Olympus High School Class of 2000 Alumni Website

Our biggest challenge recently has been transporting Riley. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to take him places. We can not fit his stroller in our car and because he has to lay flat in the back seat I can hardly get him in and out because of his size. We are in great need of new transportation for him that he can ride in his stroller. We are happy to announce a website has been set up for Riley to help fund a van for him.
www.getrileysride.org
I have also placed a link to the site in the side bar. If you wish to donate there is a pay pal button on the website. If we could get 1000 people to donate $20 there would be enough for the van and the handicap accessaries. Tell everyone to come aboard and help GET RILEY’S RIDE!
This website was made possible by an old friend from High School, Jordan, who heard about Riley. Thanks for all your work.

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Riley's Fund

Last night I went to get a massage. I heart massages. I don’t get them nearly as often as I should. Mainly because I can always think of somewhere else to spend $100+ dollars. However, when my coworker Nicole told me about Healing Mountain Massage School, my life changed. I’ve been to The College of Massage Therapy before and couldn’t handle the florescent lights and the gigantic room separated by sheets. I just couldn’t relax. However, Healing Mountain has individual rooms just like a real spa (I like to pretend). AND you can have a recently licensed massage therapist give you a massage instead of a student. AND it’s only $35. Where do I sign?

Once coworker Nicole told me about this, I immediately emailed roommate Nicole and told her I was scheduling massages for both of us. Among our many similarities is the fact that we love to pamper ourselves. So I scheduled the massages and then made a paper chain to count down the days until our massages.

So yesterday came. The Day of the Massage. There were no more paper chains to tear off and I was excited. I emailed Nicole and asked if she was as excited as I was. And well, she forgot. SHE FORGOT ABOUT THE MASSAGE! How that is possible I don’t know? Well I do know. She is becoming a grown up and buying her own condo. She’s leaving me in the process and I am denial about the whole thing.

Anyway. She forgot and was double booked and couldn’t get out of her other plans. And the wonderful and lovely friend that she is called and paid for my massage because she felt so bad. Who does that? Seriously? I need more friends like her.

So I walk into the school/spa and go to the receptionist to give her my name. And this was our conversation:

Me: Hi, I’m Natalie. I have a 7:00 appointment.
Receptionist: Oh ok let me check. It looks like your husband already paid for you, tip included, so you can just leave right after you are done.

and without skipping a beat I replied:

Oh! Isn’t that sweet? My husband is the best. He always does these little surprises for me.

Imaginary husbands are the best! Aren’t they?

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I love my husband

He also went through this phase about the same time. Lean-over-to-the-side phase. It was pretty funny.


And yet again…

Last but not least, a big cheeser. I think this is the only real smile we’ve ever gotten a picture of and hopefully it isn’t the last. My smile did not come easily as a child and I remember vividly my mother coaching me in anticipation for my school picture every year. I must say he does have the squinty eyes down already, a personal trademark.
I guess I’ll try to go get some sleep.

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For Shelly…

I’m out in Napa right now, cutting and sewing and designing, with occasional breaks for meals and sleep. I really miss Kyle, but there is something so “home” about being here that makes this trip easier. Today, I spent a couple of hours at the school that my mom went to when she was younger and as I was sitting out in the courtyard in perfect weather, scribbling away with a notebook balanced across my knees, I got that weird deja vu feeling that happens when you realize that you’re doing just what you’re supposed to be doing in just the place you’re supposed to do it.

My parents both grew up in Napa, but left before I was born. So I have these really strong connections to this city that I’ve never learned in. It’s bizarre how radically different my life would have been if they had decided to just be home bodies…and it’s even weirder to see how often I manage to find my way back here even though they left.

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In Napa

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

We made it! We are so excited to finally be here and we are getting settled. Our house is still a disaster but we are working on it. Hopefully it will look nice in time for Christmas. We don’t have internet until Tuesday so I will post more then.
BTW, I had to turn in our cell phones back to the school since I purchased them through the school. So we had to get new cell phones and new phone numbers. So if you feel like giving us a call you can at:
Angela Cell 661-616-8499
Eric Cell 661-616-8495
We home you all have a Merry Christmas!

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We are in Bakersfield

Now that football is over and the dance concert is finished and getting nominated for Homecoming is long past, here’s what Randy has been up to:

Bowling on the school team
(250+ average and tons of scholarship money already won)

Performing at the holiday concert in the school choir
(This is the first year he’s done choir instead of orchestra.)

Checking out the lights at Temple Square with his friends
(Yes, I actually followed them around with a camera.)

The only thing more depressing than not really having anything to blog about, is providing constant updates on the exciting life and times of your baby brother. I’m going to have to change the name of this blog from “Being Carly” to “Being Randy’s Sister”.

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Now that football is over and the dance concert is finished and

Last night, my family went to see the Riverton High School production of Les Miserables. Les Mis is a pretty ambitious choice for a high school musical, but the lead seemed made for the part and the show was actually quite good. There were the usual complaints (faulty mikes, a poorly cast player, a chorus girl who couldn’t stop grinning at the audience) but all in all it was a really well done show. The sets, in particular, were incredibly detailed and impressive. Of course, I could just be easily impressed thanks to my own years on the stage.

Confession: I was a drama geek in high school.

You know how cool those kids are in High School Musical and how everyone wants to be them and how children all over the world bought their dolls and action figures? Yeah, in reality performing in high school is nothing like that. If they had made a Disney channel movie about our high school musicals, it would have featured a cast of incredibly lame, melodramatic adolescents who were obsessed with Rent and the love triangles of the drama club.

It’s funny, but I went all through school and then some believing that nothing was greater than drama and people were just missing out. It took some time (years, even) to realize that our drama kids were total weirdos who enjoyed being the center of attention or total space cadets who wanted nothing more than to escape into an alternate reality for a couple of hours a day. That realization made all of the drama that came with being in drama seem really…well, lame.

Still, even in all its lameness, my drama geek years continue to haunt me. Case in point: one of the most rotten things that happened to me in high school was that I was cast as one of the leads in our senior year high school play. Auditions were open, but there’s a 90% chance that I walked onto the part because I spent three years kissing butt and doing grunt work for the theater department. Although I had performed in ensemble pieces and done the occasional monologue, I had no real experience being on stage and it’s safe to say that I kind of sucked.

The great things about being in the play included wearing lovely costumes that I designed and made, as well as starring with some of my best friends. Unfortunately, the worst things about the play included being so nervous about being on stage that I was prone to random bouts of hysterical laughter and being so overwrought by a month of rehearsals that I couldn’t keep anything in my stomach by the time the play actually came about. At the time, it just seemed so completely life or death that I was going to ruin the play with my horrible acting and everyone in the school would witness this car accident as it happened.

Reality: I think about 40 people came to those plays if you don’t include the people who were related to the actors. In all fairness, the bar for acting was pretty high, since our high school was serious about theater, but thanks to some really terrible scenery and the fact that I shared the stage with lots of brilliant people, I doubt that my performance permanently damaged the school’s reputation in creative arts. I even got verbal approval from the boy I had a secret crush on for six years, who said, “You were good in that play.” (Yes, that is a verbatim quote, which I will never forget. I know this because that boy said a total of 14 words to me in high school, 6 of which are the ones I just mentioned. Yes, I was counting…but that is a whole blog post in itself.)

Honestly, though, even knowing that it all didn’t matter doesn’t keep me from having nightmares about being in that play. I have dreams that I’m on stage and we’re performing, only I don’t know my lines or what character I am or what play I’m doing. Sometimes I’m on stage and spotlights just start to fall from the rafters until I’m buried under them. The worst, though, involves the entire school witnessing me walk onto stage completely naked. In that dream, the stage inevitably turns into an island with deep canyons on all sides and I have no choice but to just stand there.

So last night, when I was watching Les Mis, I kept thinking about all the kids on stage, knowing that most of them are completely wrapped up in the performance and really believe that the musical is the most important thing on the planet these days. Do I envy them? Maybe, but only because I miss the comraderie of learning lines and the gossip circles that formed during rehearsals. The spotlight, however? Not missed. I’ll leave that to the Jean Valjeans of the world.

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Last night, my family went to see the Riverton High School

Updates on the 101 in 1001 project:

It’s been more than a week since we got back from Disneyland, but I still haven’t sorted through all the photos yet. Luckily, I haven’t been procrastinating in all my endeavors. I made an original goal to accomplish one of my 101 every single week and I’m still going strong. (It’s true that I’m doing all the easy ones first, but can you blame me?)

• I’ve read my third memoir. This time I picked Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay, which is a memoir of first-time motherhood. The writer is a blogger and the book is very popular, so I was excited to read it. It was actually pretty good, although not fantastic, and her constant humerous references to alcohol are sort of unfunny in light of the fact that she revealed to her blog audience that she’s actually an alcoholic. It’s all fun and games until there actually is chardonnay in the sippy cup.

• The daily goals of photoblogging and drinking water are still things that I’m attempting, but it was so annoying to have to log in every day and update it that I’m not longer keeping a strict count. I’ll just have to give myself a thumbs up or thumbs down when the project is over.

• I sent my random care package, but I don’t know if it’s been received yet…

• I joined a gym with fitness classes included and it shouldn’t be too hard to find one that I’ve never taken before. I’ll let you know when I pick one.

• We’re at 80% on the church we want to join. We’re only hung up on the fact that it’s a 30 min drive every Sunday morning.

• I’m taking Kyle to see Les Mis at Riverton High School this Thursday, which fulfills both my musical requirement and seeing a creative arts production where I don’t know anyone in it.

• I woke up and photographed the sunrise, but apparently I was really sleepy because I can’t figure out what I did with the camera after that. When I find it, I’ll share the pictures.

• We’ve been invited to Universal Orlando but I don’t know if we’re going. I’d really like to see the opening of that Harry Potter land, though…

• I’m at 97 followers on the wedding blog…only three to go!

• And last, but definitely not least, I’ve met three of my five people from the internet. While we were in California I had lunch with Hope, J.Darling, and Luis, who are all long-time readers from the days of wedding planning. We had such a fun time and it was really great to meet them in person, since I feel like I know them all so well. I also met Hope’s fiance Mike and his friend Andrew, but I’m not counting them towards my five since they aren’t blog readers. Plus, they were sort of dragged along, much like my sweet husband. (Kyle: “You want to have lunch with internet people? Did the Craigslist killer teach you nothing?!?!”)

So, all in all, the project is going strong. I’m actually really happy with it and I strongly encourage everyone to start their own list and share it.

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Updates on the 101 in 1001 project:It's been more than a week

Last night, at Riverton High School’s Homecoming game, my little brother was crowned Second Attendant to the Homecoming King, which means that out of all the boys at Riverton’s overcrowded high school, my little brother is the third most popular.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

I’ve already told you that my little brother is the funniest person in the world. Apparently, the general consensus is also that he’s one of the nicest kids in school, although I’m not the person you should ask on that front since the kid is a complete brat to me about 98% of the time. I can see it, though, when he’s around other people. So it wasn’t a surprise to anyone when he was nominated for Homecoming Court, even if his reaction to the whole thing was to be completely embarrassed about it.

I can’t even tell you how weird it is to be watching my little brother go through his senior year of high school. I haven’t lived her for four years, so when I left Randy was struggling through middle school like everyone else. Now he’s part of the elite group in charge of his high school and he’s having the time of his life. It’s weird enough to see your little brother acting like he’s starring in a John Hughes movie, but it’s even weirder for me because it keeps underlining the fact that it has been exactly ten years since I was in the same exact place.

Of course, I wasn’t in the same exact place. Although I think I was probably as happy as he is in high school, I spent most of my time with a small group of close friends, rather than a large group of good friends, and we spent our senior year believing that the activities of the drama department were life-and-death-the-most-important-thing-ever. Although this tight knit attitude resulted in life-long friendships and a plethora of good times, it also led to a general lack of interest in the rest of the student body and I’m am less than proud to admit that I made it all the way through high school without being nice to more than about 30 people.

I was on the Homecoming Committee my senior year, but I wasn’t asked to the dance. I actually wasn’t asked to any dances in high school (ok, technically this isn’t true, but for various reasons I never accepted the invitations) and while it was pretty common for girls to go in groups without escorts, I didn’t really like going to school dances and usually opted out. However, for senior year Homecoming I was guilted into going and I ended up heading off to the dance with five lovely “dates”.

We had a fabulous time.

Do I wish that I’d had a high school experience like Randy’s, where everyone knew who I was and thought that I was a great person? No, not really. It might be the stuff of Drew Barrymore movies, but I’d pass on being the most popular girl in school, only because I know now what I would have missed. My friends from high school are fewer and weirder (much weirder), but I can’t imagine life without them, now or then. Plus, if I had been on any other life path, I probably would have missed Kyle, who spent Homecoming Week at his high school playing saxophone in the marching band and then went to the dance in a diamond patterned cummerbund that matched the sleeves of his date’s dress (straight out of the eighties).

Nope, wouldn’t have missed out on all that for anything.

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Last night, at Riverton High School's Homecoming game, my

My little brother is starting his senior year of high school in a couple of weeks and today, after a movie marathon that included 10 Things I Hate About You and She’s All That, I started reflecting on whether or not I’d go back to high school and do it again if I had the chance.

Pop media tells us that we all want to be in high school. All the great triumphs of our life seem to happen in the senior year of high school. We come into our own, connect with the great loves of our life, and explode out of graduation ready to conquer the world. But when I talk to people who are my age, many (if not most) say that they would never, ever, ever do high school again.

High school: friend or foe?

I know that my husband, who still has a ton of close friends from his high school years, wouldn’t do high school again if you paid him. His memories are that he wasn’t good enough, wasn’t smart enough, and wasn’t cool enough. In fact, I’d say that he’s still struggling with getting over some high school stuff, even though nothing remotely terrible ever happened to him. All of this is hardly a commercial for being a teenager…

My own memories are different. I definitely remember not being good enough or cool enough, but if you were to tell me to name the first five high school memories that come to mind, they’re all good ones. I had my share of stupid mistakes and irrational insecurities and all of that, but on the whole I remember high school as a time without limits. Anything that I wanted to do could get done and I had the right to expect everything from the world. I wouldn’t necessarily rush back to senior year, but if I had the option to do it over again without changing anything, I wouldn’t rush to say “no”, either.

So what’s the difference between my husband and I? On the surface, not a lot. We both had a good-sized group of close friends that are mostly still in close contact. We both were heavily involved in extracurricular activities and held student leadership positions. We were both the leads in our high school plays and we both remember English as being our favorite class, full of kind teachers and amazing books. We both were crazy in love with someone who went to our school and we both graduated without ever telling them. So why the discrepancy?

I think it might have to do with how we saw the people around us. Kyle thought that everyone around him was accomplished and capable and having an amazing time without worrying about anything. I assumed that everyone around me was as insecure as I was (which they were!) and figured that anyone who wasn’t insecure was in for major disappointment.

Last week, Kyle and I found ourselves at Target, browsing through the new school supplies and picking out things we wished that we’d had when we were in school. We talked about getting something for Randy for his first day of school and I asked Kyle what, out of anything in the world, he’d wish that he had for his last year of school. He wanted a car (to get the hell out of there) and I wanted a better camera (to really capture it all)…what do you think you’d have wanted?

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The Best Years of Your Life

On Memorial Day I decided I wanted to plant a garden.

So, we went from this:

To this:

And finally – to this! (in only 2 1/2 short months):

Because the plants were so small, we THOUGHT (key word here, thought) we could fit 14 (yes, I said 14) tomato plants, 1 cherry tomato plant, 2 cucumber plants and onions around the perimeter. We also tried to fit 1 zucchini plant, carrots, beans, and pumpkin plants in about a 2×2 plot of land right behind the tomato seciont. I guess we didn’t realize that all of these plants grow exponentially! I introduce you to the attack of the killer tomatoes!

Can you believe those puppies went from minuscule to OVER 5 FEET TALL! Have you ever seen tomato plants like these???

We are so grateful that are tomatoes are growing so well, but at the same time, we are little frightened. They have completely outgrown their gates, have taken over the entire garden, and every day it seemed like 1 or 2 of the plants would fall over because of all the weight.

Last Saturday we spent over 2 hours trimming and fixing our tomato plants. Lance even had his tools out to help.

We got tons of stakes to hold them into the ground and filled up 1/2 of a huge garbage can with the trimmings from the tomato plants. Here is the after picture.

I am not sure you can tell, but it really is a lot more manageable now. We are excited for them to start to turn red and for the tomato party to really begin. If you LOVE tomatoes like we do, I am sure we will have some extras to share with you!

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Taggart's, Taggart's How does your garden grow?

Afterward we went to dinner at the Tapa Bar, located on a small cobblestone side street in the middle of the city. It had incredible food! but no worries we still had room for gelato at a place that had 64 flavors. needless to say, we were there for a while We spent the rest of the

evening near the port walking through markets, watching fire dancers, street performers, and listening to reggae sounds of the Caribbean. We stayed to enjoy the sunset before returning back to the hotel. It was the best birthday ever. Thanks babe!

Although we didn’t have any cake or ice cream, at work the day before my CI thought it would be a perfect time to splurge and get an ice cream cake from Cold Stone. the ice cream even had sprinkles in it! it was awesome. So, even though i feel old, it was a fantabulous birthday.

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Birthday Surprise

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The Graduate