Things I didn't realize were weird till I left the house.

This is me.

As you can see, I'm a pretty normal person.  And because of this, I assumed that everything I did in my childhood was ordinary too. 

Well, I was wrong.  I was unusual--correction, my family was/is unusual.  And as much as I like to claim that being normal is boring, I can't deny that many of the things I did as a child were plain weird. 

First of all, I grew up calling grilled cheese "cheese toasties," Grape Nuts "Crunchies," camisoles "strapies," and inarizushi "pillows."

In case you didn't know, this is inarizushi.  A really cute version.

Why did we call all these things by different names?  I don't know.  But I do know that all my friends gave me crap for it.  It's not my fault my family brainwashed me!

So we called things by different names.  No big deal.  But the farther I go into the recesses of my memories, the more bizarre things get.  I can vaguely remember following my dad/mom while they mowed the lawn.  I would literally walk behind them as they cut the grass.  Can you think of a more boring thing for a child to do?  I guess we were dying for attention.

Actually, I think we were dying for human interaction in general.  We were homeschooled, so we didn't get out much.  Whenever some repair man would come to the house to work on something, Jenai and I would just sit near them and watch.  It didn't matter if the stranger was working on the furnace, the sink, or installing a wall -- we would just sit there and stare.  Who does that?? Back then, I thought everyone did, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

I might as well continue along with the whole homeschooling factor and talk about the library.  We loved the library.  And books.  And being nerdy. The highlight of our week was going to the library.  Actually, I think we went twice a week...anyway we would spend a good amount of time there and check out three bags of books.  Of course, many of them were picture books, but three bags is a lot.  I remember listening to another mom tell her kids that they could only pick two books each and I thought, "Two books?  Who checks out only two books?"  Normal people.  Once we got home we would sit down on our couch and read for the next couple hours.  We were homeschooled -- we did what we wanted.

Now that I'm all grown up I got a dinosaur library card.

My family was pretty frugal when we were younger.  I've mentioned this in a previous post, but I didn't even know the name for McDonald's or a french fry because we hardly ate out.  (Actually, I thought McDonald's was called Bowling Green because the only time we ate there was when we stopped in a town called Bowling Green on the way to my grandparents' house).  If McDonald's was a treat, then an actual sit-down restaurant was a really big treat.  (I was hoping that last sentence would have been more eloquent).  Anyway, since we hardly ate out, Jenai and I decided to save up our weekly allowance to treat our family to dinner at Ponderosa.  Hey, buffets are classy.  I was still like five or something and only earned a dollar a week, so Jenai ended up paying for most of the meal.  Now that I think about it, we must've been pretty adorable surprising our parents to a free meal at Ponderosa.  But still so strange.

We didn't eat out much, and we didn't buy lots of the kinds of foods that our friends' parents bought either.  Sugar cereal was basically a delicacy and if we ever got it as a special treat we ate it all in one day.  One of the best things about sleeping over at a friend's house was pigging out on their sugar cereal the next morning.  Oh, and watching Spongebob on their cable.  Obviously we didn't have cable either.

Since my mom didn't buy certain foods, we had to buy them ourselves if we wanted them.  Every once in awhile we'd buy canned whipped cream and spray it straight in our mouths.  It wasn't gross, it was awesome.  Also, when Lily was around five, she bought American cheese (something my mom has never purchased) for herself.  If any of us wanted some of her synthetic cheese Lily would charge us ten cents a slice.  She was actually making a profit with that system.

I think I'm gonna end here, so you don't think my family is totally whack.  I asked Jenai for more ideas about how our family was weird growing up and she sent me NINE different texts with multiple examples in them.  Yeah, I think I'll end here.  Every family has their weird quirks, some more than others...

Like I said -- normal is boring.

AMURCA

Now that it's been a full week since the Fourth of July I thought I should get off my lazy butt and be proactive.  Except I write sitting down, and I'm not sure if blogging is proactive.

Ha jokes are funny. 

Ok, so I consider myself a pretty legit BYU student now.  I've been here for a couple of years and I'm used to the whole mormon student environment, but this is the first summer I stayed in Utah.  Which means I got to experience Independence Day in good ole' Provo.

I started off the holiday with the Provo Fourth of July parade which is supposed to be a big deal or something.  People were starting to claim their spots by the road at noon the day before.  Let me repeat, THE DAY BEFORE.  People love an excuse to camp out on the streets.  You can joke all you want, but Mormons have to be pretty crazy to voluntarily sleep on cement--while sober.

So yeah, we didn't camp out, but we left around 7:30am.

Look how happy we are.

The parade was pretty cool...I guess.  There were a lot of high school bands which is cool...I guess.  Oh gosh, but the girls who twirl those flags had gosh-awful uniforms.  Normally their uniforms are hideous like this:

If band kids wonder why we make fun of them, this is just one reason. 

Yeah, so those are bad, but for some reason Utahns think that in order to be modestly dressed, they have to be ugly.  Or in this case, uglier.  All these poor girls were decked out in like leggings and long dresses while they twirled their flags.  I should have taken more pictures, but I didn't want to break my camera.

Just another way to make high school a horrible experience.

Ok I'm done bashing the band kids.  Now I'm going to bash the pageant girls.  I never realized how many freaking beauty pageants Utah had until I went to the parade and saw all the girls for every. single. city.  And don't get me wrong, I respect a lot of those girls.  If I were to compete in a pageant I'd have to suddenly become really talented at something, lose fifteen pounds, and grow five inches solely in my legs.  But once the sixth float of pageant girls with their blonde hair and white smiles went by, I got a little disgusted.  Also, if I see another Beautifully Modest dress with cap sleeves I'm going to hurt someone.  But not really, because I'd have to hurt a lot of people.  The thing is, you can wear a modest dress without the whole cap sleeves thing.  Modesty doesn't mean looking like a clone of every other Mormon girl in Utah.

No! I will not allow this post to become a rant.  Moving on to this awesome motorcycle gang.

I'm just curious with where they bought those pants.  Actually, the wife probably sewed them.

So this motorcycle group is pretty adorable.  They all have to have temple recommends because their destinations are the temples across the country.  MORMONS.

The most popular people in the parade were the Provo missionaries.  But seriously--they got the loudest cheers by far.

No sarcastic comment here.  Mucho respect for missionaries.

Then the parade was over and we went home.  That night I got to see more missionaries, because I never get holidays off at the MTC.  I also had to work night custodial, so I ended up watching the fireworks from the church parking lot outside of the MTC.  On the plus side, I got two free Magnum bars for working.  Which were also the only special food I got on the Fourth of July.  COLLEGE.

Oh, and I rediscovered some really attractive pictures I took on photobooth while I was bored.  Enjoy.

Try not to be jealous.