Year of Firsts....November

I like to buy my produce at the mexican market by my house.  They have the best avocados.  Every time I go into their store, I see a plethora of Latinos gravitating to the cactus leaves and loading up their produce bag.  I couldn't help but wonder what the appeal was, so I told Shantell that for November we were going to cook and eat a cactus leaf.  I decided to make the event into a fun Sunday dinner and invite over around 6-7 people....big mistake...we had no idea what we were doing, and these poor 7 individuals were hungry.  To teach us how, we YouTube'd Chef Nathan.  It was a perk that he teaches us with his shirt off, although I can't imagine it's all that sanitary.  After de-needling the cactus, and cooking it over the stove, I quickly learned what the appeal of cactus is.....ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!  It was slimy, tasteless, and quite honestly disgusting!  My poor dinner guests.  On the positive side, if I am ever stranded in the desert without food or water, I am pretty confident I could survive at least 1 day.  Anything beyond 1 day, I would still be a goner.

Year of Firsts.....October

October was eventful in two particular ways:  1) I got to see my little sister and my only niece and nephews, and 2) I got to experience the well renowned Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Festival!  My sister, being the punctual soul she is, woke us up around 4:30 AM to arrive on time for the 6 AM departures.  It was freezing cold, and those of you who know how grumpy I get when I'm tired can only imagine that I was having my doubts about whether this was worth pulling me out of a nice, warm bed sleeping. 

Well, all it took was one look at the Wicked balloon, and all my doubts went away.  This was the coolest event ever!!!  I took so many pictures of that balloon, and I re-looked at the pictures so many times, that this stranger behind me while looking over my should said to me, "I think we all know what your new wall paper is going to be."  Dang Straight!  That was the coolest balloon ever!  It is my dream to ride in it someday!  All the other balloons were pretty cool too.  There was hundreds of different varieties, and it was cool to see so many balloons in the air at the same time.  Definitely an event I would do again.

Year of Firsts...September

I love all sports.  I love to play them.  I love to watch.  Even as a little girl, I used to love snuggling up next to my dad and watching Sunday football, until he told me I was too big to snuggle up next to him. Apparently, some people think being an adult and snuggling with your dad is "too big" or whatever.  I'm still scarred.  I had been to a BYU football game when I lived in Provo, but I had never been to a University of Utah football game while living in Salt Lake.  Thanks to Shantell and Emily, I was invited to attend with them.  It was a blazing hot day, and the Utes destroyed the other team, but it was fun to be in the stadium live with all the action. 

As an avid Hunger Games fan, my dream was to be just like Katniss Everdeen.  What better way than to learn archery.  That not so young gentleman in the wheelchair was my instructor.  Let's all imagine that he was my "Gale."  Archery was fun, and it is an activity I could see myself doing with friends on occassion.  I am not very good....yet.  Don't walk within a 30 foot radius of me and you'll be safe.

My friend Angela had found a balloon sculpting class while looking at a community ed catalog.  She thought it was be fun to try for my year of firsts, and surprisingly, she was right.  Call me a nerd and put a fake red nose on my face, but I LOVED balloon sculpting!!  I even bought extra balloons so I could take them to work and make them for all my co-workers.  I'm pretty sure my cool points went through the roof!  If you ever need a clown for a kid's party, give me a ring.  I can make a mad pirate's sword!

Year of Firsts...August

Growing up in the small town of Nephi, one would think that I would have experienced all the simple small town luxuries like cow-chip bingo, greased pig chase, or milking a cow.  Now, I have zero desire to ever touch a cow chip, and I definitely don't like being dirty, so a greased pig chase isn't my thing, but milking a cow....I could get on board with that!  Lucky for me, Wheeler farm does cow milking.  This particular cow was so tenured, that she pretty much milked herself...seriously...her udder leaked into the can on its own.  Regardless, I milked her.  It felt really, really weird and I'm not sure I enjoyed the feel, but I can now say that I have milked a cow.

My friends and I also traveled to New Orleans for my birthday in August.  Talk about one of my all time favorite places to visit within the United States!  Our first night there, we went to Bourbon street...kinda caca, but that's what we expected.  We went on a cemetary tour, visited the Voodoo museum, visited old plantations, and did a haunted ghost tour.  My all time favorite part was all the jazz music everywhere.  You could walk down the street and be entertained for hours!  I loved the atmosphere of New Orleans.  All the food was delicious!  Except the oysters.....

 It was my first time trying them, and definitely not a dish that I will ever eat again.  Too slimy.  Just thinking about it now makes me squirm.  Surprisingly, I would rather hold an alligator again.  That was also a first.  I thoroughly enjoyed our swamp tour we went on.  The alligators we so eery and sneaky.  They could just blend in with the swamp bushes and water, and all you could see were two eyeballs staring at you.  Creepy.

Year of Firsts...July

 My senior year of high school, I remember my friend telling me that she and her family did something where they put a candle in their ears, lit the end on fire, and then had all their earwax suctioned out.   For the past 14 years, that memory resurfaces at random.   I have been known to request random activities amongst friends in the spirit of "bonding."  Waxing.  Juicing.  And what I now know to be called ear candling.  Every time I suggested ear candling in the past, or any of my previous mentioned bonding activities, I was always answered back with blank stares.  What better excuse to finally get people to try it with me than, "It's something I've never done before.  It's a first."

It's actually quite scary.  An open flame and ashes burning down a wax strip hovering above your face and hair.  You can practically see the fear in my eyes.

Upon preparing for this activity, I read a lot of information about ear candling.  Supposedly the negative pressure of the smoke going into your ear is supposed to suction the wax out of your ears.  All recent articles warn against ear candling and say that it is highly discredited.  Most of the wax that is in the candle upon completion is actually just the wax from the candle itself, and not your ear.  Regardless, I finally got my 14 year long wish to try ear candling.

I even got Angela to try it with me.  We only had a couple near burning experiences, but we survived.  Here are our remnants in the candle....or shall I say, here is the wax from the candle itself.  My ears didn't feel any differently afterward, but the heat flowing into my ears during the burning felt kinda cool.  Mark that off my bucket list!

Year of Firsts....June

Half way through the year and still loving my New Year's resolution.  Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Cirque du Soliel shows, so when my friend Hailee's husband was out of the country doing an internship the whole summer, I maximized the opportunity and made her and Angela take a Vegas trip with me.  

Like every vegas trip, we had to get our pool time in!  We got settled into our condo and decided to have a snack.  I was beginning a healthy eating adventure, so we decided to make smoothies..... Well, I guess I don't know how to operate a magic bullet because this is the result.

I really don't know what happened other than I couldn't figure out why it was so difficult to screw the bullet into the base without losing all the smoothie mixture.  haha

After we had sufficient pool time, and after Hailee had practically walked around and debugged the whole pool, we decided to hit the town.  We stopped by the garden room at the Bellagio and watched the water show.

 But the real reason we were there was to watch "O" by Cirque du Soleil!  I have wanted to see this show for years, and what better way to see it than while trying to accomplish my "year of firsts."  Despite all its quirkiness and weird statues, Vegas is a quick and easy weekend getaway that never disappoints.   And I would highly recommend "O!!"  So good!!

Year of Firsts....May

Fifth month into my New Year's Resolution to try one new thing a month.  Once again, talking about this resolution with friends helped me come up with ideas.  I was visiting with my friends Nick and Suzie and we decided to take a cooking class.  The class we chose was "pastas."  As a carbohydrate lover myself, you can imagine my excitement for this class.

We started the class bright eyed and bushy tailed.  How hard could it possibly be?

A little harder than we thought.  Making the homemade pasta proved to be a challenge, and our first attempts were unsuccessful.  Determined to conquer our dough, we put it back through the ringers.  Practice makes perfect, and after about 4 tries, I finally made homemade pasta!

We made Marinara, Alfredo, noodles, ravioli, butter sauce, and a couple other things I can't remember, and I can't find my recipe paper to trigger my memory.  It was all delicious, except the marinara, but I'm not really a marinara kind of girl...

While visiting with Nick and Susie, Nick starting talking about his new gun and target shooting.  While I had shot guns with my brother-in-law in New Mexico, I had never shot a shotgun and I had never shot clay pigeons!  Suzie chose to stay home, but she let me borrow her husband to go skeet shooting.  It was surprisingly more fun that I anticipated.  I started out rough....I didn't even know where the bullets were ending up once I aimed at the pigeon.  I think I was closing my eyes...not the best technique for doing anything while holding a gun.  Round 2 proved to be much more successful!  I hit around 8 out of 20, which I thought was fantastic!  The next couple days, my shoulder was killing me!  It felt like a thousand needles constantly pricking at it, but it was well worth the adventure!

Year of Firsts....April

Most people have already given up on their New Year's resolutions by April, but I was just getting started.  The end of April was approaching and I still hadn't come up with an idea of what to do.  I had a moment of doubt that I would be able to think of something for each month for the end of the year, especially if after only 3 months I was struggling with ideas.  I decided to talk to people at social gatherings and allow other's creativity to help.




















I was sitting at a bonfire and brought up my resolution as small talk.  A girl there said I should try curling.  My first response, "Curling?  Like the Olympic sport on ice that's super boring to watch?"
"Yep!  I compete in a league every week and this month is the last month the oval will be open."
I guess her enthusiasm

convinced me that this curling thing might be kinda fun to try.  Even though this girl backed out last minute on our plans to go curling, my friend Stacey came with me.
I quickly learned that it was much more fun to play than to watch....kinda like baseball.  It's a sport of precision and accuracy.  And I'm not gonna lie, "sweeping" can be kind of tiring.

Our technique is really sloppy but we never fell over, which apparently can happen to people. The purpose of the game is to throw the "rock" down the ice to the target on the other end.  Your teammates "sweep" a path down the ice for the "rock" to follow.  You get points for landing in the target. Pretty simple...but not really. LOL

The purpose of this new year's resolution is to expose me to more potential hobbies.  Do I think curling will become a hobby of mine?  Absolutely not.  Do I think I would have ever gotten out of my comfort zone enough to ever pursue trying such a unique sport before this resolution?  Sure don't.  Needless to say, I'm happy I can say I have tried curling!  Not many people can say that.

Happy Birthday BFF

Abby Bailey Morrill is not one who takes a liking to many people.  She is what some like to refer as "rough around the edges" or "doesn't play well with others."  Well, at least that's how she used to be viewed, but thankfully, I got to know the real Abby.  She is the kindest, sweetest, most considerate person I have ever met, and I am lucky enough to be her best friend!  Abby is one who cares more about my life and well-being that I do for myself.  Example:  I put a post of Facebook that I was going to miss my team at work.  She called me that night around 11 PM.  I had people over so I didn't answer, but I thought to myself, "It's 11 PM and Abby is calling me.  It's unlike her to call that late.  I hope everything is ok."  I decided to text her, so she would know I'm here but I wouldn't be acting rude toward my house guests.  "I have people over.  Is this an emergency?  Or can I call you tomorrow?"  She responds, "You can call me tomorrow."  The next morning I called, and she immediately said, "Did you quit your job?  And why is your voicemail not set up?  Is everything ok?"  I assured her that I still had my job and was just changing departments, realizing that I had forgotten to fill her in on this part of my life, and that I also had a new phone.  Abby wants to know the little details of my life.  She always has.  She supports and loves me, and I couldn't ask for a better friend!  I love you, Abby!

 I went to her house for cake and ice cream!  Happy 33rd bday!  While there, she also tried to help me figure out a game I play where they give you 4 pictures, random letters, and you have to guess what the 4 pictures have in common.  Isn't she so smart?


I decided to go through some of my old scrapbooks and take pictures of pictures, so I apologize for the poor quality.

We had fun times in college.  We would occasionally go to the sand dunes and ride 4 wheelers and go camping.  Nothing bonds friends more than peeing in the bushes together.  For those of you who know the story of when I crashed on a 4 wheeler and had to go to the ER, this IS NOT the same 4 wheeling trip

In high school we were on the basketball team together.  When I was sophomore, Abby deemed me cool enough to sit in the back of the bus with her and the older crowd.  It was here that Abby would tease me by say things that she knew I didn't know the answers to and would laugh as I would try to figure it out.  We had another friend who was kind enough to always fill me in.  Abby, "You don't know what foreplay is?"  Me, "No...Stephanie, what does foreplay mean?"  Stephanie, "Abby!  Quit teasing Holly!" hahaha

Don't judge me.  Bangs were cool.

In college, Abby had a genius idea to try throwing the bowling ball while I was giving her a piggy back ride.  That didn't go over so well....

Another picture that was taken, and I'm sure she was behind the camera laughing at me trying to figure out her bridal shower gifts.

We did intramural basketball in college.  We always made it to the championship game but always lost to the same team.  They had a girl who played for SUU and she was like 6'5"....no matter how hard I tried guarding her, I was not meant to be a center and couldn't stop her enough to gain a victory.

At the time, I love the movie, Josie and and Pussycats, so Abby threw me a surprise birthday party and made pussycat ears for everyone to wear.  She made close to 40 pairs of ears for all those in attendance.  So thoughtful!

She had the most comfortable bed!  She, Matt, and I would spend hours each day just laying on her bed and talking or joking around.  Occasionally the elbow of death would come out to play.

She would always wear these black leather pants.  We called them her "hottie pants."

We also had a lot of fun nights on my hot pink skateboard!

 Abby loved Vegas!  We would go down there several times a year.  We would always joke that she would elope there....I, of course, would drive the carriage from the Chapel 'O Love!

Don't judge again...long socks were cool at the time

I would say our true bonding was when we both worked at Convergys together!  She made that job bearable.  She had the best stats, and we would joke it was because of her "do what I say" attitude.

She also wouldn't get jealous when me and her now husband would wrestle.  He would let me think I could win, and then BAM, I was down for the count!  He wrestled in High School, and I obviously did not.  Not really a fair match!

I was so happy for her when she found the love of her life!  Matt is an amazing guy for my amazing friend!  I love you guys!!