Monday, March 23, 2009

What is the CRAZIEST Dare you have ever done???

So my good friend brought to my memory this morning about a dare that I participated in one Friday the 13th night. It was back so many, many years ago (I was 21), living in Provo Utah in the run down apartment complex of Campus Plaza (blah, that place was around when my MOM went to school). Anyway, there was a group of us doing silly things, trying to out do each other (I was probably trying to impress a guy that I may or may have not had a mini crush on). My turn came up, and I chose DARE. Now, choosing "Dare" with this group could be a little dangerous so I was feeling mighty brave at the time, I was fearless. When I was told my dare, I really did not think I could do it. No way, no how! Too humiliating, too outrageous (for me anyway). But, I gave in. I couldn't say, "no," and risk being outdone by someone else. So...I faced my challenge with courage. There is a basketball court at campus plaza and most of the time, weather permitting, people playing some ball. There happened to be about 4 or 5 people (mixed company, probably in my ward, but I had not met yet), and my dare was to ask them if I could shoot around with them, then take off running with their ball and throw it across the street! OK, my stomach really just got butterflies reliving this embarrassing moment. SO, I slowly walk over and ask one of the guys if I could take a couple of shots. My heart was POUNDING. I didn't think I could go through with this ridiculous dare. Of course they say, "sure," and toss me the ball. Well...instead of shooting it, I took off running, half expecting to have someone chase me down and grab their stolen ball back, but no. Frozen in place was all that the nice, giving, people were doing, TOTALLY confused as to why I just took off with their ball. I get across the court and to the side walk and did it...Threw the ball hard enough to get to the other side of the road. I heard laughter coming from my friends, and instead of going back the way I had come, I walked the long way around the building completely hiding my face. Did I feel like I had accomplished anything grand, or important? NO, I felt like a jerk for stealing the nice, fellow neighbors/ward members basketball, when they had been so kind to let me play with them!

SO, with that humiliating, yet funny story out of the way and on paper (blog), I want to know, what is the craziest dare that you have EVER done (now, if it is something that needs to be censored because it is really bad, don't tell me. Give me the next one in line...if appropriate).

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Not Ashamed


I am convinced that EVERYONE goes through a "Stage." My stage I like to call the "Awkward, nothing looks good on me cause I am way too skinny stage." I think that I started off pretty dang cute. Correct me if I am wrong, but you are rude if you do :). Here I am, still in the cute phase...my grandma had just given me my first perm. I cried almost the whole way through because I was certain I was going to get solution up my nose. My grandma vowed never to give a grandchild a perm again after her experience with me.

Still cute, an innocent. No awkwardness quite yet.

It's starting. My body is starting to grow faster than I am ready. Clothes start to hang a little funny on me, my teeth have all grown in, but decided to do so in a crooked manner and my hair can't decide if it should be curly or straight.

Full blown awkwardness. I am not the only one experiencing this though. As you can see, all of my cousins and brothers are too. Steve (on the right) thought it was cool to mix and match stripes and plaid (he wanted to start a new trend), my whole wardrobe consisted of striped shirts and I had NO clue how to do my hair, and I should be fair and only talk about my awkwardness and no one else. They are all innocent with this post.

I was also terrified that my freckles would take over my face so I stayed out of the sun as much as possible or always wore sun screen. Notice I am by far the whitest one in the picture.

Sigh....striped shirts once again...and pegged pants. Thinking it is cool to use brother as a prop in my picture. If you look really close you might see my sister's troll ear rings. Sorry Juls. I said I would not involve others with this, but I could not resist!

Once again...another striped shirt. It was an 8th grade phase. I thought the pegged pants looked really cool still.

Girls camp. I used to think this picture was sooo cool! Probably because I was trying so hard to be friends with Kim (who is now one of my closest friends). She was SO COOL in my eyes. I think I helped braid her hair.

I could go on, but I will spare everyone for now. I have many more pictures where that came from. It took about another 10 years after this picture to grow more into my body. I did not feel QUITE as lanky, but still was self conscious. These pictures really make me laugh. Thank you Benson cousins for being ok with this (I did not ask permission, just assumed). Im not ashamed of my awkward stages. I feel mine lasted for quite a long time, and maybe still going through some type of "stage." I will call it the, " I am starting to thicken around the middle, and cry at the drop of a pin," stage.
I think that Junior high was so tough at times though. I thought for sure that I was the only one experiencing the awkwardness, because in my eyes, everyone was so much cooler! Ha...so funny to think back on. I am grateful for those times, for real, because I always had my mom to tell me that I was beautiful and special. So, very random post, but I am just really enjoying this scanner!

Bountiful Temple


I was never one of those girls that just NEW where I was going to get married. I just new I would get married in the temple. For awhile, I was thinking that I would get married in the Idaho Falls one because that is where my parents got married. And then for awhile I was thinking Oakland because that was the one closest to my house in California. And then after I started to get older, I stopped worrying all together about which temple...just WHO I was going to marry and when! :) I found this picture from my senior year of high school. My brother Jeff was the first to get married in my family and they chose the Bountiful Temple. It was relatively new I think, back in 98. Anyway, my friend Chelsy used to like taking pictures in front of the temple and pretend like we were kissing our future spouse. I always thought that was kinda fun, so the day Jeff got married, I took my kissy picture. Fast forward 10 years...Scott and I decided that Bountiful Temple was going to be the best temple for us to get married because of the location (all of my cousins pretty much live in Idaho and Utah) and the sealing room size (not only do almost all of my relatives LIVE in Idaho and Utah, there are A LOT of us). I had totally forgotten about this picture and we came across it while we were looking for pictures for our wedding slide show. So, at our wedding, I decided that I needed to have my other half in the picture with me. It's in the same spot from the picture 10 years ago! I just wanted to share (I love our new scanner!).

Sunday, March 8, 2009

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That


You know how annoying it is to have your post ALMOST finished, just to have it completely erased when you hit, "post?" Well, that happened last night. So with this new post, feel lucky that it is shorter and more to-the-point. Scott and I headed to Orlando last weekend to spend one more night with Scott's oldest brother Mark and his fam. They had tons of leftover meal tickets from Disney so Friday night after work, we drove three VERY long hours (we were stuck in traffic FOREVER) to Orlando. After spending a fun night with them at dinner, we snuck in their hotel for a good nights rest. Sorry to Kate and Maxim for kicking them out of their beds and of course, I was the first asleep (maybe even out of the kids?P)

Poor guy was wiped out. I would be too had I spent the whole week at Disney getting constantly overstimulated with all the tiny details everywhere...

By the time my meal came, I had stuffed my face with bread (come on, I'm prego and I need to eat often. I had gone too long without food). The mashed potatoes were PERFECT and I spent way too much time on those. Sorry to say, although my meat was fantastic, I hardly even dented it.

Scott's lovely dish

We all got desserts even though my top button was seriously going to pop. I was very proud of my husband to let his inner child come out and get the coolest dessert ever. It was ice cream with all sorts of toppings and Cotton Candy stickin out of the top...

I got a pretty fantastic molten cake/torte. I think my stomach only handled two or three bites before I had to call it quits. Too bad...that was some dang good stuff.

We were in a hurry to get home from Orlando because Saturday's are Scott's really big study days. The weather was fabulous, though and Scott knows how badly I have wanted to go rollerblading, so before getting ANYTHING done, we strapped on the rollerblades (thanks Tiff for letting Scott borrow Steven's) and headed out. Now, I have spent quite a bit more time on blades then Scott. I used to go regularly as a kid back in O-Town. I have to say that I SMOKED Scott down hill. However, he DID NOT have brakes on his wheels and I would have been a little nervous as well. Eventually he was going faster than me (I think cause his feet were hurting and he wanted to get home). Not more than 5 minutes after walking in the door, some friends called and said they were having a good-bye bbq at another friends parent's sweet home. After weighing out our options and figuring out what would be more important, we chose to not be responsible and head out to the bbq. We had a great time spending our "supposed to be getting things done" Saturday with friends.


I would LOVE to live in a Waterfront home. So relaxing and peaceful! Sigh...

Little Dane. His Dad is the owner of this fine home. He was hilarious, he wanted us to take a picture of his plane, but I was sneaky and took both. I have him in primary and he cracks me up!


Katie, Kira, Me and Jaynie. Good bye Kira! We miss you tons!

OK, so you know those websites that you come across and they say things like, "Enter here and win a free Wii, or free Ipod," then you have to sign up for all these nonsense weight loss free trials, or Credit cards. Well, my sister's friend was telling her that she had tried one that really worked. You have to totally keep track of everything you sign up for because most of the things are free trials and after the two week free period, they are no longer free and start charging the credit card. So, I kept a spreadsheet of everything I signed up for (it was anything from diet pills, Colo pure, Blockbuster, emusic,etc). After a few months of collecting points, I FINALLY got the Wii. Scott was very skeptical at first and became more so when I told him that we still had not been rewarded some of our points that we should have been (in truth, I was actually lying cause after I got all of the points, it just took forever to get everything processed and shipped and it was supposed to get here on V-day, which it did not). Scott was pretty excited for its arrival. I was pretty proud of myself for doing such a good job keeping track of everything. I am not gonna lie, it got a little stressful at times when you were not getting the points issued.















Happy Husband=Happy Wife.

I have played tennis a couple of times, and Scott has already racked up some pretty high points. We were both sore after the first day of playing! Sad huh?

And another exciting note...Scott and I heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time on Wednesday. Such a cool experience. I think we are having a girl and Scott thinks that it is a boy. We will be happy with either...I think I am right though!!