The Secrets of Beaver, UT

Utah has its issues, everyone knows that:

CONSTANT road construction

Hellish winters

Drivers who don't understand the fast and slow lanes

ETC....

But there are a few redeeming qualities that Utah has:

beautiful mountains

temples everywhere

Dr. Pepper readily available at most restaurants (avoid CPK and Applebees)

AND

THE 24th of JULY

What a great holiday, you get school and work (usually) off and it's basically a repeat of the 4th. Well every year the fam (what's left of it) heads south to a little town called Beaver. Beaver is best known for its award winning water (you think I'm kidding, but I'm not). The grandparents reside here, and because I've been going to Beaver for so long it holds a special place in my heart. Here is what this years Pioneer Day consisted of:

-Early 5K run with cousin Will--don't worry my dad ran into an old friend and tried to pawn me off on one of his children, it was very special.

-Parade, and for the record the parade used to be a lot better whoever is on that committee really needs to pick up the slack.

*One great thing about Beaver is they take cool old buildings and do this to them. And Yes that is gun.

-Elevensies on the porch

-Horse Races:once I won $200.00 at these horse races. AND there was a fist fight between jockey's this year, good for you Beaver.

-Trip to the Junk store resulting in 9 pairs of new sunglasses for a total of $9.00. *Note: My grandma doesn't look this frightening in person, she is not photogenic.

-Picnic dinner in the backyard with relatives.

*Awesome old bike from like 1900 found in the grandparent's garage.

-Rodeo, super redneck by the way (see picture)

*Look at that guy coming up the stairs, he's a looker huh?

-Fireworks: surprisingly Beaver puts on a pretty good show.

A Pretty eventful day in my book.

I'm sure if you went to this little town you probably wouldn't enjoy yourself as much as I do, but that is only because you didn't stop at my grandparent's house and spend some quality time with them; I'm serious, these people are hilarious. Kate and I spent most of the weekend laughing and we don't laugh at lame old people humor. My grandma can say the most hilarious sarcastic things and keep the straightest face, I'm sure she offends people daily. These were my favorite things said this past weekend. "Did you get up early Gran?" (ME) "Ya, I've been up for a few hours."(Gran) "Well, the early bird gets the worm right?" (ME) "I don't want that damn worm." (Gran) Next... Kate noticed Grandma's nylon sock had fallen down so she said, "Hey Gran, your sock fell down." She replied, "Oh hell, we can't have that can we." Last but certainly not least, this is a prime example of why no one should boycott hearing aids when they're old. I can't even remember what we were talking about but my Grandparents were trying to listen in on the conversation and somehow my grandma thought kate said, "I hate Adams." My grandma replied, "You hate John Adams?" My grandpa said, "Why would you hate John Adams?" My dad sarcastically replied with, "oh you know, he was kind of a prima-donna." I assure you our previous conversation had nothing to do with John Adams and his prima-donna ways. Someone really needs to cash in on this, these people would be hilarious to watch in a reality show. I'm talking Run's House caliber, I would watch this show and these 2 are 80+ years old. I am aspiring to be like these two when I am old: completely in love, hilarious, and happy.

The Grandpa
The Grandma

If you ever find yourself in Beaver stop at my grandparent's house and I assure you, you will not be disappointed.

Good News Minute

We've been blogging freaks lately, where's our medal at? I should be blogging about why a 23 year old girl with brown hair, blue eyes, and a bangin' bod is blogging at 9:00 on a Sat. night but I'll spare you. All I want to do is be a smart aleck and no one is around to appreciate my mood so cyberspace.....enjoy.

I hate good news minute, it's lame and a waste of my time. For those of you who are blessed with a world free of "good news minutes" let me enlighten you. It's 5-10 minutes at the beginning of Relief Society every week, where the person conducting asks if anyone has good news. In my ward it usually goes something like this. "I'm getting married (high-pitched squeal). I know all of you are surprised because I'm 33 years old and I should have been kicked out of the ward 2 years ago, but the bishop just had a feeling that my significant other was in this ward so he let me stay and now I'm engaged. He's not that cute and he is like 9 years my junior but he is so nice and we are totally infatuated with each other." Or this little beauty. "My mom just had another baby, which is really funny because I'm 30 and now I have a brand new baby sister so that means my parents have kids from the age of 0-30. Anyway, I just love my brand new little sister. " Ummm pretty sure that your Mom having babies when she is 100 years old is not good news. This crap gets so old, I don't care. If we knew each other well enough for me to care about your good news I wouldn't have to hear about it during "good news minute" I would already know it.

This week I'm going to church at my parent's ward without any of my other family members present, and all I want to do is go to Relief Society and say completely ridiculous and un-true things about our family. "Well, yesterday Rrrosa had puppies, which is such a miracle because she's fixed and she doesn't have any female parts. We are so happy! We don't know who the dad is but we are going to love them just as much as if we knew who the dad was." That's the crap I want to hear! Or "Kate met this kid at Lagoon and they eloped to Vegas, which is so great because she really wanted to get married." Or "My Dad decided to quit his job to try to break into the hamster breeding business. He's always been really passionate about hamsters and breeding, so we really couldn't be happier for him." Wouldn't that be a nice suprise to come home to tons of bizarre garbage about your family floating around the ward? I think we should consider "B.S. minute," where the goal is changed from who can be the biggest bragger to who can create the most hilarious garbage. Relief Society would be so much more enjoyable this way. I think someone should really give this a whirl.

19 Reasons I Heart Nigel Storm

May was a crazy month. School had just ended for the summer (boo yeah!), I moved home, started a full-time internship, celebrated several birfdays, including my own 21st (Holla!) and did a little traveling. In the midst of all the chaos, I did something very bad, or shall I say didn't do something... I failed to post a birfday shout out for one of my favorite people of all-time. How dare I?! Haley Anne Larsen, eldest child of Bradley and Suzanne Larsen, Born May 21, 1989, Happy Belated Birfday Post. Here are 19 reasons I keep this lady around.

1. She has been my neighbor for over 15 years and has got this "good neighbor" business down.
2. She doesn't like sports. I love sports, they are my passion, and amazingly it doesn't bother me in the least that she has no affinity for them. You go girl.
3. She's surprising. I love hearing what comes our of her mouth. It never fails to make me laugh.
4. She loves One Tree Hill as much as I do and that is hard.
5. She's a dedicated member of our rock band, Poisoned Water.
6. She's quirky. I love people aren't afraid to be weird. She is weird. I respect that.
7. She'll make fun of you to your face.
8. She calls herself the fat sister and so do I. It's not that we're fat, we're just not stick figs like our annoying sisters. Chubby girls are cute, we get to eat pie. (not that we're chubby)
9. She let me climb up her deck when I was a child...and then jump off after I got up there. How nice.
10. For my birfday she gave me a basket stating: "Everything you need for a One Tree Hill Marathon" complete with shot glasses that light up, Dr Pepper, a blanket and pics of hot Chad Michael Murray and James Lafferty. How thoughtful.
11. She's available. A couple weekends ago, I was home alone on a Friday night with nothing to do. At 9 PM I texted her to come and play rock band. The doorbell rang 2 and a half minutes later.
12. She uses curse words at the best times. She doesn't curse that often but when she does she makes it count.
13. She can quote movies like a champion. Also, when I quote movies, she always gets it.
14. She calls in sick to work.
15. She was a weatherman in one of our movies once and she named herself, Nigel Storm, he had an accent. Not just one accent, but many. Nigel would switch from being English to Irish to Australian. Incredible.
16. She participates in our tradition of watching Christmas movies every sunday starting after Thanksgiving. Not only that we get to watch em in her movie theater basement. HOLLA!
17. She doesn't like school. That's a quality I look for in a person.
18. We rule over the cul-de-sac together. There is no power struggle. We are equal leaders, and it works.
19. She let me "borrow" her Razor scooter when I went to college. At my freshman apartment complex, I was known as Scooter Girl. All thanks to Haley's generosity.

Haley, you are the best neighbor I've ever had. Sorry this is so late. I hope all your wildest dreams come true this year. As Lisa Turtle would say: "Keep a rockin'!"

ABC, it's easy as 1, 2, 3...Or is it?

Remember when you were a kid, elementary school age, and you learn something really important in school that day? Like, addition and subtraction, times tables, long division, cursive, state capitols, presidents of the United States, The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, the list goes on and on. You don't know it at the time, but you are obtaining knowledge that you will use and talk about for the rest of your life. I mean seriously, what American over the age of 11 and a half doesn't know about Pearl Harbor, or has never heard of The Great Depression. That crap is important and if it happens to come up in a conversation and you don't know about it, you look like a dumb dumb.

Well my blogging pals, I'm here to fess up. I'm not going to hide it anymore. I missed a critical day in elementary school…I missed Alphabetical Order day. I'm not proud, but I can't hold it in any longer. I didn't even know I missed such an imperative day in my elementary school career until End of Level Testing came around. Apparently my teacher didn't believe in reviewing before we took the tests. I guess she figured six-year-olds could retain all the information she'd given us over the past none months and regurgitate it in order to pass our EOL's. She must have had a lot of faith in us. But I'm here to tell you Mrs. What's-Her-Face, you were wrong, dead wrong!!

Now I'm going to paint a picture about how End of Level Testing went for me that fateful day. A day I've tried hard to forget but to no avail. So there I am six-year-old-ish Kate, a tiny, brown-haired, and probably recovering from a horrible bowl-cut hairdo, Ninja Turtle loving girl. Sitting quite contently, but probably with a serious, non-smile look on my face (after all, I am at school). After cruising through the first three quarters of the test (I was very impressive at that age), I come to the last two pages. Now I realize I was but a wee lady when this happened, but the next series of events I can remember clear as day. I proceeded to slowly read the instructions which went something like: "Put the following words in alphabetical order." I read it over again, trying to understand. Then I thought, what in the world is alphabetical order? I tried to think back to when we learned about such a thing but couldn't come up with anything. I knew the alphabet; I knew how to read; but this 'alphabetical' word was just too much for my little head to wrap itself around. I looked over all the words trying to be a problem solver but I just couldn't seem to figure it out. I was so frustrated and confused. Why hadn't my deadbeat teacher taught me about this nonsense? And why hadn't I ever heard this word before? Then it hit me, I must have missed the day we learned about alphabetical order. I know it sounds simple, like, how could I not figure it out by breaking down the word 'alphabetical' and coming up with alphabet, then maybe assuming the word starting with the letter B went before the word starting with W. Well, I guess I just wasn't smart enough to figure it out, or what I like to think, is that my brain was already fried from hours of testing, that my cognitive thinking was long gone and I was just trying to finish at that point. Throw six-year-old me a bone here!

After accepting the cold hard fact that I just wasn't going to get it, I proceeded to spell out words on my bubble sheet. 1. C 2. A 3. B and 4. B 5. A 6. D. I figured I might as well have fun if I'm going to blow it anyway. And maybe I would guess right on some of them…it could happen. After feeling sorry for myself because I ended on such a bad note, I put the test behind me, as I always do, and looked forward to playing Turtles or something. Let's just say when I got those test scores back, I didn't fare too well in that particular section; in fact, I think I missed every single one of the stupid 'alphabetical order' questions.

So there it is; the ugly truth. Don't you dare think I'm stupid, I know ya'll missed an important day, long division maybe? Or was it cursive? I will find out…eventually.