Stolen Flamingos

This is one of those family stories that we just laugh about. And no, it is not about me, it was my little sister Emily who did this.

My family went to Utah about every other summer for the longest time. One summer we went when I was eight or so and Emily was two (actually we don't really know, everyone thinks she was a different age). We were constantly in and out of the house. Kids were playing in the yard and there were a couple of adults outside. With all the chaos, nobody kept a close enough eye on Emily.

At one point Emily wandered off to the neighbors house. When she was younger she loved the colors pink and red (still true) quite excessively and wanted everything that was one of those colors. Well, the neighbors had a collection of pink flamingos taking residence in the yard. This did not go unnoticed by Emily. She simply walked into their front yard, and stole the flamingos so that our grandma could have them instead.

A few minutes later, someone noticed the strange happenings. Two year old Emily was pulling a flamingo out of the flowerbed and dragging it through the grass to a spot where she had hidden a couple other flamingos. This was pointed out to everyone else and we laughed because it was so strange. We quickly returned the flamingos and went our merry way. This was not the end of it. There were a few times she tried to retrieve the flamingos again but we already knew what she was up to and it didn't work.

Everyone remembered this story, except Emily as she was so young. Recently when it was brought up we laughed about her stealing flamingos and she was quick to accuse other people, namely our mom of stealing the flamingos. That added another dimension, which just made us laugh all the harder. Why she picked our mom to accuse I have no idea. She was two when she did it, and it was cute, not criminal.

Oh and because this is only slightly relevant (since it is about someone other than me) I will post it here. This is another thing that happened we all laugh about. On the first day of school (or the first day of seminary) one year, while Anna was getting ready for seminary she tumbled down the stairs (very normal in our family). It was very loud though, and I remember getting out of bed to look at the scene. Apparently she had latched onto one of the spindles while she fell, resulting in her breaking it. So basically, Anna broke the stairs.

Sometimes I Play Dress-up or Something Else Entirely

This always starts with me going to my grandma's house. Anna and I go each fourth Sunday for a family dinner with our extended family in South Jordan. Usually everyone talks for the whole time, but there are times when I wander and find the weird things around the house... And that also doesn't make sense because we always seem to find weirder and weirder things, why haven't we discovered them all?

If you can't tell from the pictures, I often create a lot of... laughter at family dinners. But that's okay right?

So without further ado, my weird collection of "dress-up" clothes, if you can even call it that....

September '09
Maleficent! Notice the weird flower print on the left, I didn't try it on at that point but you'll see later...

February '10
Weird sparkly dress with necklace that was indeed worn during the 80's. I wore this last Halloween as a 80's prom queen.

October '10
I am indeed wearing a little kids flamingo costume that was much too small, hence you only see the top half of my body and the head is not all the way on. Now, I'm not entirely sure why my family has a flamingo costume, nobody seems to remember who wore it.

There are also some hilarious pictures of Kara wearing this outfit here if you are friends with me on facebook, or maybe you can see anyways, I'm not sure. I'm not even sure if anyone else reads this!

October '10
Same day as the last, and this is the dress from before, and it is a little big and doesn't entirely fit. It was my grandma's dress in High School that she remade into a play dress for little kids, that we remade into a skirt for me!

 October '10
At least I think this was October. I definitely did not fit this outfit, I'm pretty sure I had to pull and tug just to get it over my calves. PS-the tights I'm wearing totally make this outfit.

January '11
Not exactly dress-up, but I specifically posed with this... slanket? Fake snuggie? Something, and it definitely looks weird!

August '11
Again, not dress-up but definitely worth putting up... This was a pair of maternity pants. Now these were huge even for maternity clothes, plus they were stretchy, so of course we decided to put it on! Yes maternity clothes are supposed to be made for two (awww) but I'm not thinking this was right...

It seems like every time we do weird things, they just get ever so much weirder. So maybe that means there will be more exciting (strange) pictures in the future.

It’s Tradition!

My extended family has a tradition of going to the restaurant Johnny Carinos every time we go to Utah. It kind of started because when my family lived in Texas we loved to go there but when we moved to Virginia we didn’t have any close by. There just happened to be one a few minutes away from where my grandparents lived so we could all meet up and go to lunch or dinner. It is really good because almost everyone in my family loves it, including the really picky cousins.

As it turns out, having around twenty people at one table to eat is really interesting. Don’t get me wrong, it is always fun but sometimes it doesn’t turn out as planned.

 One of the best things about Johnny Carinos is their bread. It is made at the restaurant and they have delicious olive oil with herbs and garlic in it to dip the bread in. When you have so many people, that bread goes FAST. They give us two or three baskets with a couple of small loaves at a time.  Basically as soon as the baskets touch the table they are emptied. Even when we have our dinner everyone still takes bread. I don’t know how many loaves we end up getting, but it turns out to be like thirteen or fourteen baskets. That means the adults end up eating almost one basket a piece, I know I eat that maybe even more, which is a whole lot of bread.

Another amazing thing about Johnny Carinos is their Italian sodas. They are delicious! They are mostly fruit flavors and they have cream at the top and are carbonated. They aren’t like orange or grape soda though; I think they have the actual fruit in it instead of a flavoring. I guess they are like cream sodas with the various flavors added or something like that.

We end up having multiple waiters to be able to cover the whole table to refill drinks, bring bread and grab anything else we need. One time these waiters were really on top of things. One came by and asked me if I needed a refill. One minute later a different waiter came by and asked the same question. I had said yes to the first, and yes to the second not realizing I would be brought a second refill I didn’t need yet. Instead of telling him my mistake, or just having an extra drink I made up a plan. As soon as the first came I drank it in like ten seconds flat. It was ridiculous, but I just wanted to avoid anything awkward. Anna, and my cousins watched me do this, and they too thought I was insane. As soon as the waiter came with my second refill all of us started giggling at him. Every time we go out to dinner there, Anna and I always remember this and start uncontrollably laughing. It’s not even hard to bring up this memory, all we have to say is “remember that one time at Johnny Carinos?” This experience just shows how I can turn anything normal into something ridiculous and completely laughable.

Two years ago when we went, it was pretty hilarious because my cousin Jayben brought in a suction cup and started putting it on people's foreheads. Luckily nobody had any permanent impressions on their heads from this but it was pretty funny. Another funny thing was some random creepy joke involving Clue. Anna, my cousins Tye and Brittany, and I kept giving each other secret signals of some sort. We kept doing weird eyebrow raising and staring until the person looked at us. At one point I wrote "Mrs. Peacock, the dining room, the knife" on a napkin and put it under Tye's plate. He saw me doing something weird but didn't know what, so after awhile I gave him another telling him to look under his plate. When he read it, he was pretty creeped out that I did that in the first place, and secondly that I had done it under his nose.

Jayben putting the suction cup on Brittany.

Sadly, nothing of interest happened last year that I can really remember. 

This past time, there was some random things that went on. Tye had a mad libs app on his phone and we did some before our food came. Now that was interesting. We had some crazy words going in there that sounded hilarious in the stories. There was something about a beautiful gordita (fat woman), and turning urine into blood that was somehow indistinguishable. Eww. Another interesting thing was Jayben sitting with Anna. Usually he can be contained, at least a little, but not that night. He was laughing up a storm and could not stop! He sat in Anna's lap giggling over absolutely nothing for ten minutes. Well, I think it might have been less than that, because we started tickling him. It was ridiculous how loud and crazy the scene was. Jayben was flailing and laughing and our whole table was chatting, which was too bad for all the people around us.

Maybe next time it will be even more crazy than it has been in the past.

Cat Wars

So I’m not talking about an actual cats, it’s a stuffed animal cat. But it’s not just a stuffed animal, this cat symbolizes a feud between me and my cousin Tye.

It’s a cat from McDonald’s when they were doing toys for the movie Babe. Somehow the cat from the movie translated to the ugliest stuffed cat that I have ever seen. It has a flat face, and you can barely even see the eyes or nose. It’s ridiculously weird looking. Plus the eyes are kind of lop sided.

Don't mind me on the side.

Well this feud started at McDonald’s, when we were four years old (how do I even still have it???). Tye had a little brother Trevor, and when kids are young, they shouldn’t play with small things because they are choking hazards. Tye originally got the cat with his toy, and I don’t even remember what I got but it was something less cool. My mom saw the cat as a choking hazard, plus I’m pretty sure I wanted that cat, so a trade was done. This was not what Tye wanted and was done against his will. I am not really sure why both of us really wanted the cat, did we not notice it looked like a mutant cat? We must have overlooked it to focus on the fact we were fighting over it and that each of us wanted it more.

Every time we get together, the cat is brought up at least once. It is a very interesting subject to talk about. Tye always claims that it is rightfully his. I say that it was given to me by our parents and it’s too bad because I have it regardless of what he says. For some reason the cat has survived many clean outs in spite of the fact that it is super ugly to look at, and despite the fact that I've had it for sixteen years.

When I was thirteen I remember that when our grandparents came to visit. The cat was of course brought up. I decided that I needed to send Tye blackmail pictures of the cat. My grandma helped me take pictures of the cat in various places, mostly on top of a safe I had for money. Then we sent the pictures in an email to Tye and I wrote a nefarious email about how evil I was for having the cat. Yes I was a cool thirteen year old. I don’t remember the response, but it boiled down to him saying “what the heck??”

The cat is still with me and I have it in college as my prize-winning trophy. I am sure that I will have this cat for years to come so the feud will continue on.