Molly's Life

Tater Tot Mayday

2011-05-13T15:09:00.001-06:00

Last week decided to get food from the cafeteria, I usually just bring a lunch but I was feeling the need for a change... so Glenn and I both got sandwiches and tater tots and he went to get a coke and I went to pay. So I paid, and then went to get us some fry sauce while I waited for him to get done. So I fill up my fry sauce and put it on my plate with the tots and sandwich, I also have my water bottle (no lid) full of water in my other hand. So I finish and go to step away to go sit down and my shoe laces got caught on the cupboard or something that way by my feet at the condiment counter… so I try to regain my balance but there was no chance. The result? Me throwing my glass plate with my food on it on to the counter as I tumble backwards falling completely to the floor flat on my back with my water bottle flying and spilling everywhere. Yes. In the lunchroom, where everyone is eating, at peak lunch time. Awesome. So I hurry and sit up to grab my waterbottle as pretty much every ounce of water has spilled all over the floor (lucky thing number one, somehow I managed not to get in any of the water, I still don’t know how this happened). So I picked up my water bottle and myself off the floor as fast as I could and from behind me I hear one guy say… “Uh, are you alright?” I just said “yes, I’m fine” really quickly. As I think about it now, I have no idea what the guy looked liked so I think I just stared at the floor as I said it not wanting to look around at all and just trying to pretend it didn’t happen as fast as I possibly could. Then to the next spot of damage. When I thre my plate on the metal counter it had made a huge noise, but lucky thing number two it didn’t break the plate, lucky thing number three I didn’t get any food (mainly fry sauce) spilled on me. So quite a few of my tater tots flew off my plate and fry sauce went flying so I’m frantically trying to clean all that up as best I can in the sea of water on the floor, when Glenn walks up. He just stares at me. and I say… “I had a huge mayday Glenn”… “What happened?!?!?” He missed the whole thing. Finally as I cleaned up as much as I could I just fled the scene.

My heart was still pounding for pretty much all of lunch. How embarrassing! What grown person flops all over the ground and spills their lunch at work? That’s like something you deal with in elementary school!

Random Wedding Chat

2011-04-01T12:12:00.002-06:00

I really thought I'd post more often while I was engaged. I don't know why I thought that, like I'm going to have all this extra time or anything! :) I think I just figured I'd have so much more exciting things to say! So first off thanks to eveyone who voted for us in the photo contest, I appreciate it. We ended up winning third place and getting a dinner gift certificate and movie tickets. :) We've also decided on our Open House in Idaho Falls. It will be on June 11th from 7-9pm. And here's the awesome part... we'll be having it at the Idaho Falls airport in and airplane hangar! My dad has a friend that is going to let us do it there in his new beautiful building. It's perfect cause the walls are all silver and the floor is pretty white and they have red in there too. oh! our colors are red and silver by the way. So yeah, I know you will get an annoucement, but here's the info kind of as a save the date! And our recpetion in Salt lake will be at the Rice-Eccles Stadium Tower in their scholarship room. (also decorated in red and silver). There will be a ring ceremony with us and the bridal party walking down the aisle and stuff that you are all welcome to attend before the reception. We are getting so excited and I'm continuing to cut the links off one by one off the wedding countdown chain that Glenn made me. today marks 48 days. Geez! It has gone by so fast. I did my bridal photos last weekend in Idaho Falls and they were so fun. It's a nice relief to have the wedding outfit all finished and accessorized! Jessica's mom made my wedding dress... and it's perfect for me. :) She's so good at making them I just took her pictures and sometimes just ideas and she turned it into a dress, that I love. I also had a bridal shower this week with my friends from folk dance and it was really fun. At the beginning of the party they started with a game and they said you can't say "Glenn" or "husband" or "finace".... At that moment I just thought... "THIS is MY bridal shower!!! AHHHHH!!!!" It sounds funny but it was just another moment that made it all more real. This is it folks, after all those years of waiting, and as my parents like to remind me, "all those years you were just NEVER going on dates and NO ONE was asking you out..." ha ha. Also, I'm getting so excited for our house. Glenn owns a house in Daybreak in South Jordan so I'll be moving there. But I can't tell you how excited I am to have a HOUSE and not one time room, for all my tons of stuff. And I finally fulfilled a dream of mine... I got a hammock!! I found a good deal on one and for the first time in my life I knew exactly what I would do with it. Put it in OUR backyard, and enjoy it all summer long, with my cute new husband. Am I crazy? maybe, but I am SO excited for that hammock. Speaking of buying the hammock, I've also been researching things for the wedding and buying a lot of stuff online (cause I don't have time to run all over town to different stores) anyway, my roommates are always teasing me now about getting all sorts of things in a mail, a package everyday, and my "obsession with internet purchasing". And it maybe true, I might have an obsession of internet purchasing. But it's just so awesome!

Glenn and I are FINALISTS!!!

2011-02-05T11:43:00.002-07:00

Glenn and I entered a photo contest for engaged couples this week and through all odds we were one of the finalists! Awesome huh? It's supposed to be "A couple having fun together." I'm happy to report that I had lots of pictures of us to choose from! The one we chose is from a trip Glenn and I took to arches last summer with Sara and Eric, and Whitney and Eric. We camped and hiked lots, and it was my first time seeing the delicate arch. So we're trying to win the contest and would really appreciate your vote. You can vote on facebook, and their are two sites doing the contest and they total the votes from each site, so please vote on each one. Look for the Bride and Groom.com facebook page AND All Points Travel (Utah) and "like" their pages, then you can go to Glenn and I's picture, #7, and "like" it as well. Only likes count as votes, not comments... althought I would love to hear your comments as well! :) Thank you in advance!

Addresses!

2011-01-26T08:24:00.002-07:00

Glenn and I have officially jumped in to the wedding plans with both feet! It will be held May 19th for sure and our reception will be that night in Salt Lake, with one in Idaho afterwards in June. We are having so much fun planning all the wedding reception stuff and we would love for you to come share with us! I'm busy collecting addresses (getting it done early so I don't miss anyone) but I know I don't have a lot of your current contact information, especially you high school friends! So if you haven't already heard from me and given me your address, in one form or another... email, text, facebook... and you would like and invitation please leave me your address or you can email it to me! Thanks everyone!

I'm Getting Married!!!

2011-01-10T22:20:00.009-07:00

As many of you have heard, I’ve found Mr. Right, Glenn Barton, :) and we’re getting married! I figured you might want to see him and hear the proposal story, so here it is.

Glenn and I started ring shopping and we had decided to keep it a secret from all our friends and family so that when we finally announced we were engaged it would be a surprise… and really exciting. So we went to many ring stores to start figuring out what I even liked. I still remember walking into the first ring store and holding Glenn’s hand as he proclaimed “We’re here to look at your engagement rings!” Inside I was freaking out! Me? Ring Shopping!?!? ha ha. So fun! We finally started finding things that I liked and things I didn’t. Finally we went to Kelly jewelers that Jessica’s dad owns and I saw a beautiful ring there. I put it on… it fit perfect… it looked perfect on my hand… after we left the store I just kept thinking about it, and loving it. It was as if I had found my glass slipper.

So Glenn bought the ring and had it for almost a month and a half before he proposed. I was just waiting for the moment to arise. He asked me out on a “mystery date” on the night of Thursday December 16th. I had my suspicions that it might be that night. He wouldn’t tell me anything that we were doing… and I love surprises so I didn’t bother to try and find out. So he arrived at my house to pick me up with a vase of flowers. They were red roses and star gazer lilies, with a few Christmas additions of pine and holly. The bouquet he brought me on our first date was red roses with star gazers as well, although I didn’t know at the time that’s what they are called. But it was perfect cause they are so pretty and smelly, and they are called star gazers! So with an inkling that this might be a special night we took some pictures and left for our mystery date.

We drove to a restaurant in sugar house that we hadn’t been to before. It was an Italian places called Lugano. The place looked like an older home that had been fancied up. It was dimly lit with fake candles on the tables to give a “candlelight feel” we ordered our food, and it tasted REALLY good. We finished dinner and headed to our next destination.

We parked at the gateway and started walking. We walked into the Clark planetarium and went right up stairs, as we approached the dome theater a young man was waiting for us said, “welcome, right this way…” we walked into the theater and no one was in there. The “sky” was lit up a light pink. We chose the best seats in the house and the narrator, Holly, came to talk to us. She said, “Hey it looks like you guys are lucky! You have the whole place to your selves. Usually I tell people to turn off their cell phones… but you can take all the calls you want, just let me know if you want me to pause the movie!” ha ha. After she left I got Glenn to confess that he had reserved the entire planetarium for a special show for just the two of us.

We watched “The Ultimate Universe” all about how the stars and planets are created and interesting Universe facts. Then after it finished we did some “star-gazing” they put up the current night sky, what the sky would look like if we were to go outside and look. Holly narrated it, pointing out where constellations are in the sky as well as Jupiter, and a neat cat eye nebula that were visible as well. She pointed out Orion, The big and little dipper, then moved to another common constellation Cassiopeia, the Queen and her King Cepheus. I love the stars and constellations and everything to do with them. When Glenn helped me move right after we started dating one of the tasks was to put the glow in the dark stars back up on my ceiling. I love having them up, but there are a lot of them so it is no small task. I try to put up a few of my favorite constellations, so I told Glenn he could pick one out to put up. He put up Cassiopeia and Cepheus… the king and queen together in the sky. So they became our special constellations that we would look for in the night sky whenever we went star gazing. So, back to the story, as she brought up this special pair of constellations I got excited and nudged Glenn a bit. She brought up a visual depiction of the king and queen in the sky and said, “These two actually have a very unique love story… I’ll tell you about it.” Then a song that had become really special to us “Just the Way you Are” by Bruno Mars started playing the theater (a pretty instrumental version). I was a little confused and looked at Glenn, “Is that our song?” Before he could reply words appeared up on the dome screen…

“Cepheus and Cassiopeia: The Real, Untold Love Story

Not many people know the real love story behind this royal couple. It’s the kind of legend about which fairy tales are written.

Here it is…”

Glenn had written our love story in the form of a fairytale, a story of the constellations. A king and queen brought together for eternity. He included funny inside jokes, and special moments, tying in lots of pieces of our dating story. As our names appeared on the screen I began to cry (but don’t worry it wasn’t the ugly cry). Every piece of the story fit perfectly and had me smiling and laughing… on top of the crying. ha ha. The story finished with…

“The brilliance of their love flourished when they were together, but they still lacked the one element needed to join them permanently in the heavens. To be together, they needed to find a star with such perfect radiance that it could bind them forever. Such a star would be able seal them in the heavens for eternity. Fortunately they were able to find that star. It’s known as…The ARCTIC STAR!”

The name of the diamond center stone in my ring is called the arctic star. Awe... Then a bright star appeared on the screen and raised high into the sky, Glenn stood me up, took my hand and talked to me for a bit and then got down on one knee and asked me to spend forever with him. I of course said YES!

Afterwards, we were so happy as were Holly and Rob the people who ran the planetarium for us that night. We got a few pictures taken.

Then we went to the melting pot for dessert. While enjoying our food we decided to drive to Idaho that night (we ended up getting there at 2am) and surprise my parents in the morning with the good news.

The date is planned for sometime in May… possibly the 19th. I’ll let you know. It’ll be in Utah and then a few weeks after we’ll be having an open house for all our friends in Idaho.

And here are some pictures of the ring...

Here's the view from the side... one of my favorite parts. :)

A Pirate's life for me!

2009-11-01T14:00:00.006-07:00

Sometimes Holidays come and go without us really feeling like we got to experience them fully… This was defiantly not the case with Halloween this year. I was on the committee to plan a Halloween party for my dance team and started getting into the Halloween spirit in September. Included in the Halloween excitement was recruiting my mom to make me a Halloween costume, just like old times (or really every time cause I’m never let her stop). She’s just so good at it. So we brainstormed a little bit and decided I would be a pirate. My mom had thought it’d be fun to make a costume like this for a while, so we both started doing our research. Once we had a good idea in our minds she went to work. For those of you who don’t know how my mom works… she is a perfectionist. And my dad described it best when he said, “Molly, she can’t just make a costume… it’s like she’s building the Statue of Liberty” And it’s all true… so I decided to showcase her fabulous work here! Keep in mind our deal was that I had to teach her Sunday school lesson so I went home one weekend and only had one fitting for the whole costume and she mailed it to me a couple days before my first party. Opening the box was like Christmas morning.

It was exactly what I wanted!!! She spent forever just making the jewelry that went with it. Check out the hairpiece and choker, they are both handmade. Also... after she spent weeks making this immaculate costume for me she made a Jedi costume for my brother... in one day. She's amazing. that's all there is to it! Thanks Mom! Love you Lots!

The Frist Snowfall...

2009-11-01T13:40:00.002-07:00

Ah… the first snowfall of the year always brings a certain sense of joy to my heart. As does every subsequent snowfall!

I awoke today like any other day and got ready for work. I passed my roommate getting ready in the bathroom as I headed out, and she stated, “You better bundle up” in a dreary voice, and I said, “oh is it cold?” and she replied, “It’s snowing.” The most magical words that my ears like to hear. IT’S SNOWING?!?!?! Are you kidding? I ran immediately to the window of the door and peeked out with my hands on the windows to block the light (cause it was still dark outside) like a little kid as they peer out the window waiting their dad to come home from work… and sure enough there it was. The beauty of all beauties… a white blanket of sparkling wonderful. With little wonderfuls still falling from the sky. I came back away from the window to grab my real coat instead of my jacket I had on. I passed my roommate who was still dejected at the sight of the snow. She was obviously in denial… getting ready in her shorts and a tank top, still wishing for summer. She lives for summer, everything she is, is a summer girl. Me on the other hand… I love winter. Absolutely love winter. The image of snow falling, snow having already fallen, sitting inside and watching it with a fireplace and my all time favorite drink… hot chocolate, being outside playing in it… everything about it is wonderful.

So I was off to work and I my little heart couldn’t help be happy. It was like God had just surprised me with the best gift in the world. A silent prayer in my heart was that it would still be snowing or at least not have all melted away by the time I got off work. I remember having such thoughts when I had to go to school when it snowed. Ha ha. Once I got to work the snow was all the talk, but it seems everyone doesn’t like the snow as much as I do. Everyone was so bugged that it’s early and that it’s here. So sad. I was looking up the weather to see how long it would last and about died when I realized it was supposed to snow for two… DAYS! I love it! So then I went about my work, sneaking peeks out the window every chance I got. I had to walk over to the other building to work with another of my co workers. As I looked at the window the snow had picked up from a light snow to a light blizzard! So I bundled all the way up with my hood and winter coat and prepared myself for the trek. (They do have a shuttle you can take… but who would miss this opportunity?) I put in my iPod playing Christmas tunes.

Big Fluffy pieces of snow were falling all over and it looked like a perfect wintery movie. I lifted my head back and opened my mouth to catch a few pieces of the heaven. I even started singing out loud (after making sure no one was near) and the whole time I practically danced to the other building. I would pass people walking the other way, with their heads down and snow all over their face, they seemed extremely bugged by this gift of the morning. And I knew that I had this big dopey smile plastered on my face… and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I could feel the grown up inside me saying… Molly, what are you doing? You’ve got to stop this! But the bigger (much younger) part of me would have none of it, she was way too tickled at the snow and she had taken over. I was a slave to my inner child. One man I passed I think noticed the big grin and said, “How you doing?” I replied with a “GREAT!” that was probably a little bit too loud and too enthusiastic.

So all in all the first snowfall of the year this year was picture perfect and as I told someone today I think it made me about a thousand times happier today! I went home and watched The Nightmare Before Christmas... compromising and not going for a full Christmas movie since it is still Halloween. I hope you all enjoyed the first snowfall as much as I did, or if you haven’t had it yet, look forward to it, it’s a gem.

Disney on Ice

2008-11-15T17:47:00.008-07:00

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

2008-10-28T23:51:00.003-06:00

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

2008-10-28T23:40:00.000-06:00

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

2008-10-28T23:39:00.003-06:00

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

2008-10-28T22:54:00.012-06:00

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

2008-10-28T22:52:00.003-06:00

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

2008-10-28T22:49:00.002-06:00

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

2008-10-28T21:31:00.007-06:00

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?

2008-08-05T16:57:00.002-06:00

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

2008-06-16T17:20:00.003-06:00

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!

2008-06-07T18:48:00.003-06:00

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

2008-05-11T09:44:00.000-06:00

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!

2008-03-18T08:44:00.008-06:00

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

2008-03-18T08:43:00.013-06:00

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

2008-03-18T08:38:00.006-06:00

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

2008-02-28T09:10:00.008-07:00

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!

Hill Air Force Museum

2008-02-28T09:09:00.007-07:00

A few weekends ago I was awakened by a telephone call from my dad and he informed me he was coming to Utah and invited me to lunch! What a fabulous surprise! We ended up spending some time at the Hill Air Force Museum before we went to lunch. My dad loves airplanes and knows so much about them. We walked around and looked at hundreds of planes and he knew them all without looking at the signs and could tell me all about them. There was one that I noticed he was calling it a “Warthog” and the sign called it a “Thunderbolt” I pointed out the difference so my dad was really bugged and asked the guy at the desk what was going on. It turns out all the really pilots and everyone call it a warthog when the technical name is the thunderbolt. Good to know my dad is in the circle of pilots. My dad loves the SR71 here is a picture of him by the engine.

My dad has been telling me about planes since I was little. I have pictures of myself in front of different planes all throughout my childhood. My dad loved to take pictures of us kids on the toilet, sleeping, and in front of planes! It’s always neat when he tells me stuff but there is so much to remember that I don’t remember even 1/10 of what he tells me. A few years ago our family went to “Fantasy of Flight” in Florida on my birthday. We were walking around the gift shop and there was a model airplane of the Spirit of St. Louis (Flown by Charles Lindbergh to complete the first non-stop solo transatlantic flight.) He asked, “So What kind of plane is that Molly?” My dad ALWAYS asks me these questions and I usually have no idea in the whole world what kind it is, and this was the case now. So I looked at the plane and on the tail it said “Ryan” so I said half jokingly, “Oh, it’s definitely a Ryan.” I’ll never forget the look on my dad’s face. It was as if every dream he had ever had in the whole world had come true in that instant when I had correctly identified this plane. That look was shortly followed by a look of total shock. You see my dad was standing on the other side of the plane and couldn’t see the writing on the tail and thus he thought I was the coolest daughter in the world. I was equally as shocked by my correct answer but managed to utilize my years of acting lessons and played it off like I knew what I was talking about. For a solid hour my dad kept going on and on about how he was so impressed and proud. Finally I had to start laughing and tell him the truth. It’s been a family joke ever since. But I will say I have a knack for guessing the names of planes. We had another occurrence at the museum and I guessed the name of this airplane without looking. My dad immediately said, “Oh okay where is that written?” I love my life.

The plane that I guessed the name of.

My dad in a fighter jet.

Valentine's Dance

2008-02-20T14:35:00.019-07:00

The institute had its yearly Valentine’s Dance a few weeks ago. It was the same day as Nate and Aubrey’s wedding. Nate and Aubrey are on the folk dance team and they started dating this year and got married February 8th. To make the story even cuter they were both president of the folk dance team once. So, according to tradition the folk dancers all perform the Israeli Wedding Waltz. So the Folk dance team danced at the wedding and then headed off to the dance.

I went with Jon. Here is a picture of us and I'm in my SILVER SEQUIN SHIRT!

I’m totally surprised that I bought it. I actually just tried it on as a joke at the store but then I loved it. Maranda took one of her best friends from high school, Preston. Well all had tons of fun just dancing around and being silly.

Me, Jon, Maranda, Preston

Maranda and Preston

Nikki, me, Jeanette

This is probably my favorite picture from the dance Brook and DJ line dancing.

Everyone dancing in a circle.

Brothers?

I walked around at the dance and took fun pictures of people dancing and captured this gem of Brody.

As I looked at it more it reminded me so much of Jacob and I couldn’t figure out why until I went back and looked at my pictures from last year. I found a picture that was much the same that I had taken of Jacob a year ago at the Valentine's Dance.

Interesting, what are the odds? They must be brothers… Love You Two!

Happy Valentine's Day!

2008-02-14T15:45:00.004-07:00

I hope you all have a fabulous Valentine’s Day. I hope it was full of love! I love all of you! Isn't this picture of a rose so awesome? My date for the Valentine's dance gave it to me (I'll post pictures from the dance soon). I took this picture and it turned out so good! Anyway, I’d like to tell you all about a special Valentine’s gift I got this year. My Grandma Bean (My dad’s mother) only has one darling grand daughter. Thus, I’ll admit it, she spoils me. Since I’ve been away from home at college, she has sent me care packages every few months for no reason at all except that she’s awesome and she loves me. Most of the packages include hygiene products (soap, razors, gum, etc.) we’ve started joking about them as my “dating help packages” because after receiving one such package I had two dates in one day. I love my life! But the packages also include treats and special knickknacks especially for me.

Since Valentine’s Day is never very eventful for me she never fails to send her single granddaughter a special Valentines package. I received my package a several days ago and have displayed my stuffed animal on the table and started in on eating my treats. To my surprise another package arrived in the mail a few days later. The card read…

Dearest Molly,

After I read your blog sight I felt so sorry for you and your holy socks. If I had known sooner your desperate need for socks, I would have put them in your earlier package.

Love Always,
Grandma Bean

And inside the package was a pair of adorable Valentines Day socks! She’s so funny and cute. I forgot to mention that my Grams put all these packages together in the days before she had to go into surgery, bless her heart. So thanks Grandma, You are the best. I love the socks. I wore them today for Valentines Day! I hope you are recovering well. I love you!

Thank you all for continuing to read my blog even when it’s just about my sock update!

Who is this handsome man?

2008-02-14T15:40:00.001-07:00

The title refers back to a story from my childhood. I went through a phase where making videos was simply awesome. We still had the huge video camera that was about 3 times as big as my head and took real size videotape. I didn’t really like being in front of the camera, and with good reason, that was one of Molly’s super ugly stages. Poor girl. But, Bryan was probably about 5 years old and I loved to make him do silly things and videotape him. He was still pretty submissive and would do whatever I told him to including willingly putting a rubber band around his face so it help his nose up like a pig and crawl around snorting. I specifically remember one shot I zoomed in right on his face (I had no concept of how far is “too far” to zoom in) and the shot is right up his rubbed banded nose he is just grinning from ear to ear, fully unaware of the blackmailing potential this tape would have later. So back to the title… In another shot I had him hold up his scrapbook and go through the 8x10 pictures of him and I made him say, “Oh, my! Who IS this Handsome man? Oh, why it’s me!” To hear adorable baby Bry say it is totally priceless. He’s a great actor. If you ever come to Idaho you’ll have to watch the video.

The reason for the post is to showcase that handsome man once again. Here is a picture that my Mothey sent me from the dance he went to on Saturday. Look at that Tux! Doesn’t he look great? He’s growing up so fast, and let me warn you, he’s funny too! (As demonstrated by his idea to take this picture).

I also thought that this picture would be a prime way to introduce to you a little more about the “Mason Family Way” for those of you who are unfortunate enough to only know me and might not fully understand the family yet. This picture is taken by our front door. That’s right, we have “May the force be with you,” the famous quote from Star Wars, on the inside of our front door. And it has blessed many that have crossed that threshold. We think of it as the Mason’s version of “Return With Honor” or “Remember who you are.” It makes for a lot of laughs and unsure looks from first time visitors. I still remember when my Mothey was trying to decide which saying to put up there. She’s not really in to Star Wars herself, but she suggested it and I immediately knew there would be no other quote that would make me as happy as that one would. And I wasn’t let down.

This one goes out to Brook...

2008-02-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

Brook recently left a comment on my blog which reminded me of another funny getting scared moment. I could probably start my own blog with stories about this alone but anyway, here’s the story. So a few weeks ago, the institute had it’s winder leadership conference. It’s an overnight at a hotel in Sherwood Hills with great speakers and awesome learning experiences… and bonding experiences. So most everyone wanted to swim, Brook and I however, decided to pass and take pictures of people jumping into the pool. We might as well have gone swimming when a couple of boys came and hugged us while they were soaking wet. Thanks guys! Anyway, a dance party started later in another area of the hotel. Brook and I were going back to fetch everyone from the pool to come join us. On our way to the pool we were walking down a narrow hallway (like in a normal hotel). Then all of the sudden a boy jumps out of his room and yells “Boo!” Brook gets scared and attempts to hide behind me, what she doesn’t realize is I was not going to be of much help. I was freaking out, screaming, the whole bit. I ended up pretty much football tackling her and we ended up in a pile on the floor. Both of us so entangled I don’t know how we got up. Sorry we didn’t get a picture.

One twist that makes this scare a little bit more intriguing than the usual scare and scream (besides the fact I almost killed Brook) is that as I was falling I distinctly remember hearing myself yell, “I hate you!” at the top of my lungs. As soon as the words came out of my mouth I was astonished. I don’t really love being scared but I had never really hated anyone for scaring me before, and it wasn’t the case now either. I can't really ever remember yelling it at anyone in my entire life. I don’t know why I involuntarily yelled it at the top of my lungs now. As I looked to my attacker I realized, I had no idea who it even was. Neither of us did. He just decided to scare some random girls out of the blue, and boy did he get a surprise. I had screamed "I hate you" at am complete stranger at an institute function. I apologized and tried to explain that I didn’t really hate him and I didn’t know why I had said it. It was to no avail he was laughing too hard.

This post is dedicated to Brook, my most faithful blog reader. I love you so much girlie! For everyone else... Brook is an amazing photographer and a link to her blog is on the side bar so please go check it out, she's all around amazing.

More Snow in Ogden

2008-02-05T16:19:00.002-07:00

The snow just doesn’t stop, and I’m loving it. They had to cancel school for Weber State last Friday because the snow was so bad and this last Sunday we had an enormous snowstorm. So I woke up Sunday morning, got myself all dolled up for church and headed out to my car. The snow was coming down in large flakes and was looking absolutely beautiful. I had just barely enough time to get to church for my meeting so I hopped in my Explorer confident that my 4 wheel drive could handle getting out of the drive way without shoveling it. Well the X probably would have been able to make it out had we shoveled the driveway from the last storm, but two storms piled up gave her a run for her money. Still determined to plow my way through the snow, I figured that since the drive way was downhill, I would just keep my speed up and I’d be fine. It worked fine and dandy for quite sometime. Then my car just stopped moving. I couldn’t go back and I couldn’t go forward at all. She was really stuck. With all this snow, this was the first time my 4 wheel dirve had let me down. In fact it's the only time I can ever remember getting stuck in this car. So I resolved that I should go in the house and change and get the shovel. I went to open my door and I couldn’t. The snow was piled higher than the door. I ended up pushing about 5 inches of snow out of the way before I could even get out. So then I ran through thigh deep snow in my skirt and church shoes to my house. To top it all off I even fell in the snow and got covered. It was a little chilly!

Well looking at the pictures you can tell that my car wasn’t going anywhere quickly…

It took Anna and I about 45 minutes to dig it out, but we did it all on our own and my dad would have been so proud of his little girl. Well, maybe not if he had known how deep the snow was that I tried to drive through! It was snowing the entire time and my hair looked like I just got out of the shower and my makeup was all smeared (sorry no picture).

We were laughing the whole time and making the best of it. Also, while we were shoveling Anna yelled from the other side of the car, “Molly, You’ve got to see what’s over here!” I ran around the car to see Anna holding something… Panties! I laughed in shock thinking, “Who in the world would throw their panties on our driveway?” To which she asked, “Well, are they yours?” I was appalled. I wanted to reply with, “Oh yeah, Must have left them out here last time I shoveled the driveway in the buff!” Then I began to look closer. They were my panties!!! What in the world were my panties doing in the driveway? We figured out that in my haste to change my clothes I had thrown on my pants from the night before and I didn’t realize my panties had slipped down into the pant leg. They must have worked their way out while I was digging out my car. I must confess it is a little embarrassing, but I’m glad it was Anna that found them and not the boys that helped us shovel out driveway later in the day!

They had to cancel most of church on Sunday and they sent the boys out to help the girls shovel their driveways. Three boys had showed up to church prepared to dig anyone out that needed it… They wore their snowpants and snowboots through sacrament meeting.

Dan, Troy, and Ben

Me in our walkway

I’m very grateful for the help we had. It was neat to truly spend the Sabbath in the service of our fellow men. Once they helped us with ours we shoveled a few more neighbors driveways and it never ceases to amaze me how good service feels. At least that day, not so much the day afterwards. My back is so sore from having to throw the snow up so high over the snow piles on the edge of the yard! It’s all worth it though went I get to see the amazing beauty all around. I went to school Monday and campus was literally covered with so much snow. I wish I had taken my camera, the glistening white just looks so pure and amazing! What a gift the snow has been.

My next investment…New Socks

2008-02-05T16:19:00.001-07:00

So this made me laugh so hard I just had to share it with all of you. I took off my shoes last night and as I began to look at my socks I realized a possible reason why my feet had been cold all day…

I got a good laugh and my roommates had a good time making fun of me. Anna suggested I buy new socks at least every 5 years. I haven’t done laundry in a while and I knew I was getting to the weird socks, but I’m surprised I still have these and even more surprised they didn’t rip to shreds when I put them on. I must have gotten dressed in a hurry that morning, but I swear they didn’t have holes in them then. It was a total shocker to me to reveal such ragged socks at the end of the day. But it must run in the family because this summer on family vacation James removed his shoes to reveal quite the hole. But, I’m pretty sure that hole was there when he put them on! I love you James!

Pizza Rolls

2008-02-05T16:16:00.000-07:00

I thought for all of you that enjoy scaring me all the time you might appreciate this story. So one night Jon, Anna and I were hanging out and we decided to make pizza rolls. Jon was in the kitchen and I was in the living room talking to Anna while I was opening the bag of pizza rolls. After I had the bag open, I returned to the kitchen only to be scared by Jon who had decided to jump out at me when I came back in the kitchen. He wasn’t let down by my reaction at all. I screamed bloody murder at the top of my lungs and threw the whole bag of pizza rolls at him (I have pretty good aim because they hit him in the face). Then I proceeded to slam my elbow into the wall before I fell flat on my back. Pizza Rolls went everywhere!!! The laughing afterwards didn’t stop for about 10 minutes. We even took a picture of the Pizza Rolls all over the kitchen. We thought that we cleaned them all up, but there were so many we must have missed some and Maranda was finding random pizza rolls in the kitchen the next day!

Wonderful Snow

2008-01-23T17:47:00.000-07:00

So as many of you know I absolutely love the snow! And for any of you who have been watching the news you know that Ogden has been getting it’s fair share and I’m not going to lie- I am in heaven. I pretty much get butterflies every time is snows. One day about a foot just dropped out of the sky while I was at school. Everyone was digging out their cars and the roads were terrible. I couldn’t drive to work so I went snowboarding instead with my friend Jon who works at the rental shop. We went night skiing and enjoyed about 20in. of new powder. It was so fun!

One downside to all the snow is our driveway. As I mentioned in an earlier post- it is a beast! It is a semi circle- so it’s extra long and on a hill. Shoveling it is quite the task (Shout out to everyone that has helped me shovel it- Thanks!) Good thing I have 4 wheel drive or I wouldn’t make it up sometimes. The day it snowed so much Maranda’s car got stuck in the driveway. It was barely off the street and she didn’t have to go anywhere so we left it buried for a few days. Here are some pictures of us digging it out. (Yeah, that’s our driveway!)

Another fun snow adventure was when I went home before school started Bryan had built a snow cave in our backyard. He snowblowed all of the snow in our backyard into one enormous pile. The night that I got home he suited me up in some hideous snow pants and we tromped out to look at it. It was way cool and actually quite big! There is one spot that you can sit up in and if you were laying down you could fix 6 people in there probably! The next day I helped him dig out the floor a little more and soon found out I was grateful I wasn’t there to help with the whole thing, it was hard work and way cold!

Oh, yeah- totally Hott! Where did he even find these? I apologize if any of you are currently sporting these pants, I'm sure they look better on you!

Can I just say one more time I love the snow?!?! Here is a picture of the trees across from our house, I had to snap a shot because they were so beautiful! Snow is just...magical. I'm in love.

Hof Festival

2008-01-22T15:40:00.002-07:00

So this last weekend our dance team participated in Ogden’s German Hof Festival. We went Friday and Saturday nights and performed a series of German dances and it was so fun. I just figured I would post some pictures. Here's the whole team (plus a few more).

Some of us went down to the festival at 5:45AM to be on the news so they could advertise for the festival that night. Here are the earlier risers that came! Check out those legs in leaderhosen…so hot! ;)

The Boys

The Girls

Jon and Me

All of the German dances have stories behind them, they are usually fighting dances or drinking dances- both awesome! The dance we are doing in this picture is about a couple fighting over socks. As you can see Tara is quite the actress! It is so fun to perform. Don’t worry they make up at the end of the dance.

A Little Too Awkward

2008-01-22T15:40:00.001-07:00

So, this semester has brought a new adventure for me of walking to school. The last time I walked to school consistantly was my freshman year with Jessica. It was pretty fun because we laughed the whole time. She even made me walk to school in a total blizzard one day. We made it to the library and we both had mascera streaming down our faces. Good thing neither of us have been much into the trying to impress boys thing…Anyway… I didn’t get a parking pass this semester so I walk to school and it has its ups and downs. There is a terribly busy road I have to cross and sometimes I feel like I am going to die, but I love looking at all of the wonderful snow that Ogden has now. It’s so beautiful and peaceful to walk. Maranda has had some funny walking stories too. One day while walking home a truck slowed to talk to her, rolled down the window and said, “Hey pretty lady, what’s your name?” She awkwardly replied it was Maranda and we’ve been laughing about it for weeks. Who says that? Honestly.

But my experience today has made walking to school more than worth while, just so I could have this experience. So I was walking in the road (the sidwalk was snowy) and listening to my iPod when a boy in a car caught my attention and slowed down. He was probably my age or a few years older and fairly good looking and clean cut. He asked me if I could help him, to which I nodded. Then he told me that he needed to win a bet and he needed my help but it was a little awkward. So I’m thinking he needs me to pretend to be a girlfriend or kiss him or something. So I say, “Well I guess it’ll depend on what the bet is.” He says, “Well I need to clean a stranger’s house for a half an hour…in the buff…that’s the awkward part.” That's right folks, stark naked. WHAT?!?!? Um, yeah that’s awkward. So then he’s looking at me looking for an answer and I think he might have even said, “So can you help me out?” I’m not quite sure because my mind was going a billion miles an hour thinking, Is this REALLY happening to me at the same time trying to banish all sorts of pictures he’s painted in my mind, AH gross! I’m sure my face said everything that I couldn’t. So I think I stammered something like, “Yeah I think that might be a little too awkward, sorry. Have a good day though!” I’m really happy that I remembered to apologize for not letting him clean my house naked and that I wished him a good day. I was wishing later that someone could have caught my reaction on tape- it would have been priceless.

Maranda and I decided that I should have offered to let him shovel our driveway because it really needs it and it’s a beast. That would have been a sight for the neighbors! Everyone I have told the story to seems to have their own response of what I should have said, so if you have one, feel free to post it. I’d love to hear it, and I’m sure everyone else would to.

WikiHow

2008-01-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I was on the internet the other day as I am for much of my life and my eyes ran across a side bar that caught my attention…”How to Hug.” Although I think that I have a fairly good knowledge of hugging (partially due to a conversation with Rhett and his roommates!!) I couldn’t resist clicking on it. What I found was none other than a jackpot of endless crack ups. It really was a step by step on how to hug. My personal favorite part was…”Lean your torso forward and extend your arms. The girl should pick up on this: if she doesn't, pull back momentarily, just for a split second, to make sure she wants the hug. If you don't get the impression that she wants the hug, change your extended arms to a quick pat on the shoulder or back.” Classic. I have had a few experiences when you go in for a hug and it isn’t expected and it’s a little awkward, I’ve even pulled off the back pat instead one time (It was weird, I wouldn’t recommend it!). But in addition to this gem of a find, at the bottom of the page are “Related Links” Which contain well… related links. I must confess right now I must have spend at least a half and hour to an hour lost in reading these wonderful articles. I think they are geared toward socially awkward high schoolers. First and formost on any “how to” ranging from how to cuddle to how to be irresitable and how to kiss, there was the hygeine issue. Make sure that you consistantly wash your clothes and yourself. So, lesson one…if you want a significant other or even friends, don’t be gross. Shower sometimes and brush your teeth! What a great idea! They sum it up best…

“Smell good (You wouldn't want to cuddle up with a piece of dung and neither does he)”

They have pretty much whatever you want from advice on "How to Celebrate Grandparents Day" to “How to Hug a girl taller than you,” Which my roommates and I got a kick out of because Maranda is significantly taller than Anna and I and it has made for some funny times. Love You Mar!

In addition to the “How To” it has sections entitled things like, Tips, Warnings, and my personal favorite- Things you’ll need. For example if you want to cuddle you will need

1. A partner

2. Affection

3. A blanket (optional)

Well, it goes without saying I can’t bring up all of the awesome tips on the website but let me just say it’s so awesome, what a gem! I’ll leave you with a little something for the guys…

“Nuzzle her neck, head, shoulders. Don't get creepy or act like an animal, just be loving and warm.”

Not being creepy is usually always good advice! I love it, ha ha ha!

Wizards in Winter

2008-01-05T16:44:00.000-07:00

Well, Christmas is over and New Year too! I hope you all had a fabulous holiday! Mine was so much fun, I got to spend a week at home and it was a blast. Bryan, my youngest brother who is 15 now, and I decided to make up a dance, mainly just because it would be fun. It is to "Wizards in Winter" by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. We worked on it for a week and then performed it at our family party. It's not perfect by far but we are pretty proud of it and it’s pretty funny and he posted it on youtube so here is the link so you can watch it! My mom is convinced that we’re going to be famous. Ha ha!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mdly8jI9l4

Pile of Leaves

2008-01-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

Okay so this post was supposed to go up a while ago, but it's still a good one...so enjoy!

For anyone that has ever been to my house you know that we have a lot of big trees and what that means in the fall is... a lot of big leaves!! The leaves had been covering our side yard for a few weeks and were about a foot deep all over the entire lawn. I came home from a football game one Saturday and Anna and her family had raked all the leaves into a large pile. The pile was about as tall as we are (which I guess isn’t too tall, but it was pretty sweet)

It was playtime!!! We ran and jumped in the leaves and it was a blast! Anna’s whole family even jumped in for a family picture. That resulted in a needle in a leaf stack search for her dad’s cell phone a little later! But against all odds, we found it. It was so awesome because when you jump into the leaves you just disappear. Anna took this sweet picture of me jumping into the leaves. The only bad part is, you get leaves EVERYWHERE. Anna and I have been washing them out of our hair for days! But it was totally worth it.

I love this picture, Anna Took it and it's perfect

Leaves in My Hair!

Here's a video of Anna jumping in the leaves. You would just disappear it was so crazy!

Sadie Hawkins Dance…oh oh oh!

2007-11-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

For those of you Relient K lovers you’ll appreciate the title, for everyone else- Sadies was Nov. 9th and it was a blast! It happened to be the night of our first performance so most of the folk dance girls decided to ask the boys on the team and we all went in a big group. I went with David. The theme of the dance was Country Western. So Nikki decided it would be fun to have the boys dress up as cowboys and the girls as cows, and fun it was! A couple of us stayed up until 3 working on our costumes, but it was well worth it. The costumes were fabulous! We had shirts, ears, bells and tails! To complete the effect they boys made up a “brand” with their initials and drew them on our arms. So we started out by eating BBQ chicken on my living room floor- picnic style, because we didn’t have enough chairs. I am also proud to announce that I did help in the cooking of the chicken; it was frozen so it wasn’t full-fledged raw meat horror. I will admit I didn’t do most of the work, Brook did- thanks Brook!

Our Cowboys

Bronson won the contest for best belt buckle.

(It's a license plate- the bright light in the picture)

A Herd of Cows!

We planned an elaborate entrance ot the dance. One of the boys brought a lasso so all the girls climbed in and ran into the dance ringing our bells with our hansome cowboys around us hooting and hollering. We made quite a spectacle. I’m not sure if people thought we were clever or if they just felt embarrassed for us (I’ll pretend the former). Well, David and I danced the night away and had so much fun. One time we were swing dancing and my ears flew off (my cow ears, not my real ears). The bells were great too, especially during the lines dances- you could tell where our group was! The girls even ended up winning “Best Cowgirl!” What a night to remember…

Our First Performance

2007-11-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

Well last Friday was our first performance for the folk dance team. We performed at a Weber State Women’s basketball game. I am happy to announce that it went well. I only made a couple of small mistakes, but I smiled the whole time :) . So here is a sneak peek at one of our costumes. Aren’t they so fun?

Nikki, Brook and me

Jon, me and DJ

A little update about the Foot Chomper dance (aka Tinikling) … Practice did not go so smoothly last week. We got out the bamboo rods (I have switched from calling them poles to bamboo rods because some people were getting offended) and started practicing with our partners. It started out with my partner hitting me so hard with his arm that I fell completely over and out of the rods. Then I stepped wrong and my ankle gave out and fell down again. Later my partner thought we were supposed to trade spots when we weren’t so I turned around to see his charging me and plowing me over! In defense of my partner, he is a really good dancer; this type of dancing is just a little foreign to all of us. But I think the most injury was cause by me towards the end of practice. My partner was standing by the side of the rods and I was just going to town dancing, and then I stepped on a pole and tripped. I was falling fast and in a moment of desperation I reached out to my partner for help. He wasn’t paying attention or wasn’t quite quick enough and I ended up hitting him with my arm. Not too bad you say… well no it wouldn’t have been if it hadn’t been right in the crotch. We both toppled to the ground in pain. I was pretty much mortified. One of our fellow dancers was banging the rods together and was laughing so hard I thought he might trip everyone else dancing. So my partner who was feeling a little guilty towards the first of practice stated at the end that I had, “got him back plenty” and that we were even.

Be sure to mark your calendars for Dec. 7 & 8 if you are interested in coming to our Christmas show and seeing all of our dances. The show starts at 7:30. Prices for tickets are: Adults: $5 Children: $3 Seniors: $4 and Family $15, (if you want to come to the matinee on Sat @ 2:30, tickets are a bit cheaper). I can start getting them this week. Let me know if you want to come!

Our Halloween Party

2007-11-12T15:21:00.001-07:00

Maranda, Anna and I threw a big Halloween bash at our house Halloween night and it was a blast. Maranda dressed up as an old lady (she even killed a spider with her cane at the party.) Anna was an oompa loompa, she made the costume (isn’t it fabulous?)

There were some pretty fabulous costumes there too so I had to post my favorites.

Aunt Jemima - Who would have ever thought of that, it's awesome. Look up pictures of the Aunt Jemima salt shakers, he looks just like them!

Old woman- she never broke character all night and made her date dress to match her as an old man! She didn't let her costume stop her from shaking it on the dance floor either.

Halloween Highlight

2007-11-12T15:18:00.000-07:00

Halloween this year was so fun. I dressed up as a Hawaiian tourist, with some crazy pants that my Mothey found me. I put as many things with flowers on as possible; It was also complete with a camera around my neck (which isn’t in any of the pictures because they had to be taken with my camera). I probably shouldn’t have done that either because I realized I loved having it right around my neck all the time, just ready to take any photo I desired. So I might be trying to start a new fashion of the tourist “camera dangling” look. So I had lots of opportunities to dress up this year, so many in fact I felt like by the end my costume had worn out its coolness and I felt a little on the lame side showing up to parties with people that had already seen my costume because they had a different costume for each party! What is up with that? I have enough Halloween anxiety over one costume a year. But here is one Halloween highlight.

This year my friend Brody decided to dress up as…Aaron Carter! (For those of you not so into pop culture, he is Nick Carter’s little brother (from the backstreet boys). He started rapping when he was about 12 and I have the cd- it’s great). Brody and I are currently planning a music video for one of his songs with Brody staring as Aaron. So he decided that he would dress up as him for Halloween. More importantly though, I got to help him costume shop.

I did some research on Aaron Carter’s styles and talking to Brody about what he thought he would most like to wear from my many ideas. Then we were off…we had quite the time going to Ross and TJMax and trying to find clothes with just the right look. I made him try on bunches of clothes- each time making him come out of the dressing room to model them for me. We were cracking up at Brody in these clothes. I guess it’s time now to describe Brody for those of you who don’t know him. He’s probably the most clean-cut and most gentlemanlike boy I know. His hair is always parted and he consistently wears a polo shirt everyday. So when he bought these baggy pants with large writing on the back pockets, he was so embarrassed and I about fell over laughing. After we bought the clothes we went to the mall to find some fake bling. (Grams, that’s a slang word for the really big and expensive jewelry, rappers usually wear big necklaces or rings with dollar signs on them.) While shopping through the mall we saw some people wear some large bling themselves and about 5 boys dressed up in what we had just bought Brody for Halloween, what is this woldk coming to, we dressed Brody up as “normal” for Halloween! Ha ha. But we did find some bling.

The final touch was spiking his ever-parted hair, and I was stoked. We went back to my house and used lots of hair products I had stashed away for just such an occasion. We gelled, sprayed, pulled and spiked his hair, only to notice it was spiking, but with a part still in it. I laughed and teased him about it and he said, “I’ve been training it for three years to do that!” I am happy to report we finally did get the part out of his hair.

So we went to the institute Halloween dance… We had just gotten out of the car in the parking lot and ran into our friend Wade who started laughing so hard at Brody’s outfit he was crying and didn’t stop for 5 min. (I not exaggerating this time either). To top it off Brody proceeded to end his sentences with “yo” and calling the boys “players” and the girls “his ladies” all night. It was a riot. I know you all want to see pictures so here they are... And be looking forward hearing about our music video.

A Picture in the usual Brody Attire

Brody as Aaron Carter

*

One last story about Aaron before we close it up. After dropping me off at home he stopped to help a girl that had ran out of gas on his way home. Being the gentleman that he is he rushed to her rescue and bought her some gas and made sure she was all set to get on her way. While filling the gas tank, she complimented him on his pants. This girl proceeded to hit on Brody probably thinking he was the nicest gangster she had ever met! The night ended with them exchanging phone numbers and only time will tell if this might develop into a budding romance. I hope I get to be there when she gets to meet the real Brody and not Aaron Carter. Brody doesn’t seem too worried though, in his own words, “I may be preppy, but I can roll with the big dogs!” Sure you can Brody…two peace.

Practice Makes Perfect

2007-10-04T17:00:00.000-06:00

So it is week 7 of being a member of the Folk Dance Team, we have finished learning a German dance, and started 3 others... with one more left to start learning.

It is so much fun and I love it, all except for the clogging part. Well, to be more specific the "me being bad at clogging" part. Sometimes I amaze myself at how bad I actually am. I find my feet just flailing around and my brain going a million miles an hour. To make matters even worse it seems like clogging is as natural as walking to everyone else, and for me it's as natural as dancing on my head. Our clogging dance is in couples and at one point the girls show off doing this really hard clogging sequence as our partner watches us in awe. Well my partner was in awe alright. About 4 out of 5 times when it gets to that part my body just freezes with the mere thought of flailing around so uncoordinatedly. So I am trying to do the sequence and watching other people, but I don't even know how to begin moving my body so I end up standing there in a trance. I glanced back at my partner and he just gives me this look of, "You know YOU are supposed to be dancing right now right?" Then the other 1 out of 5 times I end up moving around in a similar motion that a chicken might move around in if one of it's wings got chopped in half. This merits a completely different look from my partner, which is one of, "What in the earth was THAT?" Then the next part of the dance requires me to walk in front of him strutting all superior-like, well I feel pretty dumb strutting- especially after my crazy chicken dance. (Speaking of my chicken dance skills I won a chicken dance contest a few weeks ago- no joke. Woot! Woot! That explains it all I guess.) So I am hoping my clogging will improve soon.

We also do a dance from the Philippines where we dance in and out of large poles as people are banging them together on the floor. We have been learning the dance without the poles and just dancing with lines on the ground. Last week the girls decided to get out the poles to try it because we were still waiting for the boys to learn their part. I was one of the first ones to hold the poles and kneel and bang them together. You have to bang them together and stay on beat because if you don't you end up tripping all of the girls dancing because there are 4 people on each pole. So when people don't move their feet in time... They get slammed in the poles. It's a hard knock life, what can I say? Then it was my turn to try my hand (or foot) at dancing in the poles. I wasn't too worried and didn't think that it would be too much different from dancing on the lines. Boy was I wrong... The poles being slammed together are like chomping shark jaws, each time they close just waiting to take off one of my baby toes. (did I mention this dance is done barefoot?) So i finally work up my courage to jump into the poles and as I mean for my foot to go in, I chicken out and I jump over the poles completely. I am thinking in my head, "What a Whanny! Just do it they are only poles!" So I shake it off and come back to try another round of Foot Chomper. I finally successfully danced while the poles were slamming together beneath my feet. The dance I did, however, included only the steps and none of the arm movements we are supposed to do and me staring at the poles the whole time with a few squeals now and then- not my finest hour. Knowing my tendency to be accident prone... It'll be a miracle if I make it to our final performance with both of my feet. But I guess, at least if I lose one of my feet I won't have to humiliate myself in front of thousands with my chicken clog.

Tribute to Jess

2007-10-04T15:50:00.001-06:00

Hey everyone! I have heard some complaints about not having any recent funny stories posted and I am sorry, I just need to find adequate time to type them up. Until then I hope you'll enjoy some more classics. Jessica and her husband Rhett have a blog. Jessica's latest post is about our tradition to go to Frightmares every year, with our top funny stories included. If you know and love Jessica you'll definitely enjoy reading it and those of you who don't- have a read anyways- she's hilarious and you can see the picture of the pumpkin she carved to look like Sloth from Goonies!

http://crapofamily.blogspot.com/2007/09/missing-frightmares.html

Love Ya Jess!

Homecoming Week

2007-09-21T18:08:00.000-06:00

Here is some long awaited pictures of Anna- the mystery roommate! Not really, all of you just haven't offically gotten to see her yet. Well here are some fun pictures of all of us one night when we were all home.

So a few weeks ago was Homecoming Week and we started it out by "Painting the town purple" We got to go to different businesses and paint their store windows and they were judged on the best use of the theme "Purple Reign." Anna, Maranda, Troy and I did a play on words and went for "Purple Rain." We haven't heard back about any prizes yet, so I guess they didn't like the play on words, but we had a lot of fun painting it. Anna and Maranda both have a lot of artistic talent and Troy and I were left coloring in whatever they drew!

Guess who's a Wildcat?!?!?!? That's right Brian Jankowski! I ran into him at a volleyball game and we cheered together for the Purple and White. He is playing for the Weber State Football team (actually he's gray shirting this year, maybe he'll move up to a purple shirt next year). I talked to Ron McBride (our football coach) a few days later about Brian and he was really excited we were from the same home town and he loves IF. He also told me Brian is a great kid and a great athlete. So I guess he's a welcome addition to the Wildcats!!

Doesn't he look like Dave? It's hard to believe our younger silblings are now in college!

Freshman Follies

2007-09-12T17:42:00.001-06:00

So I didn't mention it in my first post about roommates but Maranda is a freshman, enjoying her first semester at college. She is doing great (except for forgetting her schedule the first day and having me look it up and text her where she needed to go). So in an effort to celebrate the many wondrous beauties that come with being a freshman I decided to share some of Maranda's experiences in her first weeks. Don't worry I asked her first, and she more than happy to share. Here we go...

So Maranda has an aerobics class in the gym every Tuesday and Thursday. She managed to find her class and everything okay the first week and was doing well. She strolled to class the next week a little distracted texting on her cell phone. She goes into the locker room and changes her clothes. She is most of the way changed, just has her shirt up by her shoulders putting a heart monitor on…and in walks A MAN! With the most startled look on his face he stares at her and then mumbles sorry and walks out. Maranda starts looking around and realizes this locker room doesn’t quite look the same as it did before. So she yells, “Is this the Men’s locker room?” To which the man outside the door replies, “Yes” and another man peeks his head around the lockers to see exactly which girl has invaded their personal man-space. So Maranda gathers up her things and walks out, passing her first lockeroom pal who is just standing outside the door, still with a look of shock on his face. She couldn’t think of anything more profound to say than, “Well, I guess I better get out of here huh?” The man just nodded his head, with his eyes still bugging out and went into the locker room. I bet he was late for class that day.

In addition to aerobics, Maranda also has English like most freshmen do. The classes are usually pretty big; Maranda’s has about 40 in it. So at the end of class Maranda was returning to her seat from asking the teacher a question. Another boy needed to get past her to the front. For those of you who aren’t in college, the aisles aren’t the most roomy of spaces so in an event to avoid some awkward personal space invasion Maranda climbed on her chair so he could get by. He was taking his time passing so she decided to sit down and start packing up her stuff, rather than hopping down and sitting in her chair she decided it would be faster to just plop down on the desk and leave her feet on the chair. So she plopped. And Plop she did! She didn’t realize or didn’t remember that the cheap college desks don’t have legs that support the front of the desk so she started slowly falling backwards… In a fight or flight reaction she whipped her feet up off of the chair to stand up, but in doing so she removed the only weight on the chair that was keeping her from toppling over. She fell hard to the ground. She also managed to domino effect two other desks in front of her, the last one running into the Professors desk in the front. I’m sure all of the students had quite the chuckle as they walked out of class that day!

But don’t worry Maranda really is surviving well in the college environment. But her stories make me reminisce back to my good ole’ freshman year. Some highlights were: Showing up to class in the wrong building only to find that room was a closet. Falling flat on my bottom in the middle of campus in between classes and my personal favorite deserves the whole long story…

During my first month at school I was talking to one of my classmates and she was telling me about this kids that she worked with on campus at Student Services. He had long blonde hair and was tall and kinds of had a surfer look was how she described him. So I quickly had realized that I had seen him around- who could mistake a description like that. Well the best part is they called him, “Prince Charming” and he loved it. I found this very humorous. So one day I was sitting in the common area of the dorms and Prince Charming walked in. I don’t know if I was in a good mood or if I was just feeling adventurous that day but being a freshman and not knowing many people I was eager to reach out and make a new friend. So I figured I would start off on a funny note to spark the conversation I simply asked him, “People call you Prince Charming don’t they?” I didn’t realize how dumb it sounded until it had already fallen out of my mouth. My insecurity just got worse as he looked at me with a puzzled and creeped face and said, “No.” Completely in shock that I had not only gotten the wrong person but that this boy probably thought I had just busted out the biggest pickup line in the world on him and he was not impressed. I said, “Oh” and walked quickly away. To make things even worse he was an English tutor that was stationed at the dorms and was in the computer lab every Thursday night. He even proofread one of Jessica’s papers, although she had to choke down chuckles the entire time. I pretty much had to avoid the lab on Thursdays. Even though I wanted to die of embarrassment at the time. Jessica and I have had lots of good laughs about it since, and he has since graduated and I lived through it. I apologize for those of you who have heard the story before and those who haven’t I hope you liked it.

Well after talking so much about her I am finally posting a picture of Maranda. Here we are at the leadership conference last Friday. No, we didn’t dress the same on purpose and we didn’t even notice until that evening… what can I say great minds think alike.

Morgan, Mitch, Merrick, Molly & Maranda on Moccasin Friday

2007-09-12T17:18:00.000-06:00

Mitch, Morgan and Merrick stopped by to visit me at college before their semesters at other colleges started. For those of you who don't know these awesome guys, we went to high school together, and I went to junior high with most of them. For all of you that do know them... Merrick was celebrating Moccasin Friday and all was right in the world again. I love my life!

We spent Friday together and had a blast. It was so fun introducing them, especially when Maranda was with us too... It was an alliteration. Our Friday activies included:

1. Merrick killing the biggest spider in the world that was in my bathroom while I hid in the shower (fully clothed, don't worry).

2. Eating free hot dogs and taking a tour at the institute building.

3. Molly and Mitch running through an obstacle course with goggles on that distorted your vision like you were drunk. (Morgan and Merrick just laughing at us)

4. Merrick winning some mouthwash and Morgan winning some toothpaste (and both of them leaving them at my house, Thanks guys!)

5. Ate M&Ms my Grams sent me (Thanks Grams!) and talked about dating... to which the conclusions were: Merrick thinks girlfriends are the best thing since sliced bread, and Molly manages to have a lot more awkward experiences with boys than the average girl.

6. Experienced eating at Golden Jade, the chinese restaurant that gives you enough food for 3 meals. We took home lots of left overs.... mine weighed about 5 pounds I think.

7. Went to a dance where Pedro himself, from Napoelon Dynamite, was the DJ.

Thanks so much for coming to visit me guys! And for all of you who are thinking... "Man that sounds like so much fun, I want to go hang out with Molly"- Come and visit! It'll be a blast I promise, there's always something going on. I would love to see you.

One of My Favorite Things...

2007-09-06T16:32:00.000-06:00

So with the new school year and all the new changes I decided to throw in a few more and try out for the Ogden Institute Folk Dance Team. Now the last time I tried out for a Dance team I was in sixth grade, but as you all know, I have always loved dancing. My love of dancing started way back when I was a tiny person of 2 years old dancing to my favorite song, “Two of Hearts” by Stacey Q. I would stand on my chubby little legs and dance my heart out whenever it came on. Although the songs are different now I still love to stand on my chubby little legs and dance my heart out to this day, and I still love Stacey Q.

Ogden is the only Institute with a Folk Dance Team. I know it sounds a little weird (I thought so myself). But they are really good and every time I watch them perform I find myself wishing I was up there with them. So my friend Jacob has been trying to convince me to try out for probably about a good 6 months now. I finally gave in and decided I would at least try out this fall. Tryouts were quite the adventure. The first night went well; we had to learn and try out with two dances, a regular dance and a clogging routine. I decided I liked the clogging the best because it was easy, although I’ve never done it. So I made call backs and went to the second night of try-outs. Boy was I in for a treat, the dances were a lot harder than the night before and I’ll freely admit at one point in the clog I was just trying to stay on beat having no idea what my feet were flailing around doing. I decided maybe clogging wasn’t as easy as I thought. :)

But miraculously, I made the team, and I am so excited. I love to dance and now I get to do it every week and I’m excited to get to know my teammates. I’ll have the opportunity to learn dances from different countries, which will be so neat. But with that comes the costumes… I will admit I am not all too excited about wearing the costumes from different countries because some of them are rather funny looking, and I’m sure putting me in them won’t make them look any better. For your amusement I have posted a picture below so you can see a sample of the costumes. This is a couple that was on the team a few years ago and now they choreograph some of the dances.

Great huh? Yep, that’s lederhosen. But look at how much fun they are having!

"There is a bit of insanity in dancing that does everybody a great deal of good. " ~Edwin Denby

New Roommates- What a Party!

2007-09-06T16:04:00.000-06:00

So the school year has started and many new changes are happening. One of the most fun ones being that I finally have 2 new roommates. Their names are Maranda and Anna, and they are fabulous! It's been fun seeing them getting used to all of my quirks I have developed while I lived alone. One of my favorite new rituals is a little thing I have affectionately named "stations." Over the summer I was leaving for work every day at 5:45 and I discovered every minute I had in the morning counted. To get as much sleep as possible, I began making my stations. It pretty much consists of the breakfast eating station (always cereal) and the lunch making station (a sandwich- usually PB&J) and sometimes a pile of things to take station. With the development of these stations I was able to get ready for work so much faster and wasn’t late as often (you can even ask my carpooling buddy Derek). I guess technically it doesn’t increase the sleep I get because I either set it up at night or when I get up, but it makes me so much less stressed in the morning and I fell in love with my stations. Also no one was there to know about them.

So… when school started I continued my stations ritual. So as I began Sunday evening to get ready for the first day of school and set up my stations. Keep in mind I can’t set up everything for every station because some has to stay in the fridge (milk & jelly), so I gathered my bowl, spoon, and vitamins for the breakfast station and then grabbed the peanut butter for the lunch station and walked over to the table to start setting it up. Maranda took one look at me and asked, “So do you eat your vitamins in a bowl of peanut butter?” Yeah, I must have looked like an idiot. But I didn’t let it discourage me and stations is still going in full force!

Maranda has been great to live with though; I’ve only had one incident where I got a bit scared. So I was in the bathroom washing my face and I noticed it… a jar with a urine colored liquid in it…. What do I do? How do you start that conversation…”How about we make a rule that we don’t keep jars of pee in the bathroom, starting today.” So, I just let it slide for a day or two and it didn’t disappear so one night while we were both in the bathroom getting ready for bed, before I could even stop the words from coming out I blurted, “Is that pee?” To which she started laughing and then looked a little embarrassed. Good news though… It is really Vitamin E oil for a scar on her leg. So just keep in mind if you use our bathroom…don’t be scared it’s not urine it’s vitamin E oil!

What a Find!

2007-08-30T09:36:00.000-06:00

So, while I was home for the weekend I found quite the treasure. To get the full effect of this find we must start back a few months ago to When I went to St. George this summer (see June posts). One of the little boys, about 11, got sunburned and trying to show some sort of parental responsibility Jessica asked if he was doing okay after a day of swimming- refering mainly to the sunburn. He replied with, "I'm good except for I have Monkey Butt." Jessica, a bit shocked, probed a bit more finding out that "Monkey Butt" is a different term for chafing.

SO, when I went home for the weekend I was shopping for a new lifejacket and in the store on the counter I see this wonderful new product. That's right people, you can buy your very own can of "Anti Monkey Butt" in Idaho Falls. Sweat Absorber and Friction Fighter at it's finest. I am taking orders for the next time I go home, so if any of you suffer from Monkey Butt and would like me to purchase you a bottle. It's yours for the low price of $9.99. Good thing I carry my camera everywhere and I managed to get ya'll a picture while we checked out!

Dad's Birthday

2007-08-30T09:23:00.000-06:00

So this last weekend was my dad's birthday and my last free weekend before I started school so I went home to visit the family! We had a big party for my dad on Friday with DQ Blizzard ice cream cakes! YUM! The the next day was a quite a long day. We got up early in the morning and went boating Megan came with us and it was a blast although kind of cold. Hilights of the trip were: 1. Bryan and I were slaloming together and Bryan cut back really quickly and we collided- HARD! We ate it, but it's all on tape. 2- Bryan has started making kind of music videos with ourwaterskiing footage and they are sweet, he is currently working on the one from that day. If he puts it on Youtube I'll pass along the link. Another hilight that will be in the video is me getting ripped off the dock when I forgot to jump- ha ha. 3. The last hilight of boating is I jumped from James' jetski to the tube behind the boat while Megan was riding on it- yahoo!

So after boating we went motorcycling. That was an adventure all in itself. I found a motorcycling shirt on sale and I was so excited because it was bright pink! Turns out this shirt served more of a purpose than I could ever have known. While we were on the trail it was a big neon flag signaling "Girl Here! I have no idea what I am doing!" ha ha. I would pass people on the trail and they would hold up their fingers to indicate how many people are behind them, and I was the first of my group so I probably should have, but there was no way I was taking my hands off the handle bars, I was thinking, "I hope you can read my mind, because I if I take my hands off the handle bars I'll be hitting that tree. Good news though- I am improving, I didn't crash or fall over at all this trip.

Here is a picture of my cute parents, I realized I didn't have one of them on here yet. My dad is fabulous at riding bikes (as with everything he does) and my Mothey is one of the coolest mom's I know and her motorcycle skills are just another testament to that. They are amazing!

Hawaii

2007-08-22T10:41:00.000-06:00

Yes! That's right I got to visit Hawaii this summer! It was my frist time going, so Sara, Whitney, Lynsi and I headed off to visit Devin in paradise. Devin met us all at the airport with Leis and flowers for our hair to greet us with a proper ALOHA!We spent lots of time on the beautiful beach. Here is a sunset picture on Waikiki beach. It was a couple blocks from our hotel.
Also While I was down there I got to go Scuba diving for the first time since I got certified in Feburary. This pictures aren't the most flattering, but I posted them none the less!

Going Home

2007-08-22T10:36:00.000-06:00

Since this was my first summer to live away from home, I've made a few trips home with some pals from college. We generally end up having a blast, just doing what the Masons do: boating, eating good food, riding our golf cart around the yard, shooting anvils in the air, and introducing my friends to many of my dad's great inventions.

St. George

2007-08-22T10:34:00.000-06:00

My Second adventure of the summer was going to St. George with Jessica, Rhett, and their 9 nieces and nephews. It's a tradition that Jess started last year. We go down for a few days of fun, swimming, singing, dancing, and of course all you can eat cookie dough! The kids are great and SO cute! We all drove down in one large van affectionatley named Big Ed. Here's the kids in Big Ed!

Indiana

2007-08-22T09:39:00.000-06:00

First I Went to Indiana with my family to visit my grandparents! We Had a lot of fun visiting and we went to Indiana Beach- an amusement park.
Here is a picture of my two brothers on one of the roller coasters! (We weren't suppose to have cameras, oops!)

This is the cool spot to hang out in Indiana! THE MILKY WAY! Everbody who's anybody goes there for ice cream, we went there as much as we could!

Overall, Indiana was fun! Nothing like vacationing with the Fam!!