Olympus High School Class of 2000 Alumni Website

Read more here:
Wowee!

On Friday Bryan brought these beautiful flowers in to my work on his lunch hour. It was a great way to start Valentine’s weekend. Thanks Bryan I love them, almost as much as I love you.

So today I made Bryan cupcakes for Valentine’s Day. I think he liked them.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Read more here:
Cupid Came In Person…

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!

Read more here:
Just Say Yes

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…

Read more here:
A Long Story to Make a Short Point

I am absolutely exhausted and completely inspired. After spending my day at Altitude Design Summit, I am experiencing creative energy overload. I have so much to share about the conference and even more to process before I step back up to the work I do, but I just don’t have the pep tonight to post any of it. So, in the meantime, I’m going to just leave this video:

I had the amazing opportunity to meet this artist, DJ Earworm, today and his talent blew me away. Hit play. You’ll love it.

Read more here:
Altitude Design Summit Kicked My Butt

I feel like a train wreck by this time of night! We’ve taken away Calahan’s binki, and bedtime has changed to the hour of horrors. I’ve been trying to put the boys down for the last hour and finally there is quiet and I’m pooped, brain dead, zapped…. and now I get to do my work, trying to get pumped about it, mostly just wishing I had some chocolate to nibble on and a good magazine to skim with zero obligations.

Read more here:
Train Wreck

have you ever felt emotionally detached from your body? you walk around doing the every day things but you look into the mirror and you can’t believe that’s really you staring back? you’re body is there but your mind is off somewhere else. for me its usually when there is some sort of life changing event because it forces me to give up what i know and enter into unknown territory. i don’t do well with change. let me rephrase that. i don’t do well with change that isn’t on my own terms. for the past couple of years my life has been changed with out my consent and it’s really starting to take a toll on my emotional well being. for the past year we have been renting a cute townhome to which i have grown accustom to. despite the fact that it’s not the greatest set up as far as wheelchair access it’s been a great place to live. it’s close to shopping, only 15 minutes from my work and i don’t have to worry about watering the lawn or shoveling the driveway! we have had no intention of moving and were actually all set up to sign another lease at the end of the month when out of the blue the owners call us and tell us that at the last minute they’ve decided to put the home up for sale by next month. that information would have been handy two weeks ago when the topic of lease signing came up. all i can say for them is good luck trying to sale this place along side 7 other units for sale on the same street a few of which have been for sale since we moved in last year! i hate moving and to have to move at moments notice is even worse! so i am going to sign off now to venture into a world of boxes and packing tape.

Read more here:
stop the world i want to get off

Speen and I are the activity chairs of our ward and through a fall party last night which turned out to be a huge success. This family in our ward brought probably 1,000 gords and pumpkins and at least 60 bundled bunches of cornstalks for decorations. It turned out so cute. We had a little carnival for the kids, chili/cornbread meal, family photo booth and country line and swing dancing. I know this will come as a shock but I only took a few pictures.

Here is our little fam at the photo booth.

I had my ‘big sister’ from my sorority come and teach swing and line dancing lessons. She did an amazing job and it was fun to hang out with her, it had been too long

2 things I learned during the night:

1. Wow, I am so out of shape. I was dying during the line dances! I seriously need to get back into shape, pronto!
2. I am dreading our next activity, just because I was so exhausted after this one, and we have our adult Christmas party in less than 4 weeks. To go through all the work again sounds exhausting, but at least we have a great committee!

After the party, we got the kiddos ready for bed. When I had Tallie, I had a few people give some of their old baby clothes. I have no idea where I got this sleeper for Tallie, but how fun that it is the SAME ONE I already had for Lance.

Is this not the cutest thing ever – my two little matchies!

Read more here:
WaRd PaRtY!

Ok, guys. I could be posting about our Disneyland trip. I could be posting about taking Ella to see Disney on Ice today. But instead, I’m posting a big thought. A BIG THOUGHT.

And I want feedback.

Ready? (…wait for it…)

I think I’m going to go back to school.

Just typing that out makes me want to duck in anticipation of the WTF?s that will come flying out of the computer. After all, I just finished school. A lot of school. I can actually say that I’m more educated than most of the people in the country. So why…in the hell…would I want to go back?

I’ll let you guys in on a little secret. Actually, most people around me in my real life know that this isn’t a secret at all, but I don’t post about it on the blog too much because I’ve been applying to jobs and didn’t want this info out there. Since nobody is beating down my door at the moment, however, it’s a good day for a revelation.

You know how I went to law school and came out and just threw my hands up in the air? Here’s the facts: the problem isn’t that I don’t know what I want to do with my life. Even though I’ve gone on and on, wondering what I’m supposed to be doing, I actually know exactly what I want to be doing. I’ve known it for years. I just didn’t trust it enough to actually do it.

No, it isn’t writing. It isn’t blogging. It isn’t photography. It’s not even being a stay-at-home mom. (Although, how awesome would that be?! C’est la vie, in another life…)

What I want to do and have wanted to do for years now is very simple. I want to be a teacher.

Doesn’t that just make no sense whatsoever? Who goes to law school if they want to be a teacher? Well, here’s what happened. I was a teacher. I took a year off in college and was a substitute teacher here in Utah when I was 19, because I knew that’s what I wanted to do and I wanted to experience it first hand before I studied it.

Result? Baptism by fire. All I got was a 30 minute speech on how to avoid getting injured by a student and then I was allowed to teach any K-12 classroom I selected. I bounced from school to school and had no idea what I was doing. I loved it, but I was also nervous, unprepared, and clueless. I didn’t know how to discipline students or manage a classroom or deal with the high school kids who hit on me (which isn’t surprising, since I was their age). So, after a year, I burnt out and gave up. I decided that I didn’t have it in me to be a teacher and I ended up with an English degree instead.

The thing is, I never lost the interest in teaching. Even as I was getting my English degree, I was working as a children’s bookseller, making reading lists and showcasing the books that really got kids reading. And when I went to law school, I ended up leaning towards education law and then got a job working with Ohio schools. By the time I lost my job last summer, I had spent three years in classrooms, using the stuff I learned in law school to teach teachers how to deal with conflicts between students and showing students how to talk to each other to avoid violence.

And I LOVED it.

So now? Well, now I’m in Utah and the work that I was doing with conflict in schools doesn’t exist. I’m a friggin’ expert at it, but it doesn’t exist. And every time I hear that someone gets to wake up every morning and stand in front of a classroom of students, helping them reach their best selves, I feel so jealous I can actually taste it.

I’m desperate to teach.

BUT…

There’s that whole going back to school thing. We have so much debt from my student loans that I’ll honestly be paying it off for the rest of my life. At a certain point, it has to be irresponsible to go back.

There’s also the problem of me being too passionate about schools. Trouble students and problems with teachers used to suck the life out of me in my last job and I’d often come home stressed and upset. When I was actually working as a teacher, I had to work a second job because I was spending all my money on extra supplies and things for the classroom. So there’s the possibility that being a teacher would actually be bad for me.

I’m at a crossroads. If I’m going to be a teacher, I need to apply this spring so that I can get my Masters in Education in two years from the University of Utah and if I’m not going to be a teacher I need to find a way to pull my brain out of the classroom once and for all.

What to do…what to do…

Read more here:
Ok, guys. I could be posting about our Disneyland trip. I could

It seems I have been asked this question quite a bit lately. Yes, I am a social worker who tries to solve all of the world’s problems in a day and feels like my work is never done. I will admit that there are days I come home and need some serious time to unwind. It’s all part of the job, however, there is something that I absolutely love to do that seems to take my mind off of what’s going on around me. What do I like to do for fun? Well, I frequent our local dog park. I guess you could say I’m part of a club that meets together just about every night around 6:30pm to let my four legged child do what he does best…be a dog. I can spend hours at this place and not even know time is passing by. Something about being around dogs and other people who are crazy about dogs is therapeutic. Frequenting the dog park is something both Nacho and I look forward to. And don’t think that Jeff isn’t a huge fan because he too, is a victim. Here are some pictures of my Nacho Sauce and some of his friends:

Nacho, Ozy (on top) and Willow (on bottom)

Read more here:
What do you like to do for fun?

Some days I’m lucky and I get to meet up with Marshal on his lunch break, and every time I see him in his work clothes I think OMG he is so hot! There’s just something about a man in a suit…soooooo sexy. I just wanted to share that because it was all I could think about when I met up with Marshal right after he got off work.

We met up with Frank (our bro-in-law) tonight because was in town on business. Its always great to see someone from the fam! We miss them all. Our restaurant of choice was the delicious Giordano’s…it never fails to satisfy.

Here are some pics from our yummy dinner adventure (can you tell I had my old crappy camera?):

I’m sure Jenny thinks Frank looks hot in work clothes too.

This view is especially nice

I love this guy!

Read more here:
Hottest Husband Ever