Tater Tot Mayday

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

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!!!

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!

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!!!

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!

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nightmare on 13th Street

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

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

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

Meeting New Friends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

High School Musical

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

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

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

Moab

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




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



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

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

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

Bryan posing silly

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

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

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

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

Girls Night Out

Me, Erin, Sara, Whitney, and Lynsi

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


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

Just Another Weekend Home

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

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

Dad, me and Bry

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

New Rommates

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

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

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

Me, Christy, and Camary

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

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

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

Where do I belong?

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

You Belong in 1985

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

What Year Do You Belong In?

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

More Adventures in Costa Rica

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

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

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

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

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

¡Pura Vida!

Hello everyone from Beautiful Costa Rica!

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

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

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

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

Costa Rica is fabulous! Pura Vida!

The WienerMobile

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

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

¡Voy a vivir en Costa Rica por un mes!

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