things i hate.

I hate those stupid Progressive commercials. First of all, the woman is unsightly. Her makeup coupled with the awful poof hair just makes me cringe. Secondly, the commercials are just annoying. Probably because of the woman's obnoxious voice coupled with her unsightly looks. Thirdly, they're just stupid. AGH. I hate those commercials- radio and television.

I also extremely dislike (hate) Aeropostale. The only time it's acceptable to shop there is when you're in 9th grade or younger and you have acquired serious brain damage. Other than that, you should never shop there, unless you want to look stupid and you want me to scowl at you.

I hate going to every store in the mall to find a stupid belt. Why don't stores carry simple, non-expensive belts? I thought an item that was commonly worn would be commonly found. Boy, was I wrong. The closest I came to finding a belt I wanted was at Wet Seal. Too bad it was in size -2, so you could only wear it if you had negative mass or something.

I hate packing. First of all, you have to take about half of what you want to take, which leaves you with three shirts, two pairs of pants and some shoes. You also have to limit yourself to less than 44lbs, because of the weight limit and the fact that you're probably going to bring stuff back. I've never been an over-packer, but I still hate the process of packing.
I also hate the fact that I don't have a backpack camera case. I have to take my ridiculous camera case and stuff it inside my carry on backpack, leaving little room for headphones, coloring books or something to keep me occupied on a stupid plane ride.

I hate the phrase "quick drying towel." Because I can't find one. The closest thing I got was a Sham Wow. I don't want a Sham Wow. BLAGH.

I hate being stressed about vacation. But I guess the bright side is that I'M GOING ON VACATION.

Yay!

Off He Goes

Ah, today the Lord will be gathering Elder Bonner for the Missionary Training Camp (er, I mean Center) to start preaching the word of God to all the schnitzel-lovin', lederhosen-wearin' German Folk. I speak for everyone when I say that we will all miss this lanky lad. I speak for myself when I say that my cat will probably not even remember him.

I'll have to wait two years to finally beat him in Foosball...

Hello, My Name is Sarah

(Zoom in for awesome-face close-ups. Also, I'd advise looking at the man in the front row wearing the plaid.)

First of all, apologies to those who posted comment recently (I believe Kelsey and Grosland), but when I clicked the "publish" button, they did not in fact publish. So, you can either leave your comments again, or just leave my posts barren.

This weekend I had a family reunion for the Hilton/Cropper side of the family. It was a relatively simple family reunion down south in Hinckley- we ate, listened to stories, looked through old pictures 0f my great-great-great grandpa when he was in WWI.




"Everyone look up at the moon!"

"I look like Thelma." Yes, yes you do.

Warning: you will NOT be able to get out of this slide.









I thought it was a swing so I rand for my spot first. Turns out it was a metal bar.







And the prestigious beautiful-after-riding-the-merry-go-round-for-twenty-minutes award goes to... MARY!





My Aunt Alicia is just... weird.

Okay, enough of the joke pictures. We actually did do things, like checking out the famous abandoned Hinckley house, going to the fort (I have no idea what it's called) made out of adobe, and then going to the Great Stone Face, which is a rock that looks like Joseph Smith's profile. Most of us were hiking in crummy shoes, namely me and my Aunt Alicia. She wore thick flop flops, I wore flats that ended up breaking.



Outside the fort. Let's play a game called "Name the Picture That's Out-Of-Place." What's your guess?







On the front porch of the abandoned house. Inside there was a stuffed bird, chairs, and an old camera. Out back there was an abandoned car and a stove.

Also, I am in need of all three Lord of the Rings Extended Editions. If you have them, let me know ASAP.
I mean it. ASAHPWKIK (as soon as humanly possible without killing innocent kittens).
Because I really need to watch them again by Wednesday.

Matt run fast.

This is a wee bit belated, but I'd like to congratulate Matt on finishing his second marathon!
I don't know his exact time down to the second, but I do know it was 3:01 (just in case you didn't put on your smart pants today, that's not three minutes and one second). He killed his old time, beating it by 38 minutes! Good, grood job.

Art City Days: Fireworks

Fireworks are relatively simply devices, so I'll just leave you some pictures.

Art City Days: Carnival

Ah, the Carnival. Creaky rides held together by duct tape. Carnies that smell strongly like smoke or are missing body parts. Children scavenging for extra tickets in the garbage or on the ground. Cotton candy and caramel apples that sit in the window of the food booths and tempt all to buy the overpriced confections. Ah, the Carnival.

Some people don't like going to the Carnival because of the possibly fearsome carnies or the potential that your life is endangered every time you step onto a beat up old ride. But that's one of the many reasons I love going! When I was little, we'd have tickets instead of the newfangled wristbands of nowadays. We'd have to carefully plan out our tickets on what we really wanted to ride, like the Orbiter, Spin Out, the Graviton (Actually called the StarShip 2000), the Ring of Fire, the Gee Whizz, the Zipper, or other smaller things like the giant yellow slide or the Indiana Jones Adventure, which is basically a giant jungle gym. When we ran out of tickets, it was always depressing because we would watch all the other kids with loads of tickets just ride and ride and ride.



When I went to the Carnival this year, I rode most of the rides but I discovered that the only rides I really like are the Zipper, the giant yellow slide, and the Gee Whizz. All the other rides just made me sick on the ride or for hours after the ride. Even the Orbiter, which was my previous favorite.
If you don't know what the Zipper is, it's a large contraption lined with cages that moves around. The cages also move around a track around the large contraption, and then the cages themselves flip around. It's excellent and possibly nauseating. But I love it.




The Zipper





My most favorite (and the best) part of the Carnival are the food booths set up by locals. There's the famous Kiwanis scone booth, where if you've never had a scone in your life from there, you're not a true Springville-ite. There was a Peruvian booth, K'Rico's BBQ grill, Texas Twister, Caribbean food booth, kettle corn, italian ice and gelati, Domino's, Navajo Tacos, Drizzled Delights, and more. Every year I try to try different kinds of foods and drinks. I always get a scone and a Texas Twister, but this year I tried Jamaican ratties (potatoes) and honey BBQ chicken at the Caribbean booth, a chicken kabob from the Peruvian booth, and chocolate-drizzled strawberries from the Drizzle Delights. I also tried a Soca drink at the Caribbean place, which was a mango, passionfruit, banana, pineapple, etc. drink of Jamaica. It was fabulous.
I highly recommend trying the different food booths- there's always something delicious waiting there.




The Texas Twister is a blend of freshly squeezed lemons, oranges, and limes put into a secret drink mix and topped with a cherry.








Drizzled Delights. You could also get cheesecake drizzled in chocolate, which to me sounds awful.

Art City Days: Arts in the Park

After going to the Children's Parade, about half of my family and I headed over to the Art Museum for the Crafts at the Museum, or Arts in the Park. I don't really know what it's called, I just call it what I feel like.

There were dozens of booths with small, mostly easy crafts for kids to do. The easiest one I actually did was called "String Art," and it was taking a piece of pre-folded paper and putting a string covered in paint on the inside, folding the paper in half and pulling the string out. How amazing! Most of them ended up looking like some sort of Rorschach test, so... uh, way to go future psychologist children?

There was another one where you painted glue on your paper and they'd cover it in sand so it would become amazing sand art. I did an "Art City Days 2010" card, but my dad never gave it back to me. Another booth was "Rose Window Art," which was actually pretty nifty. You flattened a coffee filter, folded it in half three times and cut out patterns like you would for a snowflake. You then unfolded it, colored it with markers and glued it on to a piece of black paper. You sprayed it with water so the colors would mix, and voila! Rose window art.


My little sister decided to get a... frightening face paint job. Doesn't she look positively unsettling?

Art City Days: Intro

For those of you who don't know, Art City Days is one of my favorite times of the year. It's full of artsy activities, good food, sugary food, parades, balloons, hot dogs, fancy cars, pooper scoopers, prizes, carnival rides, music, talent, traditions, city pride and fun. I always look forward to Art City Days, even if I don't even do all the activities.

To kick off Art City Days, there's always a Nestle 5k, which I have never run/walked/slugged through. Apparently (according to Kim and Matt) it's the cheapest 5k around, and most of the people do it for the prizes at the end. Kim won a hula hoop. One of these days I'm going to do it, whether I'm in a wheelchair on oxygen or not...

Other events include the "Teddy Bear Tea Party" at the library, which I also have never attended. I think it's a little too late in my life to start going now. There's a Skate Park challenge, which is a bunch of people doing tricks at the skate park with some judges weeding out the complete losers (which would be me, if I ever tried). I have never been to this event either, seeing as I can barely ride a bike without wreaking complete devastation on my internal organs. Another event that I actually would love to attend is the Fireman's Breakfast. I can just imagine somewhat-delicious pancakes smothered in syrup with a side of wimpy bacon and scrambled eggs. To me, that sounds like a wonderful start to Art City Days.

[Some other events that I actually attend are the Children's Parade, Balloon Fest, Car Show, Parade, Carnival, Concert in the Park and the fireworks.]

The Children's Parade consists of children decorating their bikes (or other) with balloons, streamers, or even a basket of candy and riding around a loop while the parents stand on the side and take pictures. I obviously no longer fit either category of "child" or "parent," but I did go this year to watch my sister and hundreds of other kids ride around. One kid threw a box of nerds at me. There was also a large group of kids from a basketball organization who dribbled basketballs around the whole loop. Some kids were sweating bullets trying to get their tiny tricycle to go as fast as the "big kids' bikes."

Sadly, I did not make it to the Balloon Fest as in years past. I love waking up at 6:00 am to go watch dozens of people unroll giant, colorful hot air balloons, slowly fill them up and take off one by one. The people in the baskets throw disks with prize numbers on them, and I always, always wanted to win something as a kid. I still want to win something. I think one year I got a dart gun or something, but I always wanted one of the big prizes.

The car show is a short snippet of Art City Days, but it's always an adventure to see what kinds of old, new, souped up, tricked out, and expensive cars people in Springville have. Of course Hal Wing always enters his array of Porsches, Mustangs, and whatever, but there are a lot of old-school Camaros, Mustangs, Ford Model T and Model A's, and a few other excellent cars. This event is always right after the parade on Saturday morning, and we always get the cheap hot dogs at Chevron right before we head over to the car show.

I'm not going to do much describing on the Carnival, considering most of you know what a Carnival is. I'll explain later what I love so much about the Carnival...

The Saturday morning Parade is the bomb. I'll explain more later, but I always enjoy running on the roads and picking up the cheap candy. Now that I'm adult, I get some of the bigger, better things they hand out. Whee!

The Concert in the Park and the fireworks are the grand finale to a fun week's worth of awesomeness. In years past they've had magicians, several different musical groups, and other random acts that I can't think of. This year they had a band called Orleans, who played southern fried rock, and I actually recognized and liked a few songs. They sang this hilarious intermission song called "Mall Cop," which would've put "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" to shame. That movie sucks.

[Well, I hope you enjoyed a brief *cough* description of my love for Art City Days. I hope you will try to participate in next year's activities when the time comes.]

Oh, and this is my 50th blog post. Go me.

Buca di Beppo

There's this fantastically delicious place in Midvale (I think) called Buca di Beppo. Matt took Kim, Petey, Mary Raymer, and I to Buca di Beppo for some savory Italian food, family-style.

The decorations in the restaurant are probably the most excellent I've ever seen. First of all, the walls are PLASTERED with pictures upon pictures upon pictures. Most of them are of Italian peoples doing Italian people things like big-bellied men standing in a speedo, big families hugging each other, little boys picking their nose, or even a group of people, er, showing their backsides. Some of the decorations were advertisements, but the rest of the things that weren't statues or pictures were... are you ready for it? CATS! There were pictures of kittens spread throughout the pictures of life in Italy, and there was even one large, notable cat tapestry that I would love to have in my future home.

The waiter led us through the kitchen, where she showed us a dinner table in the cooking area that you could pay extra to eat at. It would seem to me as if that might be a wee big noisy in there.... we also passed a table with a rotating Pope bust that apparently would talk to you. Excellent.

Well after we were seated and after we flipped through the menu and decided what we all wanted, we decided to start off with an Apple Gorgonzola salad, which was big enough to feed all five of us two or three times around. We then got our 2.5 ft long Chicken Pesto pizza, which was marvelous, and I don't usually like pesto that much! We also got the Quattro al Forno, which was a dish of four different pastas- stuffed shells, manicotti, ravioli, and chicken cannelloni.
Everything tasted so excellent, and we managed to eat everything so we didn't have to bring home leftovers. Thanks, Matt for taking us to this meraviglioso ristorante.


When we took a trip to the bathroom, we discovered the wall was covered with dozens of old-fashioned beauty advertisements and random things like an old-fashioned bra and this lovely framed advice.



Also in the bathroom, particularly in one of the stalls. Such words of wisdom!

Sœurs.

We're not sure how Elizabeth fit into that suit...



































While everyone was falling, I seemed to be the only one who could remain steady.

My cat is a cold-blooded murderer.
I never minded my past cats killing mice or a bird every now and again, but I'm pretty sure my cat is a trained assassin. I mean, he has killed 10+ birds in the past week.

Just look at this bloodthirsty, pestiferous, savage beast.













Oh, and one of his many victims.











I am housing a criminal. How can I stop him from killing all these innocent fauna?!