The Plus Sides of Owning Old Vehicles

5. People hardly ever break into your car and/or try to steal it.

4. You can cause a parking lot accident and not care about the damage to your own vehicle.

3. You can play that one game where you try to crank the handle reeeeally smoothly so it looks like you have power windows.

2. You can play that one game where you try to find a worse car in the parking lot and if you can’t, you win (I win often).

1. When someone’s alarm is going off, you never have to wonder if it’s yours.

Miscellany and Catch-up

One of my favorite things we've ever done.


Darcy and Lianna came to visit a couple of months ago! Ignore my errant bra strap in the following movie:

A still from that Vine. PEARL'S FACE.

Festive for the 4th of July. Activities included the Sweet Family Traditional Annual Kentucky Fried Chicken Dinner, sparklers, and fireworks with our friends Eric and Cara, followed directly by Penny becoming violently ill at their house (sorry again, guys!). She was sick for A WEEK and it was awful and I cried at the vet.

This was her home for 6 days. Poor little lamb.

These are the two pages of notes Jon created for me to show the vet. Skip all the graphic details about her bloody diarrhea and read the final bit I highlighted. I love Jon.

Someone left this note on our 1990 Mazda Protege when we were housesitting for my aunt and uncle. They live in a super nice neighborhood, so when we got back from our hike and noticed a scrap of paper on the windshield I was fully expecting it to be a complaint from a neighbor. This is what the Maz looks like:

I guess Anthony had $20 burning a hole in his pocket and he thought, "Hey! Maybe I can buy a car with this!"

I love this conversation I had with Annie about a picture she took of a sign at the dog park:

 

Another one of my favorite things Jon and I have ever done.


Here is a thing I tweeted on August 8th.

Then, on August 30th when I was at Christa's parents' house the night before her wedding, she pulled this same exact newspaper clipping out to show me, knowing how delighted I'd be. And this is why she and I are friends, exemplified.

omg so cute.

kthxbai

PROOF

A while back I wrote a post called “When Mutual Goes Wrong” detailing the most terrifically bad youth activities I was ever unfortunate enough to attend. The crowning jewel of my collection was an activity so bizarre and downright creepy that I had to confirm with Christa prior to posting that I hadn’t dreamed the whole thing up…the Temple-Clothing-Clad Foot Massage, when our leaders and moms wore their temple dresses and rubbed our feet in a dimmed room.

Lianna hadn’t seen that blog post, so she was not anticipating the sounds that came out of me when she unearthed the following photo of the two of us.



Steel yourself, then scroll down.

CHRISTA GOT MARRIED!!!!!!!!!

Jon and I drove up to Gardnerville, Nevada this past weekend for my best friend Christa's wedding. I try to keep the cheese to a minimum on this blog because I'm really not a gushy, emotional sort of person, but it was one of the happiest weekends of my entire life. As I put it in an email to my sister Corinne, "So so so amazing. I've never seen Christa like that - so happy and radiant...She was just glowing and happy and beautiful and it made me want to cry the entire time...And the reception was so freaking fun. I saw almost everyone I would have ever wanted to see and avoided everyone I was dreading seeing. Ate good food, danced, laughed until I almost peed. Basically it was an entire weekend of just feeling loved, and having so much love for everyone around me that I felt like I would explode."

So much for not being cheesy!

Pictures!

On the drive between Phoenix and Vegas, where we stopped at Darcy and Lianna's for a night.

 

I will never stop laughing.

 

We dug through Lianna's old pictures and found some gems. Me at Girl's Camp.

Michelle, Christa, my eyes. There's another one we found that made me start screaming uncontrollably. It's reserved for a future blog post. (You will die.)

 

The drive between Vegas and Reno is the saddest stretch of road I've ever seen. Brothels, barren landscape, and a garbage town every 100 miles. We had no choice but to stop at this alien center to pee, and I didn't realize until I walked in the front door that it's internally connected to that pink whorehouse out back. On our return trip the words "Good, cuz I don't wanna have to stop at the alien whorehouse again" were uttered. Quote of the trip.

 

My old house!

 

The Yosemite fire is blanketing the entire Carson area in smoke, hence the haziness of the above photo. The night before the wedding, Jon was complaining to Christa's dad that we couldn't hardly even see the mountains. George replied, "Give it ten minutes." Ten minutes later...

 

Everyone said it was the first time they'd seen blue sky in 12 days.

 

Barbecue in Minden Park the night before the wedding.

 

Love her.

 

We got a sneak peek of the reception hall that night. It was Christa's first viewing, as well. I love this picture of her joyfully taking it all in.

The morning of the wedding. Thanks for the clear conditions and blue skies, George (and Jesus)! The very next morning, the smoke returned.

 

Okay, photo overload ahead.

The reaction of the groom's mom, niece, and nephew to the far right of this picture made me tear up when I noticed it.

 



 



Immediately calling out for her little sister, who wasn't in the temple for the ceremony.

Locating Emily.

 

I threatened the entire weekend to steal that little redheaded girl.

Favorite. Look at her dad in the temple doorway.

 

 

Classic Christa (luncheon directly after the ceremony)

 

At the reception

 

Old friends

 

First dance, serenaded by her dad

 

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Garrett and Christa, the happy couple



"Now take a candid picture of us dancing!"

 

 

 

Then it was over :( We stopped in Vegas again on our way back. Jon playing dolls with Pearl. (Notice something on the wall?)

The end.

Crochet Bunting - Free Pattern!

I sure know how to pick the patterns, huh? So far pretty much every one I've found for free online that I've tried has had issues. This is my heavily modified version of this mistake-riddled pattern. In addition to fixing the issues, simplifying it, and adding much needed clarification, I also switched the terminology from UK to US terms and created my own version of the final image (one you can actually read).

I made this as a gift, btw. Hot pink buntings don't really match my decor. It will be much cuter in its future home (update: HERE) than mine!

ch = chain
ch sp = chain space
ss = slip stitch
sc = single crochet
dc = double crochet

--------------------------------------

Use whatever hook corresponds with your yarn.

Create magic ring.

Round 1: Into ring work 3ch (stands as 1st dc), 2dc, 3ch, 3dc, 3ch, 3dc, 3ch (to create three petals). Ss into top of starting ch. Fasten off, tighten magic ring.

Round 2: Join next color in any ch sp, work 2 ch (stands as 1st dc) 3dc, 2ch, 3dc. In next ch sp work 3dc, 2ch, 4dc. In last ch sp work 4dc, 2ch, 4 dc. Join with ss into top of starting ch. Fasten off.

Use stitch marker to mark the top (the cluster of 4dc 2ch 4dc is the bottom)

Round 3: Join next color in top right corner and work 2ch, (stands as 1st dc) 2dc, 2ch, 4dc. In the space top center 3dc, in top left corner 3dc, 2ch, 4dc. In side space, 4dc. In bottom point 4dc, 2ch, 4dc. In side space 4dc, then ss into top of starting ch. Fasten off.

Round 4: Join your starting color and work 1 round sc with 3sc in each corner. Fasten off.  Weave in ends.

Join the flags with ch and ss. I did 6 chains between each flag and 40 at each end.

Texts out of Context: Episode XIV

[Explanation and archive here. Also, I want to foster an environment of text-out-of-context sharing in the comments of these posts. I know you've got some good ones.]

Kyle told me I looked like Jesus with bangs so I went for it.

Guess what I’m eating. A raw tortilla, that’s what.

Friends that have ablations together stay together!

I must be getting used to stupid names. I wasn’t as outraged as I thought I’d be.

It’ll be the highlight of my day! Duhfcourse I will!

Remember that time you thought there was a bat in my car?

Lots of withers. Probably a good number of beans, too.

Watching PBS kids’ show and there was a girl name Ruby…then they showed her name spelled out… R-U-B-E-Y-E. Like rub your eye/ribeye steak.

Ewwww. It’s not just the ugly clothes it’s how it’s sitting there all weird like an oozing pile or something.

I love it when you text swear! Or real swear.

Once I was gazing whilst floating

I keep wanting to get a kitten just so I can name it All-Ball.

[My husband] actually just said “Urethra Franklin”

Last night there was a giant fly and it somehow got trapped between my middle and ring fingers without me noticing, and the only way I noticed was cuz I opened my fingers and he fell out onto the couch.

Whorer movie

If by relieving you mean have I gone to the bathroom? Yes, yes I have.

 

[My husband] looking in the mirror “Man! My legs are so awesome!”

Names in the paper today. Autym and Chism.

Glad I sent that to you and not my employer or anything…

I had brussel sprouts at sweetie’s last night. NOMG. (That’s a cross between omg and nom. I invented it.)

Oh dear. He must have at least experimented…

a complete orange INSIDE of another! [my husband] wouldn’t let me keep it.

Hahaha penny is so licky.

Uh, five inches…but it’s thick.

I didn’t miss my kids even once. True story.

Why do I always get the genetically mutated fruit?!

Two words: BABY MEERKATS

I had nightmares all last night about toilets flooding.

Haha some kid at the dog park was like “is that a deer?!”

Oh my fballs! You got diagnosed with herpes?! Hahahahhahahahahaha

Here’s to hoping we keep in touch with her so we don’t have to file a missing persons report like that time we thought she was dead in Mexico!