Because I am a woman of the people, and also because I have a BUNCH of unpublished posts

My dear, dear BFFFFFF Emily, made a request that I blog. Well, Emily, I like to please my peeps. And you, friend, are my peep.

Also, I often type things up and then never finish them, and therefore never post them.

So, friends, here is a post I wrote last July but never posted. I hope you enjoy it.


Thoughts about things


We saw How to Train Your Dragon last week. I highly recommend it, it was adorable. I love movies that are for kids AND adults, because win win, you know?

The “adult theme” I got from this movie is not what “adult theme” usually sounds like, obviously. But it was the idea that when there is something threatening in our environment, the response should not be to destroy it. Fear is a powerful emotion, and I think fear is sometimes mistaken for bravery, which was definitely the case in this movie. Whoever killed the most dragons was the most respected and “brave,” when really, the reaction they had was a cowardly one.

It made me think about the things in my life that are scary or threatening. How do I deal with them? Do I try to understand them and make them part of my life, even if it’s challenging? Or do I try to eliminate anything that gets in my way and isn’t easy? Something to think about.


On another note, wasn’t the Fourth of July incredible? I vote that it be on a Sunday every year. 3 days of celebrating was the best!

I had such a fun Fourth of July weekend. Here is how it went:

Friday, the 2nd: Girls night, makeup done by Kiley, went and saw Eclipse. (And now I need to talk about Eclipse a little bit. I think it was more ridiculous than the other ones. So many great moments. Most notably, the first time we see Jacob, and he’s standing by his motorcycle all hot with like rock music in the background. SO GOOD. And I really can’t get over the fact that there are people—a lot of them—who LIKE EDWARD. He is like a crazy stalker psychopath, he has major trust issues, not to mention anger issues, and his sideburns are gross and scraggly. Also, suddenly Jasper is Southern? AMAZING.) After Eclipse there was sleeping over, which equaled FUN.

Saturday, the 3rd: Got up and went running in the canyon with Shelly and her friend. My knee has been hurting (andalsoIamawuss), so I hung back a bit, but it was so great. We went for like an hour and it felt amazing. The weather was warm, the canyon was pretty, everything was good. When I got home I hung around with Chris for a while. A conversation about the Coke and Mentos craze of a couple years ago prompted a trip to the grocery store to buy said items. As it was close to the Stadium of Fire beginning time, and we live close to the fiery dome, we walked. And it was really fun. We bought some fireworks as well, then came home. I decided I would like to view a Harry Potter movie, please. We only own the 5th one, so we put it in.

Later my parents came over, and when they got there a bomb exploded on our block. Not really! It was just the jets flying over the stadium, but it was so loud that’s what it seemed like. We all walked down the block and staked out a fireworks spot. We chose a spot where we could see the screen in the stadium and hear the music. Almost as good as being there. Once we got seated, I was feeling chilly and my dad was feeling snacky, so we walked back up to my house. I changed my clothes, hopped on the back of his scooter, he dropped me off with my mom and Chris, then took off to Day’s Market. He returned with chips and salsa, fruit, vegetables, Sprite, and chocolate covered nuts. It was an excellent fireworks picnic. Good call, Dad.

The fireworks were totally better than last year. They lasted longer, had more variety, and the finale actually CAME. Last year they ended and we kept waiting and waiting, saying, “That CAN’T be the end! There’s more, I know it. But we were wrong.” One of the best parts about the whole thing was living so close to the stadium. People were still stuck in traffic outside our house after we’d been home in our jammies for like 2 hours. AWESOME. We took that opportunity to do some fireworks. It was really great, of course. There was a school bus full of girls from Juab High School singing “California Girls” over and over, out the window, super loud, for the entire 15 minutes they were waiting for the light by our house, and, I would imagine, the whole way back to Nephi. Bless that bus driver’s heart.


February note: This is the reason I never published this post. I never wrote about the ACTUAL 4th, on Sunday, and now I have no idea what happened that day so I can’t fake it. Learn from my mistakes, people. Blog in a timely manner. Or, you know, write in a journal or something.


Also, the best and most important thing about this holiday—the PARADE: One of the funnest things about the parade is always yelling at people on the floats. This year I had the added pleasure of seeing how hard I could make my dad laugh. He really loved when I yelled, “I’m fiscally conservative!” at the Utah County Republicans float. And he REALLY loved it when I yelled, “I used to eat at Mulboons in your building!” at the Law offices of Fillmore and Spencer, official legal counsel to the Freedom Festival. We shook hands with Jason Chaffetz and my dad told him he couldn’t believe he lost the leg wrestling match to Stephen Colbert, and he laughed about it and said, “I know! We need a re-match!” When the Channel 5 news team came by I tried to think of a shorter way to yell, “Congratulations on Kate getting engaged!” to Bruce Lindsay and have him understand what I said, but I just couldn’t make it work in my brain. But my dad did yell, “Eubank, you rock!” and Mark Eubank totally heard him. It was way awesome. So I really didn’t realize until just now that the parade was like the Dave and Erin comedy hour, but all my memories of it are me and my dad saying awesome stuff. Awesome.