Anniversaries and Anecdotes

Amy: Colin and I have officially been married for three years!!!  Wow.

Colin: amazing how far we've come in such a comparatively short time. :) today is also our 1 year anniversary of graduating from BYU and commissioning into the Air Force. huah!


Amy: Remember graduation?  Emily has the best video here. We're so cool.

Colin: remember our wedding? amy's mom shared a great video featuring the Draper Temple here. we were sealed in the large sealing room. it's the only one in the video where they do a feature on the altar. that's a fun day to remember. :) april 22, 2009.


Amy: I'm glad I married you. :)

I mean, who can resist this face?

Colin: it's been a wild third year. it started out with four days at Disneyland? we're gonna try and go to Disneyworld sometime in the next couple of months. anybody wanna go?


Amy: Me!! I want to.  I love Disneyland!!! The happiest place on earth :)

Colin: anybody out there ever been to Disneyworld? have any recommendations on where to stay? i guess we could just find the cheapest, closest, (cleanest?) place like last time. it was, well interesting. i guess that's what you get for $11/night. :)

Amy: yep.  We're pretty white trash. But we each got 4 cool pins--ours were Happy Anniversary, Just Graduated, Honorary Cast Member, and We're Celebrating.  Can we get anything like that in Disneyworld?

Colin: after those days of bliss, it was back to Utah to pack. remember how we photographed and made a list of every. single. thing. we. own?

Amy: I'm not putting all those photos up here...

Colin: we have even more stuff now. at least we won't be moving again for a few years. 

Amy: Remember how I went on a tour that had both the best and worst experiences of any tour?

The best experiences were being in Paris and seeing all the art again, host families in Basque country, and being with friends who make me happy.

This was the worst experience.  Pamplona.  Running with the bulls.  Freezing. Smelly.  Dirty. I almost fell asleep in a bus station with my friends. 

Colin: i just played dodgeball while she was gone...

Amy: Then we moved.  Remember how we rented the first, and only, apartment that we saw once we got here to DC?  It's lovely.

Colin: it is lovely. too bad that i had to leave almost immediately after we got here. i did not enjoy ohio. even though we will likely end up there again...

Amy: I'm ok with that. But there is a lot more to do here than in Dayton...

Colin: agreed. like the air and space museum. :)

Amy: Like a kid in a candy store--

Colin: what about you and the natural history museum? they have diamonds there...


Amy: and dinosaurs.


Colin: we've had fun while we've lived here, needless to say. museums, gettysburg, mt. vernon, the national mall. somebody should come visit, again.


Amy: We have a lovely futon with a guitar quilt waiting for the next guest. :)


Colin: and a back porch with our tomatoes and peas growing so well! it's the perfect place to study, eat dinner, or take an evening nap.


Amy: You hate naps...


Colin: yup, but textbooks put me to sleep. even the really stimulating ones about ethnomusicology..


Amy: Appalachian and Bolivian dance are just as exciting.  I think it's a conspiracy to make school harder...


Colin: oh the up and down we live.. the awesome DC sights, then the boring homework nights...


Amy: You're a poet and you didn't realize it...  It's not the information that I find boring, it's how it is written.  I love going to class and discussing everything I am learning.  I just don't enjoy proving to the university that I have learned something by writing papers about it.


Colin: and let's be honest, we'd rather be dancing to the music instead of writing papers on it.

Amy: It's true. I miss dancing.


Colin: me too. but the Air Force doesn't pay me to be artsy. nope. they pay me to.. uh.. well i think they pay me to... hmm. well they are paying for my masters of ethnomusicology. so how about that?


Amy: That is fantastic!! :)


Colin: i know. well we've just decided that we're not very entertaining in this post, so we're going to say good night and here's to the next year of wonderful, blissful, happy marriage. :)


Amy: Cheers!  watch this.  It is fun. and entertaining. :)  

Bug

I remember this day because it was the day I was rescued from almost certain death.

When I was in third grade, my best friend was Paige Gutzman.  She and I would always spend recess walking around the big field behind the school--telling stories, finding roly-poly bugs to put into jars with lady bugs, peeling the grass into smaller pieces, and only sometimes joining in with other games.

Paige and I were walking around the field when I heard a dozen girls screaming my name and running towards me.  I don't know what they were yelling- Run? Hide? They are coming?!  I'm not exactly sure.  I just know they were telling me I was in trouble.

That was when I heard the other thundering footsteps.

I looked to the school.   It was like it was happening in slow motion--There was thirty, third grade boys running around the portables, coming from behind them, and then turning toward the field where I was standing.  They were running at me!  (ok, so maybe there were only like 15 boys... but it felt like a lot more...)  The rest of the girls fled, and I had no clue what was going on.  I tried to run but was overtaken by the sprinting boys and surrounded.

They circled around and then began taunting me--they had killed a large preying mantis and had gutted it (boys are gross!!!) and proceeded to hold a stick with bug guts out towards my face.  This is where I would die.  I was certain of it.

However, I was saved before my imminent death arrived--one boy began moving through all the rest of the crowd clamoring for my screams, and he began to push them all away from me.   I was rescued. 

Jon Beh.  

I will always remember him as the boy who saved me from an early grave. Or at least from a very traumatizing experience for a third grade girl.

Adopted

I study folklore.  


I still can't figure out how to explain to people what that is.  It is more than Brother's Grimm stories but less than everything.


I'm taking a creative writing and folklore class right now, and I have found a new love of story telling.  I found myself one day, sitting in class, listening to all my classmates tell stories.  I was interested by the fact that one girl's dad ran away from home when he was like 11 and spent a year or so living in a swamp in Texas, and I loved the story about another girl's grandparents' courtship--they were set up because they were a similar height, and then ended up stuck at a martini bar because of a hurricane for a day, and then got married :)  When it came to my turn, I found myself telling everyone how I was adopted.


"Wow!"
"Really?!"
"I didn't know you were adopted!"


Those are the typical responses.  And then silence from the class.  I think they were waiting for me to spill my guts about how unfulfilled my life is because I don't know my 'real' parents, and how I have had to pull through an extreme identity crisis to become the somewhat normal student that I am.  However, I had no such stories for them.


I have a mom.  And she will forever be my mom.  My dad will forever be my dad.  I am grateful that my birthmother decided that Emily and I should go to a home with a mom and a dad. 


And I think they thought my story was boring.


I, however, do not.  That's all.