Despite the time stamps on the first few pictures, a trip to Rocky Point, Mexico is how I began 2006. You have to cut me a break on the time stamp thing, my camera intelligence was far from being grade "A." I know it wasn't 2005 though, because in January of 2005 I was a couple thousand miles from rocky point singing negro spirituals with my mission companion in Georgia.
The trip to Rocky Point was everything I expected and more. Plenty of fireworks, clean beaches, filthy streets, and hundrerds of mexicans selling t-shirts with American cuss words printed on them, and arranged in ways that only a drunk person could find humorous, much less have the desire to purchase.
This first picture is of me, Devin, and Daniel, 2 of the friendliest gringos in all of Mexico. They happen to be a couple of my best friends too, and Daniel's family happens to be the one's who invited me their beach house pictured below. Daniel's family, (the Dawson's) are to this day some of the all-around greatest people I know, and If I ever ran away from home - wait I'm 25 and my parent's want me out anyways - but 10 years ago, if I ran away from home, I'd head straight for their place. In fact, I'm pretty sure I planned something like that at one point.
This picture is worth one word... "DYNO-MIIIITE!" Well, one word if you happen to be one of the thousands of people that buy fireworks from the guy in the picture below. He's a pretty well known fireworks vendor in Rocky Point and I must say, he's quite the word-of-mouth advertising specialists as well. He basically stands on a corner, totally wasted, and screams the only 2 english words he knows, besides "cash only." Which are, "HEY," and "DYNO-MIIIITE" Dynomite happened to be the name for everything he sold that went "boom" so negotiating with this dude was a bit tough. However, as far as being a salesman, he must be doing something right because between me, Daniel, and Devin, I'm pretty sure we fed his family for three months in exchange for about 30 roman candles and a couple pieces of "dynomite" that in my best estimation could have easily blown up a microwave!
This picture is a good example of why you should never pose with street art in Mexico. Or just a good example of why "I" should never pose with street art in Mexico. Especially a gorilla made out of what appears to be popsicle sticks. I mean seriously... look at how uncomfortable I look. Like, how do you take a picture with this thing and make it look normal. I thought about jumping up on the gorilla for a more exciting picture but then I envisioned 25 mexicans beating me down when the thing collapsed under my body weight. Anywyas, I thought it was worth posting for that reason alone.
February brought a trip to the happiest place on Earth... DISNEYLAND! With the exception of my brother Clint, who was working, and my brother Russ, who was serving his mission in guatemala, we managed to round up the entire family for a 3 day Disney adventure.
My nephew Ryland attempting his best "E.T. phone home" pose.
Alright so look, I'm not gonna stand here and argue whether or not Disneyland really is, "The happiest place on Earth," but I'll let the next 2 pictures speak for themselves. Realistically though, where else can you jump on a ride all by yourself 10 minutes before the park closes, and have a snapshot like the one below show up on the monitor as you're leaving! I felt like I was 10 years old again! I didn't need anyone else to make me happy! Disneyland freekin RULED!
The more I look at this picture the more I am convinced that the dude behind me forgot the point of the game was to shoot the aliens on the wall and not the back of my head.
Going back to Disneyland being "the happiest place on Earth," this snapshot of my nephew Colton, after peeing his pants, could very easily support that claim. Let me explain. Apparently Colton was so happy about the parade that was gonna roll down Mainstreet just before Disneyland closed, that he debated in his head, "I could pee my pants and keep my front row seat to see Mickey... Or, ask mom to take me to the bathroom and risk missing as much as 2 minutes of the parade." Apparently the risk of potentially missing the parade was too much so he just let it go. What a picture this will be down the road, perhaps at his wedding!
I've got nothing for this picture, simply nothing.
My sister Amy, with my nephew Ryland. I told y'all, "the Happiest place on Earth"
The 2 pictures below were taken after returning home from one of my "roughest" days ever at work. I was with one of my bosses painting handicapped logo's in the parking lot of a grocery store. It was a seemingly simple task that I had completed plenty of times by myself, and I wish I could blame what happened on my boss attempting to do "my job" or something creative like that, but it was all me. I was cleaning out the yellow paint from the paint sprayer and it clogged up on me. I thought, "oh, no big deal, I'll just clean the tip out with a razor and I'll be back in business." I'm not sure if I was suffeing from too much exposure to the sun that day or what, but for some reason I pointed the handle of the paint sprayer at my face while I cleaned out the tip. Suddenly my hand twitched and I pulled the trigger. The paint plastered me in the side of the face and I screamed, "SH*T" way louder than I should have. My boss turned around and as far as I can remember in a very melow tone said, "well that's not good." But the worse was yet to come as I turned to my right I noticed that the paint had not only blasted me in the side of the face but a majority of it had traveled well beyond my face and had basically rained down on a freshly detailed SUV about 5 feet behind me. NOT GOOD! My boss and I frantically tried to wipe the paint off before it began to dry! As we were doing so I couldn't help but stereotypically picture a 300 lb black man being the owner of such a sweet ride. As well as picturing said owner coming out of the grocery store and upon seeing the 3,000 bright yellow poka-dots caking his black SUV, pulling out a gun and shooting me. Instead, and much to my pleasure, who came out of the grocery store and witnessed the damage to their car was an incredibly understanding woman with a little baby. She was very sympathetic and sat in her car, with the AC cranked to appease her child, for nearly 20 minutes while we finished cleaning her car. Then right before we left I managed to spill a huge bucket of white paint in the parking lot. It took about 20 minutes to clean up and managed to get all over me as the 2nd picture clearly illustrates. THEN, as if you thought this story was over, I finally left and as I was merging onto the freeway there was a motorcycle cop in my blindspot and I didn't notice him until I was already in the lane. I definitely almost ran him over! He flickered his lights behind me and then pulled directly along side my window. I took one quick look over at him and then kept my eyes forward. My best guess as to what happened next is the officer, upon seeing the perfect mixture of utter fear and depression blending with the bright yellow paint on my face, decided to move on rather than pull me over. Hallalujah!
One of my favorite midget road trips to take while going to school in Idaho was the half hour drive to Mesa Falls. It helped me forget about everything I hated about school! Here's a couple pictures of a trip I took with some friends to Upper Mesa Falls. Always a good time!
I realized I promised y'all a story about the funniest halloween of my life but I just don't think writing this story will do it any justice, so I'm going to kep it very brief! I was Stay Puft the Marshmallow Man for Halloween. For all you noobs out there who have never seen Ghostbusters, I was not the Michelin Tire Man or the freekin Pillsbury Doughboy. But that's not what's important about the story, because the people I almsot had to fight were well aware that I was the Marshmallow Man.It basically went down like this: I had just left a dance party on Halloween night and was walking home, which was difficult to do in my huge costume (see below). Well, out of nowhere from the rolled down window's of a small SUV in a basically empty parking lot I hear, "Hey little marshmallow bit**" At first I couldn't help but laugh, I thought it was genuinely funny! Then they started their car and began driving out of the parking lot towards me. They stopped suddenly as I turned and faced them and threw my hands in the air - as high as I could anyways, they were slightly hindered by my costume. Anyways, long story short, (you had to be there to truly get the humor out of this situation) I basically spent the next 60 seconds challenging any one of them to get out of the car and fight me. The way I saw it, with all that padding I had on, the only part of me they could damage was my face, so I knew I stood a pretty good chance. After all, even if they all came at me at once, I would have covered my face with both hands, run at them, and started kicking my size 13's around in hopes of hitting a few fools in the crotch. You have to understand, my adrenaline was going full force. It was one of those "flee or fight" situations and I wasn't about to flee. I was freekin Stay Puft the Marshmalow Man! HA HA! Anyways... none of them were man enough to get out of the car, so instead they continued to shout obscenities at me as I walked down the street.
Here's me getting the costume on. By the way I borrowed a pair of sweat pants and wore my own shoes, but I made the rest of the costume myself.
A couple pictures of the finished product!
Every fall the leaves around the Teton Mountain Range change colors. Unfortunately it only last about 2 weeks. I remember vowing to go on a photo excursion on a particular Sunday after church. I'm so glad I did! Here's some pictures from that day! These are the kinds of things I miss when I'm home in Arizona!
I like to call this first one my "Jesus calendar" photo.
The Teton Valley!
A field near Driggs, Idaho
I walked down a dirt road near the base of the Teton's to enjoy the view and ended up running into a girl that lived on that road. I got my flirt on with the girl in her front yard and managed to get her to take a picture of me, but to be honest I'm pretty sure she was wierded out by my obsession with the whole leaves changing colors and the beauty of the mountains thing. I guess she didn't know what she was missing. I'd give my left hand for a front yard view like this one!
Like I said above, the leaves only change colors for a few weeks and then it was fun times in the snow until I'd go home before Christmas. Here's some pics of me having a great time in the snow up near the tetons!
I wrapped up 2006 around 7pm with my nephews, because they wouldn't have made it until midnight! Here's a few pics of me hitting the peace pipe and what not with my nephew Ryland. At least you would have thought it was the peace pipe from the expression on my face.
Thus it ends... on to 2009! That's right..... I'd rather give you updates than yearly reviews so I'm skipping 2007 and 2008. I'm sure '05 and '06 were plenty to read as it was. Hopefully I will see you sooner than later and on a much more frequent basis in 2009! WAIT! I know I said I would say something about my ex-girlfriend Sami and it's only fair that I do! We started dating in October of 2006 and we broke up around December of that year. Neither of us were sure if we could handle the long distance thing during the winter semester. Especially considering every time I'd tried it in the past the girl had had cheated on me. We ended up back together in April and to make a long story short we ended up breaking up around October of 2007. It's probably not appropriate or logical to say things about your ex-girlfriend on a blog post but I'd feel bad not giving her credit where credit is due. Despite the fact that things didn't work out between us I can gladly say she never cheated on me, and by default, never married the guy she cheated on me with. We are still friends, and she is still, to this day, one of the sweetest, most genuine, most caring girls in the world! Right up there with my my mom and her mom!And THAT concludes the post! I will vow to keep future post shorter but it's hard when I enjoy writing stories so much!
