GLENN DOESN'T LIE

My beloved Glenn Beck came to Utah on two separate occasions in celebration of July 4th. He put it best on his blog after giving his amazing Freedom Speech:

"We just took off from the Provo Utah airport. I just finished giving the keynote address at the Freedom Festival’s Patriotic Service. WOW. There is nothing like the way this state celebrates America. It is truly different here. It is more like the America I remember as a kid."

Glenn said Utah is the most patriotic and Glenn doesn't lie. I know he would have been blown out of the water had he spent the 4th of July in Kaysville because hands down, KAYSVILLE 4th RULES ALL! And I don't lie about the sacredness that is the 4th. Let me give you all a little taste of the 4th in K-town.

It starts with the Chuckwagon Breakfast put on by the mayor and the city council. There are pancakes, eggs, breakfast meats that I don't partake of, juice, and friends. You always dodge a couple people and you always hug a couple people. The person I love seeing most at the Chuckwagon is Hannah Watkins, well the whole Watkins clan actually.

After lazily eating 3 huge pancakes and chatting in the baking sun, we saunter down the street to stake our place for the parade. The Kaysville parade is the highlight of the day. I can't explain to you how amazing it is unless you come. I love it when I bring outsiders in the for the first time because they are seriously blown away at how awesome our little town is. At the parade you get to see people you know and then they throw candy and treats to you. Its fantastic. The best part of the parade for me is the Davis High marching band. Love 'em! After the hour long parade of wonder, there is a water parade that will cool you off really well. I'm a little too high maintenance for that so I don't usually participate because lets face it: I will not get ready twice in one day.

After the parade comes a day of BBQ and napping. Good food, good people, good sleep, good town. Perfect. Around 9 pm we head up to DHS for the firework show. You wouldn't think a little town could produce serious greatness with fireworks but we can! The show is about 30 minutes long and you get to lay right under the fireworks so you can kind of feel them exploding in your chest. Its the best feeling. Corey came up for the fireworks and I will admit he had a little sour attitude. He didn't see why it was so important for me to have him there. Then he saw the fireworks show and got how amazing it all is. So he is off my hate list because he made it and he loved it.

To sum up my lengthy piece on how fantastic the 4th of July is in Kaysville, I will leave you all with a few pictures. Enjoy. And don't get jealous that where ever you spent your 4th was lame and mine was awesome. Sorry, its just how Kaysville does it.

RANDOM LIFE STORY: NEWSPAPER ROUTE

My friend Hollie tagged me on her blog but I don't have anything interesting to say like she did so here is my version of it. I will fill you guys in on a little job the two of us had: a newspaper route. We were probably 13 years old when we decided this was a good idea. We delivered a free community newspaper (The Davis County Clipper) to two trailer parks in Layton. Yeah, scary. I think we made .5 cents for every paper we delivered and that turned out to be about $25 dollars a month each.

Our first day on the job, the first paper thrown was by Hollie but she was a little over zealous and broke the plastic/glass window on the trailer. That was funny because it took our first paycheck to pay for it. Sad. Well we loathed Thursdays because thats when we had our route. One Thursday in particular we did not want to deliver all 200+ papers so we came up with the idea to throw about 50 of them in the big construction dumpster in her neighborhood. That was a great idea because we finished our route in about 40 minutes! Good idea Hollie.

Anyway, to say the least it was a very interesting first job. It got so interesting in the trashy Layton trailer park that Hollie's cop dad had to come with us, armed one time because the trailer trash hated us. We didn't last too long but it was fun, something to keep us busy, and quite a story for you folks.

LEMONADE STAND

The other day Lindsay, Josh, and I were driving in a very, very nice neighborhood in Holladay. What we found was appalling. Gone are the days of the old school lemonade stand on the side of the road. The lemonade stand we found was stainless steel with a cooler built into it. No homemade parts of any kind. Not even the lemonade! The brat kids whose trust funds are more than I will ever make in ten lifetimes were out there selling cans of Country Time Lemonade. Can you believe it? Not only was this lemonade stand offensive to my childhood and kids' imaginations but there were actually people buying this crap. There were about 5 people waiting to purchase their $2 can of lemonade. Gees.

1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY / 4 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

One year ago today marks the beginning days of my parents leaving for their mission. June 17 was their farewell. That was a good - with mixed emotions - Sunday. They both gave great talks, along with Elder Madsen. We had a great afernoon at home after church with all of the family. Later that week they were set apart at the Church Administration Building by President Packer and Elder Christofferson. Poor Joshie had surgery just the day before plus emotions were so high, it made for a rough but amazing day. Then mom and dad spent one week at the MTC. The day they left for the MTC was so hard. Lucky for me though, I got to visit them everyday because I was here in Provo. We had a lot of good times. Then on June 28 they left us for good for the Washington, Kennewick Mission. Happy 1 year anniversary President and Sister Belnap. Its definitely been a hard year without you here but I know you are where you should be. Only 743 days to go!

Me and momma after their farewell

The day mom and dad left for the MTC

Today also marks the 4 year anniversary of meeting Jessica and Ashton, my college soulmates. Here is a shout out to them. I love you both. Hopefully we can enjoy the next four years just as much!

My besties

RANDOM LIFE STORY: BEAVERS

Yesterday I was outside in Provo Canyon when a huge flashback hit me: Beavers. The smell of beavers was in the air. For the fortunate readers of this blog who are from Kaysville, you will understand what I mean by this. It was mix between home+wet wood+stream+outdoors. Thats what beavers smell like and thats what I smelled yesterday.


For those of you who are lost let me fill you in on a few things. I was raised in Kaysville, UT on a "farm." Behind my house there is a field and on the other side of that field is a beaver farm. Marion Rouche, our neighbor and friend, had the beaver farm which included about 30 small cement houses with 5 to 7 beavers in each of them. Going to visit the beavers, petting them, and feeding them was a very special, important, interesting, and fun part of my childhood. I loved when daddy would take us down there to see the beavers. What kid gets to go play with beavers? Probably not many.

Don't all go getting jealous because you too can visit beavers one day if you are lucky (except for Leslie and Corey because they are lame and don't think it would be fun). Just go to Kaysville and enjoy. Oh, while you are there you should probably go to Grannie's and get a scone and cinnamon roll for the road. They're mo-licous (which means MOre than delicious).

Josh and I had a good time remembering some beaver stories in the car so I decided that I will occasionally post about random stories from my past that are unique, weird, and probably only interesting to me. Enjoy.

JAGUAR

I'm a Jaguar now!!! I will be teaching at Orem Junior High School next year! I could go on and on with exclamation points because no one will ever understand how excited I am. This is going to be such a good job and I am so happy. After 6 different interviews I knew I was going to find the perfect fit. My interview here lasted 2 hours people! I chatted with the entire social sciences department for over an hour on topics ranging from kids, discipline, marriage, Nordstrom, Diet Coke (the supposed drink from the Gods for teachers but I think I will stick with Dasani). I mean we just talked about everything and they were all so nice. The best part is that I walked into the classroom and there was my friend Allison Jensen from my program at BYU. She also got hired on for next year so I get to work with her! She is one of the most amazing people I have ever met (she actually lived next door to Grandma and Grandpa in Germany). I will do a few things over the summer with the social sciences department and my first required day with the district is August 11! I am so happy, nothing can get in my way. I hope everyone can have their dreams and goals all come together like mine just have. My dream was simple: to teach junior high. Here I am seizing it! I have to give a shout out to my mom and dad and friends and family who coached me through this long waiting period. Love to you all.

CERTIFIED SCHOLAR

HUGE DEAL: I passed the Praxis test!!! That's right folks, I can now graduate and be a teacher. For those of you who are not schooled in the hell that is the Praxis test I will inform you. As part of No Child Left Behind (which I have serious issues with), teachers now have to take an exam in their content area before they can graduate and before they can teach. Well I had to take the history Praxis test which is not hard...it is super hard. The test is 120 question of pure awful. There are study guides for almost every content area except history so you just kind of have to learn everything from forever ago to today. Thats thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years people!

I spent days just reading everything I could get my hands on about history, particularly ancient world history as that is a black hole in my knowledge pool. I woke up at 6:30am on SATURDAY March 15 (Josh's birthday) to trek it up to BYU campus to take my test at 7. The test took 2 hours and the questions were really hard. They have free reign to ask you anything, literally anything that has ever happened in the world. Dates, art, rulers, civilizations, periods, wars, dynasties, people, acts, bills, and anything inbetween. And trust me, they asked me all of that crap.

The complete torture that was the Praxis test lasted for 5 weeks after taking it while I awaited my scores. I was physically ill as I curled in a ball in my closet debating whether or not I should even open up my results. Good thing I did because I passed hard core. So if any of you are looking to give someone a gift for how awesome they are, you can save some time figuring out who that should be and send it my way. This test kicked my trash but I kicked it right back passing (not to be cocky), by a large margin!

GRANDMA AND THE RACE

As I am sure many of you know, my obsession with breast cancer started because of my Grandma Belnap. She developed breast cancer twice, years apart from each other. I don't remember her first battle but the second I do remember as I watched her go from one boob to zero , loose her hair, go through chemo, and still be as funny as ever. She came out of the second bout with cancer and has been an extremely healthy (not including the knee replacement) and active grandma.

She inspired me to want to do something so I did. About five years ago I just started reading everything I could about breast cancer and during my sophomore year at BYU I heard about the 3Day. I automatically signed up and pledged that I would raise nearly $3000.00. This didn't seem like it was going to be too hard but little did I find out that raising money in a poor college town with poor college students all around is not the easiest task. After this point I became addicted and dedicated to breast cancer. The theme of my 22 birthday party was breast cancer.

This Saturday (May 10) four of the Belnap kids - Heidi, Lindsay, Josh, Ashley - will participate in the RACE FOR THE CURE in Salt Lake. This race means a little bit more because I just found out that my grandma's breast cancer metastasized and she is know fighting bone cancer that has spread throughout her body, including her lungs. She's a fighter though so lets hope she still has that in her.

I could really use my parents right about now as a lot of crap has been piling up in my life between family (grandma, Jaimee breaking her leg, worrying about mom and dad) school (graduating, finding a job, being a grown up, knowing enough to teach, being a good teacher) and then theres the Corey issue (always a constant in my life but now a much more interesting twist in our friendship). I think I just need to take a vacation from my life and that vacation needs to be in Lake Powell.

GLENN BECK

This is long overdue. I love Glenn Beck. He and I are kindred spirits politically, humorously, and spiritually. This man owns my life weeknights from 7-8 pm with his CNN Headline News program. Leslie and I are his biggest groupies. Yeah thats right, Glenn Beck has groupies.

For those of you who are not subscribed to his daily emails, don't frequent the Glenn Beck website, or if you don't even know who I am talking about I will give you some Glenn info. Glenn started as a regular radio DJ in Connecticut and worked his way through brilliance and charm to a nationally syndicated radio show. In 2006, CNN gave him his own primetime news show and he has been blessing the lives of American homes ever since. He is a comedian/news anchor/genius/conservative/political analyst/economist/future president/Mormon. Basically Glenn Beck has it all. We see eye to eye on a lot of issues concerning the presidential election, the economy, oil, McCain not being a true conservative, polygamy raids, and cats (Glenn thinks that people who have more than 3 cats should be committed).

I first knew I was in love with Glenn when I saw his program right after President Hinckley died. I was already a Beck fan but my love jumped to a whole new level. You should check out his tribute to President Hinckley on youtube. Also look at his website and the wikipedia article (copy and paste the links because I am too lazy to hyperlink them). He came from drug addict to Mormon, what a champ you are Glenn! Please let me be on your show!!!


President Hinckley tribute:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z58eHBnEHhk

Mitt Romney on Glenn Beck = dream team:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN36O_l9xGg&feature=related

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Beck

Glenn Beck website
http://www.glennbeck.com/index.php