreading the word… “Whatever you do DON’T ask Molly about her job!” With my mom being the primary instigator.

But I have since learned to be aware of my boringness to others and try to avoid the subject of my job usually. But tonight, it caught me off guard. One girl asked me what I did and then responded that today she had to Google to figure out how many kilobytes were in a megabyte. So I asked her what she found out. She replied, “1,024” “Yep, Great Job” I said. Then the table conversation turned to how weird it was that it was that number. Isn’t it kind of random? Yeah, so weird. Why isn’t it just like 1000? Well they were asking questions and my mind was going and the words just started coming out. I couldn’t stop them. I started to explain that computers run on bits which can only be 1s and 0s and therefore the bits had to be in powers of 2 so it doesn’t work out to be exactly 1000…on and on…When I was about half way through there was a voice in my mind, trying to harness all the social skills I had to stop myself. STOP! Stop right now, that’s enough. Bits and bytes? Why are you talking about this? This will earn you -5 cool points! But I couldn’t stop in the middle of my explanation. I just continued as I looked at the 4 pairs of clueless eyes staring back at me wondering what planet this girl had come from. All the while continuing to explain and ignoring the voice in my mind that was blaring like a siren alerting the death of my future social life in this ward.

Classic Molly moment, figuring more talking will somehow work my way out of the awkwardness I have created… instead it deepens it. So for all of you nerds out there, who make jokes about atmospheric pressure (no joke, I did it without even thinking just 2 days ago), I have posted my nerd score. I’m happy to report myself as a “high-nerd.” Feel free to take the nerd quiz if you’d like!

High School Musical

One of my latest adventures was last Friday… for those of you who aren’t up on the culture of a 10 year old, it was the opening night of the movie High School Musical 3- Senior Year. Brook and I decided to go; we reserved the last two seats together. The theater was almost sold out! To make the night an even bigger success Brook bought us matching shirts that said “BFF” on them. (once again for those of you not up on the pre-teen culture, it stands for ‘Best Friends Forever’) We were originally looking for High school musical shirts, but couldn’t find any on such short notice. We went to dinner before and got quite a few stares at the matching shirts. So we showed up at the theater with a million people half our age and quite a few moms and a few dads that must have been good sports. We weren’t the only ones that dressed up for the grand event.

The movie was fabulous, listening to all of the girls squeal whenever the main character, Troy, came on the screen. I even joined in a few times. Most of the time we were laughing, fully enjoying the cheesyness of it all. But during one of the hip hop dances both of our jaws just dropped cause we fell in love with one of the dances, We vowed to learn it. :) Afterwards Brook and I talked a stranger into taking our picture by the cardboard display for the movie.

Us kissing Troy… following the example of a group of 6 year olds before us!

Moab

As I mentioned earlier in my posts I have finally earned my passage to travel with the family to Moab. They have gone the past few years to ride dirtbikes on the slick rock and because of school and my minimal skills I got left behind, but not this year. We had a blast! This trip brought lots of adventures. It started out with a new bike. My dad decided it was time for me to graduate from my 100XR up to a 200XR. So he spend weeks before getting it all cleaned up and set up so I could ride it, thanks dad! The main thing about the bigger bike is… it’s bigger. It has bigger tires, which are better for riding up big boulders and it’s taller (not good for my legs) and it weighs more (not good for my girlie muscles). All in all I loved riding my new bike, it only presented a problem when I got in a spot I couldn’t touch or when I tipped over. Sadly to report when I crashed with the bike on top of me I couldn’t lift it off so I just have to wait for one of the boys to come pick me back up. They were pretty good about keeping an eye on me and taking care of me though.




So I rode better than I think anyone thought I would, even myself. My skill consisted of point it uphill and give it some gas and hold on. I didn’t fall too much, but when I did, I made it count. I came home with bruises everywhere! One of my favorite parts was riding on the slick rock. It’s neat because they have white dashes painted on the rock to show you the trail. After a while of riding my dad stopped me and informed me, “Molly, you don’t have to touch every single white line with the front of your tire, you can go off a little bit or take a wider turn if you need it!” ha ha. I think following the path with exactness gave me a confidence that if I just pointed it where I was supposed to go, my bike would go there.



I wore my pink riding shirt to alert others of my riding level, and as Bryan pointed out to me, “cause then you look more professional in the pictures.” Turns out it also has more useful reasons. I got to one difficult part to ride up and my dad wasn’t there to show me where to go up and there were people all around waiting and watching so I just gassed it up these rock steps and I didn’t crash, but I didn’t make it all the way up either but before I knew it 4 boys ran to my rescue in order to rescue the pink shirt motorcycle chic. They pushed my bike the rest of the way up… no problem. Another thanks to the pink shirt! Although, after a hard day of riding my dad informed me that I had graduated to a whole new level and that I deserved a red shirt now, like the rest of my family! ha ha.

So I have to take a minute to brag on my Mothey. Sorry to all of you, I don’t mean to cause offense but, I have the coolest mom ever. A few stories to illustrate my point. The first was my mom got thrown off her bike riding on a tough part. She got thrown headfirst into a large pile of sand. Not everyone gets to witness their mom thrown from a dirt bike. (Don’t worry she wasn’t injured) She rolled over and her helmet was filled with red sand, she couldn’t even see out of it. Her body was shaking she was laughing so hard at herself. Classic.

She always keeps up with us in all the adventures we take and to be frankly honest she kicks butt at motorcycling. Probably my favorite part of the trip happened on the hard part I mentioned earlier. A bunch of boys from another group came riding over it and they were barely making it up and out of control (one almost hit me). My dad sent Bryan back to offer to ride my mom’s bike through. She declined cause she thought she could do it, and she was right. She and rode up it like it was no big deal. Surpassing all these grown men with her motorcycle skills. I couldn’t help but let out a loud cheer yelling, “Yeah! Go MOM!” That’s right boys… my mom just kicked your trash. Pretty much she’s amazing.

Bryan posing silly

One of my falls (thanks for getting a pic mom!), after James pulled my bike off me, I was stuck between my bike and the rock ledge to my left.

We rode one day in the rain... all day long! So here we are in a beautiful canyon that we found in our rain ponchos!

The famous mural depicting the "Poison Spider" trail that I rode.

To get this picture was quite a feat. One of us would have to set the camera up on a ledge and then press the auto timer and run across a crevice and around to the rest of us and sit without looking too silly! All in all the vacation was fabulous and very much needed!

Girls Night Out

Me, Erin, Sara, Whitney, and Lynsi

I just wanted to do a real quick post on the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. A few weeks ago my girlfriends and I went on a hike up to Ensign peak and it was pretty cool. But along the way I stopped dead in my tracks because of this enormous spider. I exclaimed, “Girls! There is a HUGE spider right here.” As I back away in panic. (For anyone that doesn’t know I have a mega fear of spiders and have nightmares about them attacking me all the time.) Everyone thought it wasn’t really that big of a deal until Lynsi came back to look and screamed because she saw this little guy in the trail…


Yeah… biggest spider ever. I wasn’t going to post this, but at Lynsi’s request it made the blog. Enjoy!

Just Another Weekend Home

I went home for a weekend in September for my motorcycle boot camp in order to prepare me for being able to take the family vacation to Moab this year to ride dirt bikes. The weekend was fun filled and started out on Friday evening with my Mothey and I both taking our skills test to get our motorcycle endorsement on our drivers licenses. We both passed and now all of the Masons are licensed motorcycle riders! Yahoo!

When I arrived home on Friday afternoon my dad informed me that Bryan and him we going to be taking a helicopter flying lesson in the morning. He casually asked if I wanted to do it. OF COURSE! So Saturday morning we all went down to the historic Red Baron Hanger to prepare for our first helicopter lesson. The lesson went really well and the instructor was really impressed with all of our talent and said any of us would succeed if we pursued a career in flying. I felt that I caught on pretty fast to all of the controls and was soon flying it all on my own. It was such a fun experience to try something totally new. I never know what to expect when I go home!

Dad, me and Bry

So after that we came home to go out motorcycling. We went on a hard trail but I did rather well only falling a few times and breaking one motorcycle part. :) My dad said I passed, so I earned my passage to ride in Moab!

New Rommates

With moving also comes new roommates. Unfortunately it has taken me so long to post that I have already lost Camary, cause she moved back to Canada yesterday and we are feeling her loss already. But I’m still living with Chirsty and we are looking forward to a new girl moving in this week. So a little about Camary and Christy, they love to have fun and be silly and they love organic food! They were both on vacation when I moved in and as I started to move my food into the kitchen I noticed that there was no other food in the house, just vitamins and protein drinks. Now part of this was because they did go on vacation for 2 weeks and hadn’t left much food. But I joked with my mom about meeting these new roommates and what I was in store for. I told her I felt like I was sneaking food into fat camp by moving all my super non-organic food into the house. But all has turned out well and I am happy to report that they eat food, even if it’s organic M&Ms (which are called sundrops!) :)

So we decided that we had to have a roommate initiation night so we could all play together and get to know each other better. So… our night consisted of going to a dollar store and buying 3 of something (we got carried away and did 3 things) so that we would all have something the same to start our roommate time together. The adventure at the store was great all of us shopping and trying to hide everything from each other as we pick out our goods.

Then we had a great gift giving ceremony when we got home. Complete with music and dancing around and playing with every gift as we got it! The gifts were fabulous, they included dart guns (which started a war), boxers, glass goblets, pom poms, and my own special touch… safety goggles. We had a blast opening and playing with all of our gifts. Here are a few pictures from the fun night…

Me, Christy, and Camary

Posing with our bags of gifts
Celebrating with out new toys!

After we finished with our gifts we went out dancing. Here we are all dressed up in our dancing outfits.

And here we are ready for church the next day. As you can tell they are both way more fashionable that I am and I’m hoping that some of this fashion sense will rub off on me from osmosis. Love you girls!

Where do I belong?

All the quizes that are out there just amaze me. I thought this one was funny. I think it fits me kinda well.

You Belong in 1985

Wild, over the top, and just a little bit cheesy. You're colorful at night - and successful during the day.

What Year Do You Belong In?

Sorry I'm forever behind on the blogging. Hopefully I'll be moving to a house with the internet soon!

More Adventures in Costa Rica

This Wednesday we went to the temple and Satan was sure working hard to keep us from getting there. First of all we missed our bus by 5 min. and it only comes once every hour. SO, we took another bus to the temple, and a car ran into us! Yes it hit the side of the bus and slid all the way down. The front was all smashed and a windshield ruined. I couldn´t see all the damage to the bus. Everyone on the bus was fine. It hit the opposite side that I was on but I could still feel it hit! It was crazy so everyone had to get off the bus and get on another bus. Then we realized the stop closest to the temple was still a 20 minute walk away up this huge huge hill. The sessions only run every two hours so they had 25 min before the session started. So we booked it up there. (Wade talking to a kid on a bike doing missionary work all the way) It was so hot and tiring walking but we made it in time for their session by like 5 min. Then they told us they don´t do baptisms on Wed and they didn´t have enough workers! Sad! But Wade and another boy with us, Dustin offered to stay and help and they found two more workers so we got to do them how fortunate!

So now for the funny story that you know had to come. So when I got done with baptisms I was walking down the hall and I remembered I hadn´t seen a shower in the dressing room so when I walked down the hall I noticed another door was open and so I went in and found the shower... took a nice long shower. Then I came out and started looking around... I wonder where this connects to my dressing room? hmm... there are other dressing rooms here... hmmm why is that picture of a MAN on the wall? That´s right, I was, in fact, in the mens locker room in the temple wearing only a tiny tiny towel! There was no one in there, thank goodness, so I paniced and ran out hoping I could make it into the girls dressing room without anyone knowing but I ran into a temple worker lady on my way out of the mens dressing room and she had a very puzzled look. I could barely find the words in enlgish much less in spanish so I managed to stutter ¨wrong room¨ I had no idea if she understood me. It was all I could do not to bust up laughing the whole time in the dressing room. I came out and Amanda was dying of laugher. She just watched me walk into the mens bathroom and didn´t bother rescuing me.

Amanda said the temple worker lady heard the water shut off and waited a minute and then came back to ask me if I needed another jumpsuit for confirmations and went into the dressing room and came out with a very puzzled look and then I ran out of the mens. So she had to get me a suit for confirmations and I just had to stand there in my towel till she got back and I had to face her again. Then after I changed I went out and she asked me, in spanish of course, uh, did you get lost? I stuttered yes and made her promise she wouldn´t tell anyone! ha ha. I think that would only happen to me, or possibly Maranda! :)

This last weekend we decided to go to the beach to scuba dive. We didn´t have exact plans of where we were going to stay or how we were getting there. We decided to take the public bus to the beach. The bus was full when we tried to buy tickets but we got on the bus and bought tickets anyway. I didn´t realized till later that we purchased standing tickets to stand in the asile for 2 hours! So we ended up sitting on the floor of the bus where ther open spot for wheelchairs is. It was quite the adventure. I enjoyed the spontenity and feel of it, but I was extremely grateful for my seat on the ride back!

So we went scuba diving and I got to see and TOUCH a white tiped shark! Pretty Awesome. I tried to post the picture and it´s not working. Sorry. We saw lots of cool things and it was great.

¡Pura Vida!

Hello everyone from Beautiful Costa Rica!

I have been in Costa Rica for about a week now and it is fabulous. I am staying with a family here and they are so amazing. They are very nice and I was worried about not being able to communicate with them very well but it´s great and if we don´t understand each other we resort to acting things out or my family guessing the words that they know in english. By the way they are so cute when they try to say things in english! My ¨father¨ was trying to say sausage the other day and it was impossible for him but so so cute. When we got here he said in english ¨I am your dad in Costa Rica!¨and it was in the most adorable accent ever! I have noticed that my spanish has improved alot. Actually I´m not sure if my spanish has imporved the most or just my cofidence in using it. I only speak in spanish to my family and it´s nice to get to use it so much. All the classroom practice of spanish just doesn´t add up to the real thing. They are so great to be too. Every day our mom washes our laundry, by hand, and makes us a fabulous breakfast and dinner and makes our bed and clean our room a little bit. I feel so spoiled being here! What an amazing opportunity it is for me to be here.

I was super worried about the food here just because I am so picky but I have like all the food that we have had here. My mom here is a fabulous cook. We have even had....yummy funeral potatoes here! I almost died when I found out we were having them for dinner. I love my life or in spanish Amo mi vida! Amo mi vida has become an everyday phrase for us!

Pura Vida is the national phrase down here. Directly translated it means pure life but it just means that life is amazing and everything is great. It´s on all the merchandise and everything, it´s kinda fun. You say good morning they say Pura Vida!

I know you are all wanting to hear a funny story from down here so here goes... As I mentioned earlier our mom does our laundry by hand. The first night amanda and I just had our underwear that we needed to wash so we put it in the hamper. We didn´t know that she did it everyday but we found out when we came home the next day and our underwear was gone. We were discussing for a mintue the idea that she probably had to hang them to dry but we wondered where but we didn´t think anything of it. So later that day our buddies Wade and Jeff came over to our house to visit with us and our family. Our dad took us out in the back porch area to show us his orchid collection. Then we went around the corner to see the aloe vera plant, which by the way have flowers, And there next to the aloe vera plant are two pairs of panties and one pair of socks. Amanda and I busted up laghing. I couldn´t help but be in awe of the awkwardness of the situation, there was nothing I could do but laugh it off. It took the boys a while to notice them, but they did. To top it off Amanda´s were bright pink and mine had lots of huge smiley faces on them! I was looking through Jeff´s pictures of the plants and there were our panties in the picture. The momory is saved forever for posterity! I thought I´d share it with you. :)

Costa Rica is fabulous! Pura Vida!

The WienerMobile

Quite a while ago (because I'm so behind on blogging) we had our Spring Formal dance while my date and I were driving to dinner (at one of our friend’s house) we drove past none other than the 27 foot long and 11 foot high Oscar Mayer Wienermobile!! Right there on the side of the road on a residential street. I about flipped out with overjoyed excitement. I made my date stop and I got out and took pictures of this fabulous find. It was huge and so awesome. As we were finishing taking pictures a group of people walked up to get inside and go for a ride. Had I not been on a date trying to maintain some type of normalcy after my outburst and been in a hurry to get to dinner, I would have asked if I could jump on board with this awesome family.

I’ve since looked up some facts about the Wienermobile on the internet and according to Wikipedia this fabulous car is one of only 6 in existence! They are identified by their licese plates: Our Dog, Hot Dog, Big Bun, Oscar, Yummy, and Weenr. And it turns out they recruit recent college graduates to drive these Wienermobiles around the country and they are called “HotDoggers.” It’s a good thing I have just graduated because I know what I am doing with my future now… driving a giant hot dog and passing out weenie whistles to ecstatic children (and possibly college students).

¡Voy a vivir en Costa Rica por un mes!

Hey everyone I am going to live in Costa Rica for the month of June! I am doing a study abroad through Weber State and will be studying Spanish and living with a host family, while having so much fun! Green jungles, waterfalls, beautiful beaches, and hopefully some neat marine life I can see while scuba diving. I have been studying Spanish for 6 years and will be getting my minor in it. I am still totally a fish out of water in my conversational Spanish and I’m hoping that this language immersion trip will help me out a bunch. I will miss all of you so much it makes me sad to think about it. I’ll keep you posted as I know more later. I just figured I would let you all know it was official because I’ve paid my deposit and I’m working on getting my passport!

Trip Home

I hadn’t been home since Christmas and it was due time. I just missed my family way too much. I had to plan it a month in advance, but I got to go home!! As has become traditional for the last few times I’ve gone home, I brought some friends- Anna, Maranda and Jon.

Talk about packing snacks for a road trip- Good Job Mar!

We started out weekend with a tour of the snowcave. It has since gotten bigger, collapsed on my dad, and then been rebuilt and reinforced. I can stand up in it now. Bryan enjoyed showing off all of his hard work, here are some fun pictures from the cave.

Crazy Faces- Jon, Anna, Me, Bryan, and Maranda

Tall enough to stand in!

Then we had a fabulous dinner that my Mothey made. If any of you have not had the privilege of eating her food, I apologize. She’s amazing and makes food of a restaurant caliber. As soon as the word gets out we’ll probably have people bringing dates to our house for a night on the town. We finished up the night with a chocolate fountain, Maranda was pretty excited, as you can tell! I was excited because I talked James into going to the store to get me some white chocolate because I love it so much and he did and I ended up with my very own bowl of white chocolate to dip in…could life get any better? I submit it cannot.

Well we retired to bed in order to rise early the next morning to go snowmobiling. But not before a home cooked breakfast, Idaho style complete with potatoes! Once again my mom is the best! Maranda and Anna had never been snowmobiling before and we so excited for their new adventure. While packing our lunches in the morning we were told to grab whatever we wanted to drink. We had small juice bottles so Maranda grabbed two. Then she asked, “Are there a lot of places to go to the bathroom up there?” to which my dad informed her, “Yeah, all over the place. You can go wherever you want!” She said, “Oh,” thought for a minute and put one juice back. LOL! When we stopped for lunch Maranda ventured off to go to the bathroom, she asked a few questions and I gave all the advice I could about being a girl and peeing in the wilderness… in the wintertime…with all your snow clothes. What an adventure. She came back with a little grin and informed us it was her first time ever peeing in the wilderness and it was successful. I’m so proud! Way to go Mar! I love you. Both Maranda and Anna did so well and everyone was impressed by their skills. Where ever we went they were right behind us following in our tracks! Jon did well too. After telling me over and over that he wasn’t very good he went out like an old pro and had a ball! I also improved on my carving and by improving I mean I learned a fact that no one had bothered to tell me before and made all the difference between me just tipping the snowmobile over on top of me and being able to successfully carve! I was proud, and so was my dad.

Anna is excited to go!

Me, Maranda, and Jon

Maranda's "I peed in the woods" face.

In front of the trailor after we were all done!

All in all it was a successful ride and we were all exhausted when we got home. We all ended up in a pile on my bed to lounge and talk, my brothers even came and joined us, it was awesome!

Sara's Wedding

Sara Buckley married Eric Woodbury on February 15. This wedding was a pretty exciting one. I’m really good friends with both of them so it was fun to know both of their family’s at the wedding. Eric’s family is the family that takes care of me in Utah and I love them so much!

I also feel an additional sense of pride because it was at my Ugly Christmas Sweater party in 2006 where they had their first kiss… underneath my mistletoe. They weren’t dating and it took Eric about another month to finally ask her out, but it all started at my house! Here is a picture from this year’s ugly sweater party of them under our makeshift mistletoe!

Sara asked Lynsi, Whitney and I to be her bridesmaids. We were to dress in silver (Thus the purchase of the silver shirt which I wore to the Dance too!) After the wedding I went around with Sara and Eric to help look for the details in the pictures they were taking. So I followed them around straightening her necklace and dress, moving hair out of her face, or anything else I could think of while they got their pictures taken. It was fun to get to spend so much time with them on their busy day. It was a cold one though; I couldn’t feel my feet when I got to my car because the only dressy shoes I have are sandals! It was windy so they didn’t have the fountain on but Eric knew the grounds worker (because Eric makes friends with everyone) and he willingly walkie talkied and asked them to turn on the fountain so they could take a picture. Talk about connections!

They had a dance at her reception and it was so much fun. All the girls danced to “Our Song” by Taylor Swift, which has become a sort of theme song over the last year. To top the whole night off I ended up catching the bouquet so you know what that means!

*NSYNC Love

Okay it’s confession time. I love *NSYNC! There was a time in my life that you might even dare to say that I was obsessed with them… Let me elaborate. I don’t exactly remember when I fell in love with them, but I distinctly remember my friend Christie bringing over their first CD and listening to it in my basement for the first time and I was jealous I didn’t have my own CD. She went to a concert of theirs that year and invited me. I still remember it was $10. I realized the concert was on my dad’s birthday so I declined and didn’t even bother asking my parents. Only to talk to my mom about it later and have her respond with, “Are you kidding me? You should have gone!” I was really disappointed.

My love grew as my friend Jordan Mecham and I bonded over their music and good looks. My celebrity crush was JC Chasez (From *NSYNC) for the longest time. Hers was actually Josh Hartnett but in order for us to obsess over *NSYNC she has a closed second place crush of Lance Bass (also in *NSYNC). We knew everything about our celebrity crushes and talked about them as if they were our best friends. One year we even threw a birthday part for JC. His birthday is August 8th. We decided to eat Chinese Food because it was JC’s favorite. I didn’t even like Chinese food at this time but I made myself eat the entire meal with chopsticks because I was convinced that’s what he would do if here were there. After lots of practice and thinking of JC every time I got a lot better at using them. This actually turned out quite well because I know how to use chopsticks now, a skill that has impressed many dates. Our Birthday party also consisted of watching Indiana Jones (His favorite trilogy) and playing the *NSYNC backstage pass game that we had to borrow from Jordan’s little sister. Of course the party ended with a sleepover so we could gush over our *NSYNC crushes!

Another fond memory I have is finally obtaining my ever coveted Larger than life *NSYNC poster. Ever since I saw it in the Barnes and Noble window display I wanted it. It was a advertising poster for their new CD and it was huge! You couldn’t buy the posters you just had to call the store and beat all of the other little girls that wanted it to put your name on it. I remember frantically calling so many stores and the one that I finally got it from was in Twin Falls (hours away from where I lived). A family friend had to go pick it up for me. I loved this poster so much when I got it! I hung it on my wall and it stayed there for a long time. When I moved away to college, Bryan moved into my room. I couldn’t bare to let him take it down so for the first year I was at college Bryan had to have a poster at least 5ft x 5ft on his wall of the *NSYNC boys! This is what it looks like. (My favorite, besides JC, is the creepy grandma on the right side)

Well I have only been to one concert of theirs, but it was amazing and I have collected anything *NSYNC I can get my hands on. I have a box at home filled with my treasures. Recently I received the crowning piece to my collection. Thus the reason for my post.

Last week I get a text message from Jon and it says, “Hey you love nsync and stuff right? So do you know all their names?” I responded with “Of course! Names, birthdates, favorite foods, what do you need to know?” The rest of the details of the conversation aren’t too important, what is important is that Joey Fatone (From *NSYNC that recently took second on Dancing with the Stars) was skiing at Wolf Mountain with his wife and daughter! He had rented skis for his daughter from the shop where Jon works. In defense of Jon’s manhood, he didn’t even know who it was until the ticket ladies came and told him. I couldn’t believe it Jon had conversed with one of my adolescent idols. The good news of the story doesn’t stop there. Jon managed to get Joey autograph and surprised me with it! I know you all wanted to see it so here it is…


Joey Fatone wrote my name… and I’m pretty sure it says Love, Joey Fatone. We’re pretty much BFF now. To make it even better it’s on the back of the snow report for that day. So, I’m not obsessed with *NSYNC anymore but I will admit this was a pretty exciting event. I mean come on… it’s Joey Fatone! So thanks Jon for the autograph- you’re the best! I love my life!