white trash weekend

it'll drive a cowboy crazy. . .
ah, summer. when white trash activities abound. i wait all year for it: rodeo/demolition derby/carny days. where the kettle corn flows like beer and dudes with handle-bar mustaches and short shorts flock like drumsticks to a bucket of fried chicken. last week kicked off the official rodeo season with the strawberry days rodeo in pleasant grove. as it turns out, i have quite the strawberry days legacy. my great-grandmother was actually strawberry days queen in the 1920's, and i myself won a few blue ribbons at various horse shows at the rodeo arena ( i only have one picture of me at a horse show. wasn't my horse beautiful? we won a lot of blue ribbons that summer).
here are a few pictures from the events of last weekend.
brad thinking he's clever by stealing my camera and trying to take a picture of the girl behind him. . . . . . and then being busted for it.
the sights at the rodeo are mighty fine.

ben isn't afraid to show some cleavage. and also living a country song moment with a barbeque (nacho) stain on his white (blue) t-shirt . . .
shooting is awesome. chris knows how it's done. poppin' a cap with his .40

100 things about me

I’ve seen these lists before on blogs and always wanted to do one. But I kept thinking, who wants to read 100 random things about me? Then at church yesterday, we were talking about the parable of the talents and the teacher asked us to make a list of our talents. I had a hard time coming up with more than two or three. I decided I needed to sit down and think about it some more and thought that a 100 list would be a fun way to figure out what I like and to share few things about myself (I’ve always had a hard time deciding on a “favorite” anything, I usually have to have a top five or ten). So here is my list of 100 things about me.

1. Before I was born, my mom was going to name me either Christian or Kristin
2. I’ve decided I like using capital letters again
3. Horses are my favorite animal – especially Friesians
4. I love the colors turquoise, coral, and deep red
5. I am afraid of spiders, sharks and costume characters at theme parks (especially clowns)
6. I have had the same hair style since 1998 (and I sometimes have nightmares about someone cutting off my ponytail)
7. I wish I wasn’t a moody person
8. I love school – I used to read the encyclopedia during summer vacation when I was a kid
9. My family has been through a lot and it has made us very close
10. I consider my sisters some of my best friends
11. I have a hard time getting to know people, but once I do, I love them unconditionally
12. I am pretty good at art and photography and I want to become better
13. I have a hard time picking a favorite anything
14. I think I’m pretty easy going even though my family and friends tell me I’m intense
15. I love stupid movies (the right kind of stupid like Dumb and Dumber and Happy Gilmore)
16. I am good at punctuation but bad at spelling and citation
17. And I was an English major in college, but I can’t deconstruct sentences
18. I wanted to be either a marine biologist or exotic animal veterinarian when I was little
19. I love chemistry equations
20. I love to read – I can read all day
21. One of my favorite things to do is going to the pool and reading US magazine
22. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up
23. If I could pick any hobby, I would pick horseback riding (but I can’t afford it)
24. I have a knack for training animals
25. I also have a knack for organizing information/learning (which is why I majored in Instructional Design)
26. I wish I only had to work four days a week instead of five
27. I wish I was married and had a family
28. I love flamingos
29. My favorite vacations are road trips with friends
30. I lived in Oahu, Hawaii for six months and I went to the beach almost every day
31. I love real Hawaiian shave ice with ice cream and azuki beans
32. I love to swim. I swam in high school and I wish I had time to swim more often
33. I am a hard worker, but I get burned out easily
34. I also get bored easily
35. I love to talk
36. I hate purple
37. I am a techno gadget geek
38. I am also a computer/web nerd
39. I wish I was better at drawing
40. I love Saturday morning cartoons. My favorites were He-Man, Scooby-Doo and Speed Buggy
41. I don’t feel 31
42. I love ice cold Diet Coke with lime wedges
43. I love to play outside
44. I love to hike
45. I would love to move to the Caribbean for a year
46. I am addicted to email
47. I like to write, and I want to develop that talent
48. I love plain vanilla ice cream
49. Green banana Italian soda is my favorite drink
50. I like cacti
52. I have a good memory and often remember entire conversations or movie dialog word for word
53. I love peonies and daffodils
54. I am not very good at saving money
55. I like going to matinee movies by myself
56. I love just being with people, hanging out and talking
57. I like people with strong opinions
58. I bake really good cakes
59. I look just like my dad and I am a lot like him
60. I love fries with fry sauce
61. I am proud of my Danish heritage
62. I took four years of French but can barely speak it
63. I tend to make all types of friends and I love them all for being different
64. I love peanut butter and will put it on everything
65. I am afraid of heights and wouldn’t go skydiving with my roommates in Hawaii
66. I am scuba certified and love the ocean
67. I swam with sharks in Belize even though I was scared out of my mind
68. I like vampire books and movies
69. My favorite TV shows are My Name is Earl, the Office and 10 Items or Less
70. I talk on my cell phone in the car even though I know I shouldn’t
71. I am not very good at obeying rules
72. All my report cards in elementary school described me as “conscientious”
73. I am good at noticing things other people usually miss
74. I love crossword puzzles and I hate riddles
75. I am freakishly good at rocks paper scissors
76. I am easy to read and have a terrible poker face
77. I have zero musical talent and have no desire to play the piano or any other instrument
78. But if I could choose a talent I don’t have, I would pick singing
79. I like to travel, but I’m always glad to be home again
80. I love rodeos
81. I hate parades
82. I can’t sit still for more than five minutes
83. I like to rearrange my room
84. I love to decorate and sometimes I wonder if I would be good at interior decorating
85. I love the red rock deserts of Utah and I missed them when I lived in Hawaii
86. Someday I want to take good enough photos to be in a gallery or magazine
87. I love reading National Geographic and DIY decorating magazines
88. I love watching Golden Girls (secret shame)
89. I love doing random acts of service for others and am always thinking of things I can do for people I know
90. I love to teach kids, but I’m not sure I would make a very good teacher
91. I often antagonize my nieces and nephews to “get back” at my older siblings for teasing me as a child
92. I love action movies with lots of fighting and car chases
93. I am very sensitive and try hard to pay attention to the feelings of others
94. I have a knack for quickly discovering people’s true motives
95. I am often cynical and want more than anything to be naturally positive and accepting
96. I hate meetings
97. I don’t like talking on the phone
98. I appreciate sincerity above all other qualities
99. I am a republican who is also an environmentalist
100. I love reading the Book of Mormon and I’m very serious about my personal beliefs

who's your caddy?

the other day i learned something about myself. i cannot golf. normally, something like that wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. but given my DNA, this couldn’t be worse news. i grew up on a golf course. i hit golf balls all day with tiny clubs at the age of four. my dad was a golf course pro in west bountiful and he designed and built the golf course in nephi with his bare hands (and a john deere tractor). he even invented a golf club designed to perfect your swing and patented it! pretty much every day after school was spent at the golf course – though usually playing by the pond, catching guppies. but i do remember hitting range balls from time to time, and i knew the official golf club grip by age 3.

so i went with lori the music sherpa the other day to hit range balls at mulligans. it was fun – but i couldn’t help feeling a bit frustrated as i repeatedly smacked the fake turf with the club and almost hit lori in the back of the head at least a dozen times. i just knew that i should be inherently better than this. my dad would surely shake his head in disappointment if he could see me swinging a nine iron like a spaz. and i’m sore! who knew that hitting a few range balls would give you sore muscles and kill your grip for three days! clearly i just need some practice. perhaps i even discovered a hidden talent/passion that’s just been waiting to be set free. if pro golf girls didn’t look so butch, i might consider it. maybe i could be sponsored by forever 21 and etnies instead of nike. i could be the anna kournikova of golf! it’s quite possible that i’m sitting on a veritable gold mine and i don’t even know it. i mean, happy gilmore is one of my favorite movies – that can’t be a coincidence. you might even say that hitting range balls all summer long is my duty. that i owe it to the family to find out if i am indeed a golf ingénue. it could happen.

yeah, and grizzly adams had a beard.