Slacking

I get a little behind on the blog updates and picture review. Give me a break, I do what I can!

This is a man named Fred Rungee. He is AMAZING. He lives in the Alaska wilderness. You have to drive hours to the middle of no where, get out of your car and hike five miles in (while carrying guns because there are so many bears) to a little lake where you canoe across to find his cabin he build by hand. Once we went to visit him in the middle of summer. Well he knew we wanted home made ice cream so he got up at 4 in the morning to hike the mountains and find snow so we could crank out some homemade goodness. Never has anything tasted so good. He teaches wild Indians how to play the piano, he lives off the land and builds more inventions than you could ever imagine. He has no modern conveniences like running water, electricity or an indoor bathroom. So sing all the way to the outhouse if you don't want to be eaten by a wild beast. Thanks Fred for being so amazing, even in your 80's!

Oldies Dance

By far my favorite outfit of the night. Go NYPD Blue!

Last weekend there was an oldies dance. It was old guys playing old music. Can it get any more perfect than that you may ask? Yes, because it was suggested to dress from the 60's, 70's or 80's. And I am here to say, people love to dress up. It brings the dancing up a solid 2 levels!

This picture was taken before the kid on the left jumped in the air blowing out the entire back seam of his snug polyester pants!

Everyone loves an excuse to sport a mullet!

Just because he looks like he might faint does not mean he could not rip out the fabulous dancing tunes! "I've got two tickets to paradise...

No Respect

Rodney Dangerfield isn't the only person who gets no respect! Do you ever have one of those days where you think to yourself "gouging myself in the eye would be less painful than listening to this?" I have a lot of days like that!

I would start with a preface that we live in a democracy. Because of this we have many freedoms. We get to choose where to live, what religion to practice (or not practice), who will be the next president or run in any public office. We take for granite the very structure of this system when we become so caught up in our own greed and personal gain. We think everything in life is a right, not a privilege and other people should always respect us no matter how ignorant, rude or immature we may act.

What is getting me on this soap box? Teenagers! I work at a "crisis center" for troubled youth. This has seriously discouraged me from ever having children of my own. If 8 hours makes me want to gouge my eye out, what would 18 years do? These kids take on the victim side of life, when each one of them has a chance to be a survivor. Yes life is hard. Really bad things have happened. But life is hard for everyone, some things by choice, others out of our control. Just because you go to college doesn't mean you will get a great job. Just because you love someone doesn't mean relationships will work out and just because you are 17 doesn't mean you can blast the F-bomb in my ear and think I am going to take it.

It is not what happens to us in life that matters, it is how we respond to the unexpected, the unfair and disappointment that make us respectable (or not)! Living rules and laws don't make us weak, strange, weird or eccentric. It is the very thing that gives us freedom. Mock me if you will but let me give you some examples:
1. I do not break the law, therefore I do not have excessive fines to pay
2. I am not promiscuous, therefore I do not have an STD (statistics show 1 in 4 women have an STD, I BEAT THE ODDS!)
3. I haven't experimented with drugs (unless drinking diet coke is a drug!), therefore I am not addicted, I do not have to fight, steal or manipulate for something with a short term effect.
4. I try not to swear (not to say when I wreck on my bike the "s" word doesn't fly out), therefore I do not have to watch my tongue based on my surroundings
5. I do not steal of lie. I barely have enough money to pay the rent, I can't afford and Ipod (the only music I hear is the song I am singing), but I have nothing to hide, I have a clean conscience.
6. I know how to say please, thank you and to just shut up when ideals are mentioned that I do not agree with and I know I can not change. Nothing is solved with someone who argues and uneducated point!

Some of you may think I don't know anything, I am just a lame observer. Well come to find out I have had a lot of experiences in life. For instance, I worked very hard on passing a ban to stop smoking in a small Wyoming town. I have been around many people who hate my very being for taking away their "right" to smoke. Smoking is not a right, it is a privilege. I have the right to breath clean air and when your privilege takes away my right, I have a problem. When one person smokes the whole room smokes. When a parent smokes a child smokes. Your cigarette butts thrown in the city drain system, we all drink carcinogens. Often the innocent by standards are the very ones who die from lung cancer, leukemia and heart disease.

So for you out there that say kids have the right to listen to any music they want no matter the lyrics, or watch whatever show they want as long as it is PG-13, to you I say, it is not a right it is a privilege. If "you are what you eat", then aren't you what you watch, what you listen to and how you treat others? Because I choose to go to school again and try for another education, because I give back to my community with service or practice a religion that gives me values does not give a 17 year old (or anyone) the right to swear in my face, degrade my values or shrink me to something less. That is a privilege you have not earned and never will earn.

So can't a girl get a little respect?! Respect for becoming a survivor in a world that is unfair, for taking crap all day long from people and knowing inside I am better, stronger and more than that. Because I work hard I will not get things handed to me on a silver platter, nor do I expect it. Class will not come easy, grades won't always be A's, the pipes in my house won't always work and disagreements will still arise. Respect me or not I respect myself enough to know that shoving things in peoples faces that they choose not to have in their life will not bring them down, but will only make them fight harder, live stronger and give thanks for the blessing they have from being an upright citizen in a blessed, hard worked for democracy!

Happy Birthday Kate-O

(These pictures are from our friend Holly's wedding)

Today is one of my best life long friends, Kate's birthday. I wanted to give a shout and say I hope you have a most wonderful day and year!

We have been friends since kindergarten when we were is the same class. We were then in most of the same classes there after. I have lots of wonderful memories with Kate. The first sleep over I ever had was at her house, she would run out of the room to freak me out. We have run many businesses together under alias code names. We have been pharmcists, florists, mayors, lawyers, we have run stores and offices as well as getting a certificate in babysitting. I taught Kate how to swallow pills (we were not druggies.) She had a hard time getting anything like an aspirin or tylenol down. One year for easter her parents gave her a million jelly bellies. So we had competitions with them, who could swallow the most at one time. It is a lot less intimidating swallowing whole candy than pills, so we slowly but surly got our throat open so far we could swallow almost 10 at a time.

We loved fake nails. With our allowances we would always buy press on nails and eventually moved up to real fake nails at a salon.

In 5th grade we sat in the same group of desks. I had an air freshener under my desk because Nathan (a super smelly boy) sat by us. Every time Kate would say "do you smell something fruity" that was my cue to crank open the freshener. We also had fake kitchens at our desk. Every time we got hungry we would make invisible sandwiches with all the fixings. We would heat up some hot chocolate in the fake microwave. It was great, I need to go back on the invisible food diet.

Through out the years we did many things together like track (we were terrible), cheer leading (and no one wanted to give us a ride home ever), and soccer. We were on the soccer team for one day. It was about a 3 hour practice in the pouring rain and it was sprint after sprint and then a cold ball smashing against your head. So on one particular set of sprints they said "go" and Kate and I ran to the end of the field, down the stairs, and to the parking lot, where we got in our cars and drove off, never to return!

When I turned 16 Kate threw me the best surprise birthday in the WHOLE world. There was dancing, all my favorite friends and she invited the student body president over to kiss me. She caught it on video, freeze framed it, took a picture and printed it off for me to remember the glorious day forever.

There are so many great memories with Kate I can't even tell them all. We used to have hot tub parties and try and breath off the air bubbles. We have been to Australia on vacation with my aunt and uncle and it was the funnest two weeks of my life. We ate so many tim tams, snakes alive and pineapples (stolen off trees surrounding the condos). We are girls night forever!
Happy Birthday Buddy! Thanks for all the fabulous journeys in life so far, I am sure more are on their way!














This is our attempt to spell "girls", we failed to relized it would be backwards for the camera!

Kate always looks like a million dollars, I on the other hand look like I have been shot with a case of caffeine!

Pictures of the Past

I have an obsession with pictures and I have recently come upon some good old photos from back in the day (if you couldn't tell from my last two posts). So I would like to start a new tradition in which once a week I will post a picture I find and make comments about them. Today I will start with a picture of my brother....AGAIN!

The UniSuit

Back in the early 80's when my mother was pregnant, they didn't use ultra sounds unless it was an emergency. So my mom and dad had no idea if they were having a boy or a girl until the moment it was born. I think this outfit was made for a girl/boy, an outfit that could be bought by those mothers not knowing what to expect. It's a little bit of a girly one piece, yet in red, so still manly. It has a bunny on the pocket, but then again my brother was a bunny for halloween. Apparently the shortness of the shorts does not prevent one from having a wonderful day at the fair while eating delicious popcorn. I think we should bring the unisuits back in. (Unless its for people to look emo in. Then that's just a little weird!)

OLYMPICS

Again I am only a few months late, but I would like to make some comments about the olympics this year. I love the olympics. Watching people run really fast or swim world record times made me want to become an athlete myself (for about two days, then I realized it was to much work.) One of the favorite sports that I would watch with my parents was mens gymnastics. It is ridiculous what these guys can do. Who ever came up with the idea to swing yourself through the air at ridiculous speeds on a set of dangling rings and then stop without dislocating your arms was CRAZY!! So to anyone who dares this kind of strength and greatness I commend you. And I am proud to say my brother almost made it to the olypics on the ring swing too!
Way to go K-dawg. Unfortunately he didn't have enough upper body strength and that is why he bikes now.

Late Halloween

I know Halloween was a week ago but I haven't had a chance to make some much needed comments about such a wonderful holiday. First, when parents were doing the down town business trick-or-treating I couldn't help but come up with some awards. First award goes to MOST REALISTIC. There was a little kid dressed up as the grim reaper carrying the sword and all. Behind him was his father smoking away on a pack of cigarettes. He was the real grim reaper sucking the life out of his little kid! Next award goes to MOST PROBLEMS LATTER IN LIFE. I chose this award to go to the mother who had her kid dressed up as a dice cub and she was dressed up like a slutty version of Little Bo Peep. Thanks for teaching you kids bad morals at such a young age, I predict you will be a grandmother in less than 8 years.

Enough of the awards, lets see how cute my brother and I were on Halloween when we were small children.


We have Kevin as a rabbit and me as a clown. I love that my parents have my brother wear a pink bunny outfit, and the fact that being a bunny makes you very tired, or like you are going to eat someone! And next we have Kevin, the great pumpkin. You can't say my parents weren't creative with the costumes. In fact I think Kevin wore that coat just this fall during hunting season. The scary pumpkin face really intrigued the deer, making it a very productive hunt!