¡Pura Vida!

Hello everyone from Beautiful Costa Rica!

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

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

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

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

Costa Rica is fabulous! Pura Vida!

The WienerMobile

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

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

¡Voy a vivir en Costa Rica por un mes!

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

Trip Home

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

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

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

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

Tall enough to stand in!

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

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

Anna is excited to go!

Me, Maranda, and Jon

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

In front of the trailor after we were all done!

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

Sara's Wedding

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

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

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

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

*NSYNC Love

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

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

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

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

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


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

Hill Air Force Museum

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.