Masquerade

The masquerade was held at the old court house in Provo. It was a beautiful building. I had never been before... I didn't even know they had this every year, so I didn't know what to expect. It was just like a regular dance with hip hop and some slow songs thrown in the mix. They had someone taking pictures, refreshments and of course, everyone was dressed up. I loved looking at every one's masks. When they were giving out prizes for best costume and such... there was a proposal. I wish I could say this was something new.... but I have seen many public Provo proposals (hockey game, karaoke, masquerade). *Side note to future husband - I want something private and romantic*

My favorite part of the night BY FAR was on the upstairs floor. They were teaching vintage dancing. Our whole group went and there was a room full of people dressed up and in masks learning to dance like they do in Pride and Prejudice. Can I just tell you I have always wanted to dance like that in a group all dressed up? It was so fun. Our whole group loved it and stayed the whole hour or so that they were teaching different dances. They are simple and fun. Absolutely loved it. I wish I had more opportunity to dance like that.

Michaelene and I had just become friends on facebook... and she is actually the reason why I knew about the event. She lived with my family while she was attending Brooks Photography school. I had not seen her in at least 5 years. So good to see her and meet her new hubby.

My date Curtis. He drove up from Cedar City to come with me, bless his heart. We were set up on a blind date a few weeks ago by my old roommate Allyson who is dating his younger brother. We had so much fun that we had to go on a second date. Curtis is charming, funny and an amazing dancer. Thanks for a good night Curtis!

Here was the group we went with, with and without the masks. I actually only new a few people in the group to start out with, but we all ended up having a great time. Turns out Curtis and my FHE hubby Matt are friends and knew each other from BYU ballroom dance. Small world.

"Masquerade! Paper faces on parade. Masquerade! Hide your face, so the world will never find you! Masquerade! Every face a different shade. Masquerade! Look around - there's another mask behind you!"

Dentist Haiku

Morning of torture
I'm tense sitting in the chair
Now my mouth is numb

Yucky smells and sounds
My mouth stretched to its limit
Drilling seems endless

Today, three fillings
Grateful it's not root canal
Choice of color? White

Wish there were no more
Must go back in a few weeks
The dentist was nice

Morning of torture
Beautiful smiles are pricey
My mouth is still numb

Sweet & Sour Chicken

Had many requests for the Sweet and Sour Chicken Recipe, so here it is. It is kind of a process to make, which is why I don't make it often. It is well worth the effort though. Also, it was a lot faster with sous chef Ash. I would dip and she would fry. So much faster than doing it by myself which I have done many times. On to the recipe...

Step One: Cut up 4 chicken breasts into small cubes. In one bowl fill with corn starch and in the other, two eggs. In frying pan, fill with oil on medium heat. Take each piece of chicken and first dip in egg, then cover with corn starch and then fry in oil until golden brown. After each piece is fried, spread chicken pieces on baking sheet.

Step Two: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pour sweet & sour sauce over all the chicken pieces.

Sweet & Sour Sauce

1/2 cup white vinegar

3/4 cup white sugar

4 TBS catsup

1 TBS Soy Sauce

Bake in the oven for one hour.

After it bakes for an hour... stir it around in the extra sauce on baking sheet to soak in all that flavor and then serve with rice or whatever you want to do with it. For my dinner party I stuck tooth picks in them to be one of the appetizers.

ENJOY!!! I hope you try it and love it!

Tie Dye

Another FHE activity success. Since they are encouraging our groups to become BFF and have super unity... we decided to make group shirts. Apparently our group loves arts and crafts. We wanted to stick to the theme of General Mills and our blog.... so we got camo colors! It rocked and I am pretty sure everyone had a good time. We should probably all make a pact to wear them every week to FHE. (Abby, Karen & I all watched the Pregnancy Pact over the weekend... so the joke is making a pact out of everything... because its fun. Oh why do Lifetime movies suck me in?)

Dr. Merrell teaching us all the different ways to tie dye. She even printed different patterns out

Here are some different style patterns ready to dip

Abby begins the dipping process


Everyone else joins in

After letting all of our kids go first, Matt and I finally join


Here is my finished shirt!

Tracy's Tasty Treats

If I had a blog dedicated to recipe's... I think that is what I would call it.

When we moved on Halloween... there were a lot of sweet friends in the ward that helped us. I told them that day that I owed them big time for helping us move our entire house and in good time. I promised them that I would make them an awesome dinner. I had kind of forgotten that promise for a while and remembered recently. I never back down on a promise, if I say I will do something... you can count on me to do it.

Yesterday was the day! Ash and I planned out the menu and bought all the food on Saturday and I started some of the stuff on Saturday. Sunday after church Ash and I spent the entire afternoon cooking our little hearts out. It was a lot of work, but I think cooking is fun, and Ashlee is a great sous chef. My favorite part of Ash being my sous chef is that she will bust out into song with me. While we were cooking we were rocking out to our new favorite group ROC, that we recently discovered by accidentally going to the wrong musical fireside. Best mistake ever! My friend happened to be in the group and she copied some of their Cd's for me. Thanks Ginene!

Although I spent lots of time prepping for meals and making some of the desserts on Saturday and spent all of our free time cooking on Sunday... we still would not have made our dinner appointment of 5:30 if our good friends Chalyce and Isaac did not come over early and offer to help with the meal. They cut up all the fruit.Thanks guys! You were a life saver! I bet you are wondering what was on the menu? Well... it was a feast, but here is what Ash and I made for the party....

The fruit was beautifully displayed by Chalyce & Isaac. The cream cheese fruit dip was a big hit. I got the recipe off another blog.

Bruschetta

Sweet & Sour Chicken
(this is like orange chicken at Panda, its amazing)

For dessert, chocolate fondue!
We had lots of goodies to dip, including cake balls & Oreo truffles (just leave off chocolate coating). This was my first time making Oreo truffles. SO GOOD!

The Chef & Sous Chef with our Masterpiece Meal!

Also had rolls, salad, chips & salsa, salmon cakes (made by Ash) and I also made the "Sassy Salsa Pumpkin Soup" which is always a big hit.

P.S. I am sad that I didn't get a picture of all the people there. What was I thinking? I was pretty excited to eat after all the work that went into the meal I guess.

P.P.S. If you would like me to post any of the recipes of anything I made, please leave a comment telling me which one you want me to post.... and I will.

Spark

Last night I was invited by my friend Abby to go get drinks. Growing up lds... this is a new concept. I think any other young single adult that did not grow up lds this is a very normal activity... but for me, well, I had never done this. I have to say that I really enjoyed it. We went to Spark in town. It is very laid back, low lighting, comfy couches, groovy music and a menu full of yummy non-alcholic drinks, appetizers and desserts. Karen ordered "Pork Lollipops" which I thought was pretty awesome. I ordered some sort of banana dessert goodness.

This opened up a whole new world for me. I think I want to go out for drinks and relax and hang out a lot more often.

I Miss...

Hanging out with these girls. The girls I met at Santa Barbara Institute! Those were good years.

Blustery Night

Last night the wind was blowing so hard. I was inside for most of the night, so I thought it sounded pretty loud, but I didn't know how intense it really was until I went out later that night to visit a friend and saw the damage it had done. Either the Deer Haven fences are weak or the wind was intensely strong OR both. Anyway.... even taking these pictures, the wind practically blew my purse off of my shoulder and the camera out of my hands. It was all kinds of crazy!


Turns out a lot of people ended up moving their cars that night.

Mr. Smooth

February 2005 my friend Monica and her cousin Melissa are at the store. They run into this guy that Melissa knows. Being the friendly chatty person Melissa is... she says hi and they start to chat. Monica being the hockey recruiter that she is... even though she barely knows this guy, invites him to drop in hockey. He commits, they exchange numbers. The night he decides to go... for some reason it is canceled so he comes to the Riviera to hang out. This is how I meet him. We all decide to hike the Y together that night. He hiked with me a bit, I thought he was a nice guy that I would probably never see again.
The next week he comes over again. He hangs out with Monica and I. He decides to go home and wants me to walk him to his car. I am thinking why? And not really going with him as he leaves... so he drags me out the door with him. So I start walking with him down the stairs and then he leans me against the railing on the stairs and leans in. I ask him what he is doing... which clearly ruined his romantic moment. So we continue to walk to his car. It is kind of uncomfortable at this point... but I try and laugh it off. Then we get to his car... he tries again. He leans me against the car and leans in until we are nose to nose and then stops. All the sudden my ex boyfriend Scott gets out of a car right by us. He obviously saw, so I said hi. Moment ruined again. ha ha. He went home, no kiss.
Later I started going to the temple to do baptisms on Wednesday nights. Guess who is baptizing? Yep... same guy. This is when I started referring to this guy at "Temple Boy". It was kind of awkward at first... but I decided it shouldn't be that big of a deal, so I continued to go Wednesday nights even though he worked then. I just had to tell him to stop flirting with me in the temple because that is not why I was there and other girls were getting their feelings hurt. Seriously... I would try to ignore him, but he would keep staring and smiling until I smiled back. There were times I would hear girls next to me make comments like "Does he know you, or does he only flirt with the cute girls?". She was so sad.
Anyway, temple boy and I became friends. He would take me for motorcycle rides, he would come to parties that I would through, etc. One night in March 2006, he calls me and asks me if I want to go get an ice cream cone with him. I said sure, so he came and got me and we went to McDonnald's and both got an ice cream cone. I thought he was just going to drive me back home... but then he passed my house.

Temple Boy: "Hey, have I ever taken you to my secret make out spot?"
Me : "Umm... no.... and I don't think you need to"

So... he continues to drive up towards the lot where you would park to hike the Y, but then turns to a little spot the other way that dead ends. He then parks there as we continue to eat our ice cream and look at the view of the beautiful city lights. As he is eating his ice cream he starts pretending to be looking for something behind my seat. He is leaning towards me and putt his arm on my seat. He is being super weird with his conversation and things just become too awkward for my comfort.

Temple Boy: "So this is my secret make out spot, cool huh?"
Me: "Umm... ya. I don't know how much of a secret it is... I mean... I have been here before."
Temple Boy: "Oh really?... Uh......"
Me: "Listen, thanks for the ice cream. Really I appreciate it, BUT... you are being awkward, so do you think you could take me home now?"
Temple Boy: "Oh, ya... umm... sorry."

He then drove me home and walked me to my door and gave me an awkward hug goodnight. Poor guy, he was probably expecting something like the picture below to happen that night.


Oddly enough after that, we still hung out and were friends. He would occasionally take me out to dinner or other dates. People always ask us how we met.... which was random (which is why I explained it first before I started the story). I run into him in random places. Like he was kind of dating a girl I worked with at Apx, so he started coming to our softball games and he would talk and cheer for me more than he would her. He is so weird. I saw him at the temple this last summer... he hasn't changed one bit.

You Scream, I Scream...

We all scream for ice cream!






So my ward is trying to switch things up with FHE a little bit. We get points for things.... whoever has the most points at the end of the semester gets some sort of party. There are different ways to get points. Some of the ways to get points include hanging out with each other besides when we have to on Monday night, going on dates with people in our group (which doesn't include people who were already dating) and I think you get more points if there is a second date, third date... and I think it is a very large amount of points if you get married to someone in your group. We will see if any of the groups pull that one off.
They now also have an FHE trophy. It is like "The House Cup" in Harry Potter I guess. To see who gets to hold the trophy for the month, they give a challenge to all of the groups. This month the challenge was sculpting ice cream. Good thing we had practice last week with sculpting soap, not that it really would help. I have to say that my group is pretty creative... we came up with the idea of a train and I think it turned out awesome! You had to work fast because boy does the ice cream melt fast! Here is the finished product. Speaking of Harry Potter... you could say this train is the Hogwarts Express or The Polar Express... since it is ice cream afterall.


On another note... they also want each FHE group to come up with their own name and have a blog where they can post pictures and stuff too. Karen and I started it last night. The group came up with "General Mills" since I am the new Mom. We started a quote board and there are more pictures to come. Here is the link:
General Mills

Dangerous

I have been trying to transfer my pictures and music to my new laptop from my old desktop. It has been fun to go through everything... finding music I forgot I had and going through old pictures of things I had forgotten about. I have also been touching up some of my old pictures. It has been fun. I came across pictures from a Yellow Stone weekend trip that I took back in Summer 2005 with my friend Monica, her cousin Melissa, a guy that I barely new from work at Star Satellite (James) and a guy that we all had just met in the hall at the Riviera that Monica decided to invite and he said he would drive (George). While going through the pictures from this trip... I realized that I don't always do the smartest things.... especially when it comes to potentially getting an awesome picture. Take animals for example.

I think it is perfectly okay to get up close to take a picture of this one...

Or this one..

I don't think it was the best idea to get up close to take a picture of this one...

Or this one...

P.S. In case you are wondering... No, my camera does not have a good zoom.

Foggy

It has been really foggy lately. I am used to this with Santa Barbara weather being next to the ocean and everything, but I am not used to it here in Utah County. This is what it looked like this morning. The sun is trying so hard to shine.

Soap Carving

For Family Home Evening this last Monday we all got a bar of soap to carve into whatever. I thought it was actually a pretty creative activity. I just wish that I thought of something more creative than this weird face. Below that picture is Ashlee's fish. Some of my favorites were a whale and a tooth. Good Times.

Tip

Totally random tip. I was talking to my friend the other day and she was telling me that she was getting bad headaches. Then I had a flashback from when I was in Massage Therapy school and we were studying Cranial Sacral Therapy. Normally you have someone (trained in Cranial Sacral Therapy) to do this with their hands and put you in "rest point", but then they told us if you didn't have anyone to do it for you... you could use tennis balls! You get two tennis balls and place them at the occipital base and just rest your head on them. There is a lot of tension there and this helps relax the muscles and ease the tension. The tennis balls tend to roll... so I like to put them on a pillow and I will just rest there like that for like 10 minutes. (I have just started doing this since I told my friend about it because I have been tense lately). I feel like it helps.... so maybe it could help you too?

O+

Last week I was showing my dating book that I started to a couple of friends and let them read through a lot of the stories. It got me thinking that there are more stories that I have not added yet. This got me thinking of donating blood. You are probably thinking that is totally random, but I have had some interesting things happen to me when I go donate blood at the Red Cross.

First time I donated blood was back home in Santa Barbara when the Red Cross would come to the church. I always saw my family members go donate blood. They were such a good example to me. Watching them donate made me want to donate. I believe everyone in my family has donated blood at least once except for my brother Chad.... who is scared. Go figure, the only brother. Anyway... donating blood is great. No, you don't get paid like you do with plasma, BUT you do get yummy snacks and juice. You also get to pick the color of your bandage they put around your arm when they are done. Sometimes, you get stickers.... like this one


I think my second year living in Utah, I went and donated blood with my roommate Britt. We went to the Red Cross to do it, so they now had my phone number. Since I had O+ blood (which rocks, but doesn't rock as much as O- blood) they would call me every time I was eligible to donate which is about every six weeks. I went most of the time, so I ended up donating over a gallon (over time) of blood at that Red Cross. When that happens... you get this pin.


Cool huh? Don't you want to donate now? I do. It has been a while because I had to wait a year after going to Guatemala. But I can now... so I should. Anyway... Here are some of the things I have experienced while donating blood at the Red Cross in Orem, Utah....

#1- This one was actually awesome. I was the last one to donate for the night and someone came in to get treats at Arctic Circle for the employee's. Since I was the last one there and still pumping blood, he offered to get me an ice cream too. I said no thanks. He was such a nice guy and didn't take no for an answer. By the time I was done pumping out my pint of blood, he was back with an ice cream cone for me and the other employee's. I thought it was so nice. It made my day and ice cream is way better than the treats they have there. Did it make me want to go back and donate again? Yes it did.

#2- There are pretty much the same people that work there that I would see every time I went. There was an older man that worked there. I got him one of the times that I went. This is the first time that someone had stuck the needle in my arm and I didn't feel a thing. I was impressed. So I told him how good he was. He took that as an invitation to grab a seat and sit and talk to me the whole time I was pumping out blood. No escape. Awkward conversation. He was telling me about how a guy my age came in once and was telling him he was from California and that he didn't know who his dad was (not sure how that got brought up). Then this man told the guy "I could probably be your dad... you are the right age". I didn't know what to say to this, so I was silent. Then he continued talking and telling me that he slept around with so many women when he was living in California that sometimes he wouldn't know their name until after they had slept together. So that boy could be his son. I still have nothing to say to this... so I smile and nod. I think I pumped out the blood faster than normal this time around (except for the time I raced with my mom).

#3- I had a nice lady who was asking me the normal questions... you know what I am talking about... the questions like "Have you slept with a man who has slept with another man" type questions. After the questions and taking my blood pressure and such, she smiles at me and we have this conversation.
Red Cross Lady: "Do you have a boyfriend?"
Me: "Umm No.... why?"
Red Cross Lady: "Well, you are a super cute girl and just seem like fun, I wanted to set you up with someone"
Me: "All I have done is answer No to all of your questions except for Yes to "Am I feeling Well Today" who is it that you want to set me up with?"
Red Cross Lady: "Oh... my husbands best friend. After I am done taking your blood I will get your phone number and give it to him if that is ok."
Me: "Umm, sure. Why the heck not. "
Red Cross Lady: "Awesome. His name is Travis, super nice guy. One thing though... he is from Eureka Utah, do you even know where that is?"
Me: "Nope, never heard of it"
Red Cross Lady: "I will make sure he calls you"

Don't worry, Travis called me. I could tell on the phone that he was a hick... but I didn't want to judge before I went out with him. So he drove an hour from Eureka to Provo to take me out to dinner. He assured me that his friends wife NEVER sets him up randomly like this, so he was excited. I always try my best on dates... even if I am not interested at all, I still try to have a good time. I tried really hard to find things to talk about with Travis. He was a little overwhelmed with the "Big City" of Provo. I never thought Provo was a big city... and he told me how he went to SLC once and almost had a heart attack. I am thinking... wow, Eureka must be a REALLY small town. All he could talk about was his high school days. His graduating class was 22 students. 20 guys and 2 girls. He had never left Utah before and just had his friends that he grew up with. As nice as Travis was... that date ended after dinner.


I'm sure there are other blood donation experiences that I am leaving out.. but we will leave it at three. So there you go. Go Donate Blood! You will save a life AND who knows what other exciting things could happen. :o)

Goodbye Activities...

After being on the Activities Committee for 4 years (3 in this ward and I was the activities chair in my last ward for a year) I was finally released today in church. I honestly didn't think it would ever happen... I thought it was my eternal calling. Don't get me wrong, I have always liked being on activities. I'm good at it. I usually come up with fun activities (probably because I have the Peter Pan Syndrome *Never want to grow up*), but alas... my time is done.... for now. I am a little sad and I may go through with-drawls for a little while and get offended when I see someone else sending out emails for the upcoming activity instead of me, but I will survive. It is time. I have seen the activities committee completely transform in the 3 1/2 years I have been in the ward through 4 sets of co-chairs. So what does the ward have in store for me now? I am an FHE Mom which I guess isn't really that different from activities if you look at it. I am just going to be planning activities with one other person on a smaller scale and weekly instead of monthly. So there you have it.

In memory... above is a picture of the activities committee from back in 2007. We are all dressed up because our activity was "Recess, Come Relive the Glory Days"... once again, my idea, me loving to be a kid. I actually came up with this activity when I was Activities chair in my previous ward. Anyway... we dressed up because to introduce our activity to the ward, we did a skit. I was the school teacher, and we also have the principal and the lunch lady that came into my class room to explain the rules of the activity to the kids (aka, the ward). It was cute but maybe you had to be there.

Lounge Singer

Many of you probably don't know this about me, but back in the day... like 2002, I was an aspiring lounge singer. Yep... T-Dub and Racy Tracy would practice almost weekly for our record that was never recorded. However... we did take pictures for the album. Our big hit (the only song we practiced and performed) was "Scotch and Soda". Although this never went close to anywhere, it was sure fun while it lasted.