This is Halloween, This is Halloween! Halloween, Halloween...

That song has been stuck in my head all weekend, and I don't even know how the rest of it goes! I just keep singing the chorus over and over. Oh, that, and then Sean and I decided the next part is "in this town, we call home, everyone gets a Halloween bone!" Not sure what a Halloween bone is, but that is what they get. It sounds Halloweeny, right? Like, I picture everyone in the town getting a bone that is a piece of a skeleton and they have to put it together like a puzzle. Ooh, and then it comes to life when you put a hat on it! Frosty the Skeleton. And he dances around all claymation-like, all through the night and until the sun begins to come up, and then he collapses to the ground until next Halloween. Halloween bone. It's a good idea.

Well let's get started, shall we? I've just added a few photo highlights from this past week of Halloween celebrations. There are more on facebook, but let's be honest.. I'm super tired. So this is all I'm doin for now. So...

Halloween Event Number 1: "Murder Among the Mateys"


This last weekend my friend Michelle and I hosted a Pirate Murder Mystery party and it was pretty legit. Everyone looked awesome, and if I do say so myself, our apartment looked spectacular. There were candles everywhere, skulls, old silver dishes, cobwebs, a really old accordion, lace, a pirate flag, mugs, bottles, a wooden steering wheel, a sign for the tavern, pictures from the time period all burned and old looking...



I totally got these pictures off of Ancestry.com-- they're from the National Archives (in DC) so you know they're authentic.

Anyway, here we are as Commodore Clearing and Thumbless Jackie:



(Except in this photo I have thumbs... I was wearing gloves for some of the night with the thumb part of the glove tucked in so I would appear thumbless but... it was pretty frustrating so I took them off quite frequently.)

And here is everybody!


It was a great night. Now, on to last Friday at work-- first of all, I've worked at Ancestry.com for four Halloweens now. It was a pretty big deal the first year (each department decorates their area for the little trick or treaters), but it keeps getting bigger each year. It is so fun, I love it. Anyway, our department did UP and it was super cute!

Here I am, as a Wilderness Explorer, with my good friend Kevin.



And here we are with the floating house and Doug, while doing the Wilderness Explorer motto: "The Wilderness must be explored! Caw-Caw! Roar!" They don't announce the winner of the department decorating contest til Monday, but I think ours should definitely win the cutest category...


Alright, and finally Saturday night-- pumpkin carving! My family gets WAY into pumpkin carving. Simple jack-o-lanterns are unacceptable. Unfortunately Sean and I got there a little later than we wanted so we had to improvise, but I like what we came up with. He made this way cute owl, and I made.... drumroll please... a goblin from Troll 2!!! I love it so much!! For those of you who have never seen it, PLEASE do! It's been voted the best worst movie of all time. Last I checked it's free on Hulu, so you have no excuse. Really, you can thank me later.

But yes, back to the picture, this is us and our pumpkins. Oh, and wearing our dinosaur costumes. (We are dinosaurs dressed up like humans.)



And just for your viewing pleasure, here is a closeup of my masterpiece, complete with hair and a goblin's favorite food-- part plant, part human!


So in closing, even though Utah Halloween was last night, since there's still technically 10 minutes left... Happy Halloween!

Passive Aggressive

I don't like confrontation. I genuinely try to like everyone, and I don't have many enemies... I like to think... maybe I do but they themselves are so passive aggressive that I would never know it?!? But anyway, despite my attempt to love everyone... I'm only human. And people are insanely frustrating sometimes!!

Anyway, because of my peace-loving, confrontation-less ideals... every now and again I might do something a little passive agressive. Today would be one of those days.


I'm not going to go into details or anything, (because I might've done it to YOU! Hahaha! But no, just kidding, it wasn't to anyone who reads this...) but in light of these recent events, I thought I would share a video. Enjoy.

Important Things with Demetri Martin
Games - Passive Aggressive Race
www.comedycentral.com
Nick Swardson's Pretend Time Big Lake Ugly Americans New Episodes

Primary Lessons

Kids are the greatest.

I have now been in primary for about 6 weeks and I have loved every minute of it. I don't know why, but I definitely underestimated how strong the spirit would be with those little tykes. Oh my goodness, every time they sing they sound like little angels. And holy cow, they are sooo smart! Just such good kids.

The first month I was just helping out with the little three-year-old sunbeams. So adorable. And so loving. The first day they were already giving me hugs and wanting to sit on my lap and the little girls were telling me they liked my hair and my necklace. Sure, they were wiggly, but ALL of them wanted to say the prayer, or hold up the picture, or talk about Jesus. Just really good kids. The other teachers, quite older than me, would reprimand them quite often for not being reverent, (Tyson, the youngest, had THE hardest time staying in his chair... and keeping his pants pulled up...) but I wasn't very good at that. I even kind of got one of the little girls in trouble once because she was telling me about playing at her cousins house during the lesson. Woops...

Then I got my official calling as a co-teacher for the 8-9 year olds a couple weeks ago, and these kids... wow, I have just been nothing but impressed. So smart! And just such good kids. They actually want to participate, and we've had some really good discussions. Today I taught for the first time and was a little nervous about how it would go and... I really shouldn't have been. It went so smoothly. It was a really great Sunday.

Sean theorizes that I got put in this calling so that we would want to have kids asap, and I can't say that it isn't working...

Ok, I shouldn't tease my family like that. It'll still be just a little bit til we get to that stage. But all I'm saying is-- I'm dang excited for when we get to that point.

A Blog from Memory Lane

So, remember that thing called myspace?? Ya know, used to be big like six years ago? Then facebook came along and punched it in the face? And then the only way it could fight back was to become super trashy? Which only attracted maybe 2% of the population, and then encouraged the rest of us to get off of there and away from those people as fast as we could?

Maybe that's just my experience.

Well the other day I was remembering that I blogged all about this funny beauty pageant in Washington on my myspace blog, and I was like, "shoot! I wonder if I can even still log onto there?"

So today, I finally remembered to look into it, and four password attempts later, I made it in. Looks like I still have a myspace account! And more importantly, looks like I still have my myspace blog!

Reading it was such a huge blast from the past, and I have to give myself credit-- it's way funny! And even a little deep at times... Well, that could just be my biased opinion, but if you'd like to judge for yourself:

http://www.myspace.com/tishybelle/blog

Please especially read "Carbonation is bad for you" (which seems to be a recurring lesson in my life). It is me, late at night, wide awake due to a Red Bull intoxication. Hillarity ensues.


Well, in the words of my 2006 self,

"Give my regards to Broadway,
Tiff"



p.s. And no comments about my chubby face please! Some of those pictures are from the post-Disneyworld/Freshman 15 phase of my life which luckily only lasted about six months, and that was long enough... you might even be able to notice that a few of my friends were slightly suffering from it as well... haha, at least we could all commiserate.


*** Update: Sorry, I didn't realize that link wasn't working... it should work now. I think.

Anaheim Livin’

So about a month and a half ago, my family was getting ready to take a vacation in sunny California. Only… we hadn’t exactly figured out what it was we were going to do while we were there.  Being the planning-oriented person that I am (I can’t help it!), I called a family meeting where we discussed possible options (complete with a full presentation via a laptop hooked up to our tv) and then each person wrote down a list of what they were wanting to do.

This, of course, brought out the comedians in my brothers and sisters. And Sean. Sean, in lieu of writing a list, drew pictures of what he wanted to do. If I remember right, he only drew a picture of a sandwich (for Earl of Sandwich), him at the beach, and then a picture of a piece of  pizza. Have I mentioned that Sean loves pizza? A quote from last night, as he was taking a pizza out of the oven, “I love pizza!! I could eat pizza every day. Seriously. As long as it was a different pizza, I really could.”

One of my favorite responses though came from my 21 year old brother Adam. His number one thing he wanted to do? “Anaheim Livin’”.  He is such a dork. But you know what? We did it. We Anaheim-Lived-it-up. To see what other items made it to the list, continue on.

 

EARL OF SANDWICH!!! I can not explain to you how much I love this place. If I could get the funding, I would open a franchise here in Utah and become a billionaire.

My family’s first experience with Earl. (Sorry Emily, guess you didn’t quite make the cut for this photo.)

 

I’m sorry for including this Amy… but I love this picture.  

The Griffith Observatory! Highlights include: the Aurora Borealis show in their really nice planetarium, looking at real-time solar flares through a special lens, seeing and touching real meteorites, and then looking at Venus through their huge telescope (behind us in this picture).

Waiting in line there was a worker answering questions. Sean asked a question about why the moon doesn’t rotate and we always see the same side of it (a fact I did not previously know). After the worker explained it (I don’t really remember what he said), Sean said, “Huh… weird.” To which the worker replied, with a very smug smile, “It’s not weird, it’s physics.” It quickly became evident that this guy had a catch phrase, and we had stumbled right into it.  We heard him say it probably four more times to other questioners (“huh, that’s crazy..” “It’s not crazy, it’s physics”), and he got more and more smug each time he said it. Psh, scientists. Here is Sean looking at Venus through the telescope.

 

Balboa Island for frozen bananas. Yes, inspired by Arrested Development. Huge hit, and soooo good. Ten cents gets ya nuts!

 

Hanging out at Laguna Beach!

The Siblings.

Six Flags! Okay, they have seriously upped their game since the last time I was here. Tatsu? Possibly my new favorite non-Disney rollercoaster. (Disney rides get their own category.) You are on your stomach! And it feels like you’re flying!

This is me doing a classic jazz hands pose, paying homage to dance tours growing up. This is where we would always do our shows at Six Flags. On this burning black top.  Man… it was hot.

We went on an adventure to find the infamous Fudgie the Whale ice cream cake. After a two hour drive to Pasadena and back, we were the proud owners of a slightly-melted Fudgie of our own. He was delicious.

 

But, probably the best part of the vacation were the pool parties!

 

The end of our synchronized swimming routine.

 

Um, do you see what I am doing here? I am jumping into the DEEP end. 

 

Face-down floating made it on the list of things to do. This is a long story.

 

And here we are face-up floating.

 

Night swimming was delightful.

 

All in all, it was a beautiful and very relaxing vacation. The house we rented was awesome, and having our own pool in the backyard was awesome. And the biggest news? I can swim! I got over my fear of swimming!  Anyone who knows me knows how pathetic I am, scratch that, how pathetic I was, when I was trying to swim. Sean describes me as looking like a drowning cat.  Really, such a huge phobia.

But now? I can swim! Well, not amazingly or anything, but enough that I can not die!  Such a huge development.

Another new development? I tried ketchup again for the first time in probably ten years and… I didn’t hate it. I still hate the smell (it reminds me of, well, a down syndrome girl that I went to school with who would dip her hamburgers into huge piles of ketchup.. is that mean?), but it actually really helps out french fries when they’re a little bit dry.  Who knew.

So I can swim, and I can eat ketchup- who am I?!?

 

Well, there you have it, our vacation in a not-so-small nutshell. Nothing but us just, you know, Anaheim Livin’. That’s just how we do.

A Pretty Picture

See? I told you it was pretty. I tried to tell you, but you didn’t believe me.

I’m mostly just trying out this new Windows Live Writer I was tipped off about (thanks Jeni!) and these are the only pictures I have on this computer at the moment.

So, here are some more pretty pictures. Did you know you can make a photo album? Well, neither did I. But it looks like you can. Let’s check it out.

View Full Album

Picture Assault!

So we finally transferred pictures onto the computer so I thought I'd go ahead and smack some onto this here blog. Hold on to your hats and glasses....

Thomas Family Reunion, June 2010. Went real golfing for the second time ever.
Luckily we were playing team golf/using the best ball, so I didn't hinder our team (Me, Sean, and my brothers Adam & Andrew) too much. Andrew and Sean pretty much carried us though.

After that we went to my grandparents property up Nephi Canyon and....


...there were guns.

I'm a regular sharpshooter. No, really. I even impressed my grandpa.

Oh, and I can't forget...

... the duck races. Turns out Sean is a champion duck racer. See? He even has a trophy.

Probably because he is so "full of hot air" (that joke got made a lot.)
Lucky for me, I was also a winner, because I guessed how many tootsie rolls were in the jar.
And yes, that is where the tootsie jar from my previous post came from.


Hiking to Stewart Falls with Sierra & Brett. Sean and Brett decided to try and scale the cliffs above the falls to try and get to the very top, only they took off without telling me or Sierra that that was the plan. An hour after wondering where they were, and shivering like crazy as the sun was going down, they came back to inform us that they were super close to reaching the top, but for fear of dying from unsafe hand and footholds, they gave up. Boys.

Sean working on his jeep, getting it fixed up real nice before selling it. Here he is tightening the tie rod ends and putting on a new control arm... or something like that. He's become quite the mechanic lately. It's pretty attractive.

Fourth of July! Outside the Stadium of Fire to watch the fireworks with my family, a huge bag of popcorn (my sister works at Wynnsong and brought a huge bag of leftovers from the night before) and so many glowsticks.


So many glowsticks, in fact, that Sean made a glowing neon ball. (I told him he looked cool leaning against the car like that, so he needed to make a cool face for this picture.)

It then transformed into this. We decided it looks like a knight's helmet, so I call this photo "Soccer Knight from the Future".


Sean then let me wear it on the drive home. Which went slow, due to the
inevitable Fourth-of-July Traffic. My window happened to be down, and I received many compliments.

Tennis Photo Shoot with Dana. The last time we played before she moved to Maine. She taught me everything I know about tennis.

Probably at some point in every game we played one of us would use our racket and pretend it was a machine gun. Not sure how it started, but it proves to be very intimidating for your opponent. So we had to take a picture in remembrance of this pose.
Sad... I can't believe they're really gone.

Well doggone it, if this hasn't taken an eternity to upload all these darn pictures! (Sorry, not sure why I keep slippin into hick talk...maybe all the gun-shooting rekindled my inner cowgirl?) What's frustrating is I haven't even gotten to our trip to California, which is the whole reason I started this post... but I've got to give it a rest. Got laundry to do, clothes to fold, and even more laundry to do and clothes to fold. (We've been really busy and, um, kind of let things get out of hand.)

So look forward to Picture Assault 2: Cruise Control!