Olympus High School Class of 2000 Alumni Website

As part of my 101 in 1001 project, I’ve been on the hunt for meat that I’ve never had before. I’m a big time carnivore (going to the zoo makes me hungry) so the challenge of finding new meat was actually pretty difficult. After scouring the grocery stores and butcher shops here in Utah, I figured my best bet would be to wait until I was on the coast and then find a fish I’d never had.

Well, as it turns out, the coast offers lots of meats that I’ve never had before, as long as you’re shopping in the right place. When we got to California last week, we stopped in at an Asian grocery store to pick up some snacks and I was greeted with a whole case of meats that didn’t sound familiar. I debated long and hard about whether to get a pair of beef hearts or a pound of pork bung (don’t ask, I have no idea), but ultimately I went for the weirdest of the weird: pork uterus.

I’ll have you know, my family eats some really weird stuff and I usually only get to eat certain things when I’m in California, including fresh crab backs (the fat lining the shell is edible) and little fish fried up like french fries.

BUT, even though I would think of my relatives as being adventurous eaters, they were all grossed out by the pig uterus. Super grossed out. As in, tried to pay me not to eat it.

I would not be deterred, even when I pulled it out of the package and found out that it was even weirder than I thought it was. Apparently a uterus is a V-shaped organ attached to the cervix that sort of resembles a wrinkly tube.

Nobody else seems to be into eating pork uterus, because I couldn’t find a single recipe online, so I had to sort of wing it. I sliced it up, cleaned it really well, and then heated up some oil, ginger, and green onion.

When I added the uterus pieces, they immediately turned white and started to shrink up and harden. This part was actually a little gross, because as the tissue constricted it squeezed all of the blood out of the tissue and into the pan, so I had to drain it a little bit. After a while, though, it just started to look like macaroni and I only had to add a little soy sauce and cook it for about five minutes before it was done. I didn’t want to overcook it, since it was getting harder and harder by the second.

Once it was in the bowl, it wasn’t scary anymore and it smelled really good…sort of like liver, but with a strong pork aroma. And the taste? Delicious! I’m serious, this stuff was really good! It was like rich, salty, pork-flavored calamari and I ate up half the bowl before my stomach started to tell me that I wasn’t supposed to be eating that much uterus all at once.

Unfortunately, I did have the worst dream that night about giving birth to a litter of children. So I think the uterus was a one-time meal, but hey! One more thing off my list!

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Adventures in Pork Uterus

Today I was told, ” You look tired.”

I have no response. Just… blank.

Was this person stating the obvious?
I mean- I’m 8 months pregnant and caring for a home and a two-year old, so yeah, I’m tired.
But not exhausted. Or run-down, haggard or drained.

Just a little tired.

Maybe it’s the glasses I was wearing. Or no mascara. Or maybe just bad lighting.

I guess it’s bedtime for me at 9 pm tonight.

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ummmm…..

I’m not what you would call a “yes” person. I really like being at home and doing my thing, so I lean towards saying “no” to going out and getting involved in extra stuff and doing things that I probably ought to be doing. I’m kind of adventurous, but really I just like to stick to the stuff I know. And, unlike many of my friends, I have no problem using the phrases “Sorry, but I’m swamped and can’t help” or “Not this time, but try me again later.”

But I’m definitely having a “yes” kind of month.

It all started with my new year’s resolutions and wanting to change up my life a bit. Although I’m a pretty happy camper in my little situation, I felt like I was starting to mentally (and physically) atrophy a bit from just sitting around the house doing my thing. So, I decided 2010 was a good year to take on some new challenges. I decided to run a half-marathon, get more involved in the community, and pick up some extra freelance work instead of spending so much time searching for a 9-5 job. It was time to break out of my rut and push myself into new situtations

Fast forward five weeks:

My quest for new situations has been successful…maybe even a little too successful. I went to that blogging conference and joined the ranks of people who treat blogging like a job and, as a result, the Disney Wedding Blog has exploded. I have seven times the traffic that I did a month ago and therefore I have seven times the emails to answer, spotlights to run, and posts to plan out. I’m also getting contacted right and left by vendors who want to talk to me about giveaways and additional programs, which is great for the site but a little overwhelming for the Carly. I even have a couple of different multimedia projects going on that will make the blog even bigger. It’s great, but it’s all happened really fast and I haven’t quite caught my balance yet…

I also opened the door to some freelance work and got hit with so much stuff all at once that it looks like I’ll be making more in the next six months than I made last year working my 9-5. This is completely amazing, but I haven’t quite gotten used to the idea of being my own boss and setting schedules and doing all the things I’m going to have to do to make this work. I think I’ve got it under control, but my desk just looks like a giant haystack of post-it notes right now…

Finally, a big “yes” went from “yes, I’ll fly out to help you with some costumes” to “yes, now that I’m here I can do these as well” to “yes, I can act as a consultant for the whole show” to “yes, I’ll fly back out, handle the costumes for a cast of 94, and stay until opening night.” So, even though I got back to Utah yesterday, I’m headed back to California in the next couple of days and I’ll be elbows deep in Beauty and the Beast until the end of the month. It completely sucks that I’ll be away from Kyle for so long, but I think I’ll have a pretty good time while I’m out there and I’ll be able to see my family more than I usually do.

All of these “yes” moments have led to good things, but now I’m in a place where I wake up and spend my day trying to wrap my brain around a million radically different projects. I’m out of my comfort zone (to say the least!) and I haven’t been bored in a really, really long time. I just hope I’m not taking on too many things at once…

Oh, and check back tomorrow for a “yes” that you don’t want to miss!

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Just Say Yes

So I know I’m a little late on this, but what else is new? Enjoy a photo journey through our 2009.

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Year in Review

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Love is celebrating birthdays.

My sister in law and I have been going crazy making fabric bows, hair clips, pins and headbands, and now we want to share them with you!!!

If you are interested in purchasing any of our items, email me at ktaggart1@hotmail.com for more information or for a time to come over and check out our stuff.

We can put a clip or a pin on any flower, or both if you would prefer.

We have a lot more than this, but here is a taste of what we have been up to, with an estimated price.

Little Girl Pearl Rose Buds: $5

Little girl flower clips – $5

Little girl larger flower clips $7; Circle clips $5

Adult flower clips and pins: Range from $8-12

Beautiful, comfortable, and stylish headbands – $15
(a variety of colors and styles available)

(FYI – in the black tool picture, there is a little piece of gray string on the headband, it is not actually on the headband, just was accidentally on it in the picture and I didn’t notice, sorry!)

Hope you enjoy!!! They look darling in children and adults hair and they make good gifts too!!!

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Our latest creation…

Remember when I was -55 hours for my vacation time with work? Well, that was rough. I was told I couldn’t take vacation until Christmas. And let me remind you, I was told that in June. That was 6 months of not taking one single day for myself. It was rough.

But I made it.

Barely.

When I went to turn my Vacation Responder on today, this is what I saw:

I think this is a record for longest stretch between vacations. I hope I never achieve it again.

And so now, I’m off to Mexico. I’ll see you all in a week. And, I’ll be tanner than you.

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Hello Vacation, I have missed you.

This week Kaylee learned to clap. This girl is 8 and a half months old and is really starting to figure things out. I love watching my kids grow and learn.

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Kaylee's new trick

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Love is Giving Yourself Yummy Food to Eat!

For the past oh six months or so I've been noticing that Riley's left eye just doesn't move quite right. His left eye looks at you as if he had a glass eye, it freaks me out every time he does it.  At first I was the only one who noticed it because it only happened every once in a while.  Then it started becoming more frequent and more obvious.  There are only 4 pediatric Opthamologists in Utah 3 are at Moran Eye Center and the other has a private practice.  Dr. Swoboda sent a referal to Moran in November and I couldn't get in until February.  The private practice had an opening the first part of January so I took that appointment as well.  At the appointment in January he said that everything looked good with his eyes as far as he could tell.  The only thing he saw was astigmatism but it wasn't bad enough to have glasses.  I wasn't quite happy with what he had to say because I knew something was wrong with that eye.  So we went to the next doctor and they did the same tests and he saw the same things except Riley actually did the weird eye movement in the office during the tests.  His decision was that Riley needed to be in glasses to help with both the eye movement and his focus because of the astigmatism.  He told me that most kids with these problems don't come in until they are a lot older because their parents don't notice the eye movement and the kids aren't able to tell them they can't see very well.
So it's a good thing that I was being extra observant and determined to figure out what was going on.  If Riley was a regular kid I most likely wouldn't have noticed anything because I wouldn't be tuned in to every little thing he does or doesn't do. I'm always very aware of anything that isn't quite right with him because even the slightest change could become a huge problem.
Riley's new glasses should  be here with in the next week.  It will be interesting to see if it really does make a difference.  I'm curious to see if it will change the way he plays with his toys or looks at his books.  This whole time they've probably all been blurry.   His eyes will be open to a whole new world.

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Four Eyes

I would like to take a moment to make a tribute to a very special little boy named Hodges.  On February 2, 2010 at the age of 15 months he lost his battle with SMA.  I have never met this young man but he has a special place in my heart as do all the SMA children.  His mother is an inspiration to me because she has not gone through this once but twice.  This is her second child lost to the disease, her first when he was only 4 months old.  
Today my problems don't seem as significant.  The dishes in my sink don't matter.  The fact that I haven't combed my hair isn't important.  Let's set these things aside to think of what is important in life and what matters.

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saying good bye

A week’s worth of blog ideas that didn’t make the cut:

• Jason was chewing gum last night while reading Lyvia her bedtime story. She asked him, “What you have in there?” “Gum.” “Oh. I had some gum last year,” she says matter-of-factly. Jason and I laughed hysterically. In another incident- she was pretending to be the Mom at the grocery store today and she turned to the cashier and said, loudly, “It’s credit!” and proceeded to swipe my library card through the reader with perfect precision. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be totally embarrassed. I still don’t know how I could make these into a whole post…but they just had to be shared.
• I went to the gym to walk on the treadmill- but the only treadmills that were open were one’s facing the brick wall. I seriously waited for 15 minutes until one that overlooked the pool became available. Who wants to stare at a brick wall while you work out? Watching the high school diving team is way more entertaining- the time just flies by!
• A few people on Channel 4 News drive me crazy. Especially that Chris Vanocur. I’m sure my sister Bailey also has strong feelings about Marti Skold.
• Speaking of news people- I now have a soft spot for David James. All of this sports watching with Jason has made me actually interested in what is going on with the Jazz and now David James is my guy. I hope Jason doesn’t get jealous.
  
• I’m a jeans and top kind of gal. So why is it, that when you are pregnant, suddenly the maternity clothes people think you want to dress like a birthday cupcake? Ribbons that tie, bows everywhere, strange floral prints, dresses closely akin to mumus- I don’t wear this stuff normally, so why would I change my entire persona when I’m pregnant? Thankfully, my mom, Grammy and friends have steered me to quite a few good looking maternity clothes- so I feel a bit stylish. One problem: I’m now thinking that my maternity wardrobe is much more fashionable than my regular clothes.
• How many of these “Judge” shows are on TV? Are people watching this stuff? Are we really interested in neighbors squabbling or traffic violations? I can see all that stuff out my front window at least 3 days a week!
• I’m feeling a lot more “with it” now that the stuff I have been into all my life is back in vogue. Things like: Frank Sinatra, cooking at home, knitting, being thrifty, real mail, short hair, cupcakes, kind people, glasses, girls night.
• So, it’s doppelganger week on Facebook… apparently. You are supposed to post a picture of the famous person who you most look like. (Seriously, who comes up with this stuff?!) Anyway, I’m thinking either Melissa McCarthy (Sookie from Gilmore Girls) or ElastiGirl. Anyone?

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rehashing

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Love is Rockin' Out with My Boys

FACT: It is the responsible, adult, smart thing to do to put all of your tax return into your savings account with the exception of making a few, small necessary purchases.

REALITY: When you’re wandering around Wal-Mart waiting for them to change the battery in your car (an example of said small necessary purchase), and you see a wagon that you’ve had your eye on for TWO YEARS go from $99 to $40, sometimes you have to let your husband (the finance PhD student, mind you) be the responsible, adult, smart one while you splurge just a bit!

I was excited, to say the least. But not as excited as these dudes:

And for the record, the box has been as big of a hit as the wagon itself:
Yes, the wagon is half the size of my living room, and Yes, my boys have fought over it at least 5 times a day since its purchase. But it was worth it. Remember all the fun we had in Grandma and Grandpa’s driveway with their little red wagon, my Dudley cousins? Incidentally that wagon is now occupied as a planter in my parents flower garden!

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FACT: It is the responsible, adult, smart thing to do to put

FACT: It is the responsible, adult, smart thing to do to put all of your tax return into your savings account with the exception of making a few, small necessary purchases.

REALITY: When you’re wandering around Wal-Mart waiting for them to change the battery in your car (an example of said small necessary purchase), and you see a wagon that you’ve had your eye on for TWO YEARS go from $99 to $40, sometimes you have to let your husband (the finance PhD student, mind you) be the responsible, adult, smart one while you splurge just a bit!

I was excited, to say the least. But not as excited as these dudes:

And for the record, the box has been as big of a hit as the wagon itself:
Yes, the wagon is half the size of my living room, and Yes, my boys have fought over it at least 5 times a day since its purchase. But it was worth it. Remember all the fun we had in Grandma and Grandpa’s driveway with their little red wagon, my Dudley cousins? Incidentally that wagon is now occupied as a planter in my parents flower garden!

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FACT: It is the responsible, adult, smart thing to do to put

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Love is Poop

Want to hear a story?

It’s even illustrated (if you consider the mandatory scrapbook pages that every Utahn teen must make “illustrations” and not “terrible attacks on photos that never wanted to be associated with construction paper”).

In the eight grade, I was almost failing out of school. Boredom and general apathy towards life kept me from finishing my homework or attending my classes, so I rocked out a solid 1.5 GPA, much to the horror of my teachers and parents and all those concerned adults hovering around my adolescence. In a random act of intervention, my English teacher stepped in and asked me to be a part of the drama program. We had done a theater project in which I had drawn costumes for Pygmalion and she used this to talk me into doing the costumes for the school play, knowing that I was friends with Katelyn (an extra..party guest #2, I believe?) and some of the other girls who’d be on stage.

Oddly enough, I really took to it. I liked the social side of being involved in drama and I liked the creative side of sewing the costumes. It’s true that my early designs were a little…off. The jester’s costume was kick-ass, but I dressed Cinderella’s godmother like a giant banana adorned with sparkly, metallic, ruffles. Hey, you can’t win ‘em all.

Drama led to getting my grades up and enrolling in drama classes when we made the jump to Sr. High. I tried to get involved as a costumer my sophomore year, but it wasn’t until my junior year that I was allowed to do all the costumes for a school production. I did the costumes for our fall musical and really got into all the period pieces and creating something different for everyone. That production saw about 300 costumes, but I loved it. It was crazy and exciting and different…and it was enough to make me sure that I wanted to be a costume designer for the rest of my life.

And then, it turned into work.

After I did the musical, I did all the costumes for the school productions until I graduated. This included the Shakespearean Festival…a production that apparently needed all new costumes, laboriously hand-sewn, and usually made out of materials you aren’t supposed to sew with. My least favorite conversation introduction in the history of the world is, “I was at the thrift store and I saw this shower curtain and thought of you…” To the 1% of you out there who will ever direct a theatrical production in your life: just buy fabric. Don’t bring curtains and drop cloths to your costume mistress and ask for reproductions of the gowns from Shakespeare in Love. You might get them, but she’ll hate you forever.

To be fair, those costumes were beautiful. They had no business at all being involved in a crummy outdoor production at a high school that couldn’t get it together enough to actually put up a set, but the costumes were gorgeous. So it was still sort of fun. Almost. When I wasn’t missing class to launder someone’s sweaty tunic or spending my lunch period sewing up the crotch of an old pair of tights.

My senior year, I even got to wear the costumes I was making, which sort of upped the fun factor. I did all the costumes for the school play, which meant sewing pretty dresses for myself and Bryttin. That was fun. Kind of. And I got a couple of awards for doing it. Also fun. For those two minutes that they mattered.

Ok, it was officially pretty un-fun by that point and it led to a major blow out with my drama teacher and a few months of lost sleep. I don’t know when the work of sewing all those gowns managed to grind my passion into a slimy pulp, but I know it was right around the time I got a full-ride scholarship to the University of Utah for theater studies. I was so over costumes at that point, I never wanted to see another zipper…but I went and I made myself this promise: “This will all have been worth it when they’re flying me out to big cities do to the costumes for big Disney productions.”

Fast forward: my mom and I are flying to California tomorrow to do the costumes for Beauty and the Beast. We’ll be gone for a week, during which we will likely be stressed, overworked, and vaguely panicking. It occurred to me that I got exactly what I asked for ten years ago. And you know what? My today self doesn’t like being overworked and buried in thread much more than my yesterday self did. Just goes to show that you shouldn’t kill what you love to do by turning it into your job AND bargaining with your future self doesn’t always pay out the way you think it will…

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A Long Story to Make a Short Point

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there's no place like home

A quick shout out to Uncle Robbie who returned last week from his mission to Equador.  Marc was excited to have his baby brother home.  He has appeared to be a little over whelmed with returning to the real world as all returned missionaries are.  Don't worry Rob you get back into the grove before you know it.

Welcome Home!

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Called To Serve