RACE FOR THE CURE

Dear Blog Followers,

I think you are all well aware now that I love breast cancer. That is definitely not in question. What is in question is your attendance at the SLC Race for the Cure on May 9. If you live in Utah and you are a decent human, I should see you at the race. If you live in Utah and I do not see you at the race then you might suck at life. Yeah yeah, plans come up. Blah blah. This will help cure breast cancer people! Help cure my grammie. Online registration ends tomorrow but you can register the day of the race but its more $. For those of you who do not live in Utah you can go to the Komen website to find when a race for the cure will be going on in your neck of the woods. It is honestly one of the most empowering things you can do. Walking with thousands of people to better the world will help you believe in a cure, in humanity, and in yourselves. Please participate in a race somewhere this year. If you cannot I don't hate you. I Promise. But you can still contribute by donating to the cause at the website above.

Love, Ashley Ann

p.s. for anybody who is interested I will be doing the Raft for the Cure this summer. Look at the info HERE. Seems like fun!!!

WATERMELON CARVING

This is what Josh accomplished in my kitchen the other night. Let me be the first and probably the last to tell you that we carve pumpkins for a reason: ease. Watermelons are easy to actually cut out but the juice is continually spilling out all over. It gets quite messy. But then again you do get to eat the pieces you carve out. I am not sure whats up with the "Sloth" mouth but thats Joshy for you - just straight up strange.

QUITE CHATTY TODAY

I need to share my thoughts and feelings on many things right now so I am going to have to turn this post into a list. Thank you for your cooperation.

1. Band: I am in a band. It consists of me on the lap harp, Leslie on the flute, and Allison on the Piano. We had our first concert last night in my living room to an audience of 6. We were really amazing.

2. Goodbye: I met Leslie last year when she and I were forced to live under the same roof. One day I asked her if she wanted to come with me to pull a prank on this real douchie girl and she did. We have been in love ever since. The point of this is that she is leaving me next week for greener pastures (graduation). Good riddance Nessle. I didn't want you to stay over the summer anyway. I am not sad you are leaving. Did I convince anybody? Probably not. On this note, Alisha is leaving me also. You guys really suck. Good thing Heather came back and Jessica got into grad school or I might be suicidal.

3. Prize table: At the Jensen family Easter there was a prize table just for being there. I got some pretty great swag so thanks to the Jensens for letting me take your stuff and hang out with your daughter.

4. Race for the Cure: The 2009 Race for the Cure is on May 9. I am thinking about forming a walking team with shirts for grammie. Who is interested? FYI: there were 20,000 people at the last one and it was so much fun/sad/fun.

5. Countdown update: Just so you know my parents only have 13 fast Sundays until they come home from the mish. June 2010 or bust!

6. Spring Break: Its spring break right now in Alpine School District and its an entire week! I have never had a whole week off before but I am really loving this. When I was in school we had 3 days. And in college we had 0. If this is what Summer is like I am going to be really good at it (except the massive snow storm of course).

7. Nephew: I have a new nephew born to Mark and Lindsay on April 5. Henry Manning Horne is his name. I think he likes me but that is in comparison to how Bennett was treating me yesterday and lets just say he wasn't my #1 fan. But Henry is healthy and handsome. Now Jaimee needs to have her kid so we can have one more boy.

8. With the help of my peers I rightfully reclaimed previous property. Thank you.

9. Calling: With the end of the semester rapidly approaching I hope to get released from my calling. Is that bad to say? Probably but I have had it for two years and I want to be done. Ward hymnbook specialist please.

MORE THAN COLLEAGUES

I don't know how we came to be but we did. And it all seemed to start on day 1, my interview at Orem Junior. I can tell you what Allison and Cameo were wearing, where Kathe was standing when I first met her, how excited I got, and the conversations we had that day. Well that was just the first of many great days with these ladies. If you would have told me a year ago that I would become best friends with social studies department at OJH I probably would have laughed at you. But these ladies have become my life line. It is normal that you can do the following with your colleagues: cry, laugh, vent, share, plan every lesson together, hang out with, work out with, visit their homes, take a Fun Bus adventure with, join their fam for Easter, receive far too generous of gifts, go to the temple with, find one an amazingly well fit spouse, prank people, go on dates with, willing to give up a full time contract so I can stay at OJH, go get ice cream, and still have a professional life with? I don't think so. We have found something amazing in our department and I don't want to give it up or change it. I hate that next year has to come. I literally could not teach without them and I will not teach without them.

PICKED ME UP ONE OF THESE

My Grandma Belnap had one of these at her house when I was a little kid. I loved this thing. It was usually a battle for who got to play it. Well I was roaming Wal-Mart yesterday and saw this beauty for only $15. Can you believe it? If you are one of my Belnap cousins reading this you are probably already on your way out to pick one up because you are so jealous. I have enjoyed serenading folks with musical masterpieces like "On Top of Old Smokey," "Ode to Joy," and "Camptown Races." In addition to receiving 10 sheets of musical classics, I wrote some of my own music yesterday. I have now created more music for this awesome instrument like "For the Beauty of the Earth." Leslie and I are going to perform a duet in Sacrament Meeting with me on the lap harp and her on the flute.

FOR HEIDI

I don't like tags. I don't believe in them. I think they are a hassle. But Heidi tagged me in one of her blog posts and I obeyed because I am a little afraid of her. She has a lot of power. For this tag I was supposed to go to the "Pictures" on my computer, pick the 6th folder, and the 6th picture. I was to then post the picture on my blog, tell about it, and tag 6 people to do the same.

I will not however, be tagging 6 people but I do recommend that you go find what picture this would be. I was intrigued at least. I did cheat somewhat because the picture below is not technically the 6th picture. The real picture 6 was of me and Corey and I just absolutely was not going to let that fly so I got around cheating by deleting it. So the following is now picture 6 in my 6th folder in which hold all the great photographic memories of my 3rd year at BYU. And may I just say this was very hard for me not because I had to look at a picture of that horrible excuse for a man but because it was the 6th folder, 6th picture and I HATE even numbers.

This very random photo was taken at Shane Johnson's 26th birthday party. Shane is one of "the brothers" meaning he was my FHE brother when I lived at Liberty square plus he lived with 2 of his real brothers - hence we called them "the brothers." These men have changed my life. I love them all so here is a shout out to all of them: Shane, Daniel, and Jason Johnson, Justin, Michael, Ransom, and Billy kind of too. They would do anything for anybody, building you anything out of wood that they personally chopped down from a tree, take you camping, fix your bike, sing you clever songs, or talk to you on the phone for hours. I love them all very much.

AN EMBARRASSING TRUTH

When I had the Bells I wouldn't let my mom see what I looked like because I didn't want her to see her perfect - and favorite - daughter looking like Nancy the sewing lady on KUED. Well now that the Bells is gone I decided I could show a picture. This was taken at the junior high 9th grade dance during my second week with the Palsy. It was quite mild by this time. I am seen here with Kathe (assistant principal, mentor, mom #2, hero, angel) and Miss Allison Jensen. I feel it is necessary and okay to document at this time what I looked like. Good thing for me the only side effect today from Bells is an extremely droopy eye when I am tired. I can't always control the right eye but I don't care because by the time it closes on its own, I usually want to be asleep anyway.

WARNING: the photograph you are about to see is disturbing.

No, not really. Its not bad at all.

p.s. I had a great surprise visit from Meagan this evening. It was just neat. The end.

REJECTED BY WENDOVER & PROVO

In the last two weeks I have literally been rejected by two cities: Wendover and Provo. How is this possible? Wendover is utter trash and will take any specimen still breathing and Provo is supposed to be the place where all feel welcome. Let me start with Wendover okay.


Two weeks ago a slew of people (Josh, Holly, Allison, Kyle, Lani, Hillary, Alisha, Heather, Nessle, and my lovely self) went on the Fun Bus to Wendover. It was a great idea but like always, not well planned out. The Fun Bus was unforgettable. We played Bingo, ate great treats, chatted with great people, and had an all around great time. That was until Mary Lou (our hostess) announced that the economy was bad. How this was relevant we weren't sure. She continued on that because of this whole bad economy thing the free buffet (the entire reason we went to Wendover) closed at 10pm. We didn't arrive in Wendover until 9:30. We hustled our buns to the buffet and grabbed plate after plate of food. Just loading our tables up with crap. There was no time to enjoy the food because all of our time was spent collecting it.

I did however manage to really enjoy this (look up). After eating we quickly realized there is not much do in Wendover for a group of Mormons. After our very high stress and high calorie meal we traveled to the Nugget to enjoy some dancing. This is where we spent most of our evening until we got kicked out. After dancing we sat in the hallway under some stairs telling secrets and quietly chatting in a circle of very calm, sober, Mormons. This apparently looked threatening so 5 Wendover cops and 1 cook escorted us out the back of the casino. Wow. We quickly realized we had no where to go when we tried to re-enter through the front doors and they were waiting for us there to keep us out. Seriously? We just got rejected by Wendover for being quiet? What?? Well it really happened. The bus ride home didn't get much better when we tried to sleep at the same time drunk Linda was laughing for 4 hours straight. NOTHING is funny that long! A fight broke out on the Fun Bus around 4:30am. Things got interesting really fast. All I wanted in the world was to sleep but that just wasn't going to happen. After the most amazing night of my life I finally arrived back at the doorstep to my apartment at 6:05 am and slept until noon. I still haven't really recovered from the smell of nasty Wendover and a sleepless evening. It was however, worth it.


Now onto Provo rejecting me. I am 23. Graduated. Working full time. Single. Thats about all it takes to feel rejected by Provo and its residents. But thats not just it. We (Jessica, Heather, and I) were rejected by the dollar theatre two weekends in a row. Every movie we try to go see there is sold out. Since when does the dollar theatre sell out? I didn't think it even knew how. Each weekend we just ended up in my basement with a rental instead of the dollar. You see we try to get out in public and do social-ish things but Provo just won't let it happen. I try people, I really try. Its hard to be rejected on this level. Really hard.

On a completely random side note I need to shout out to Heather for finally acquiring a blog and Jessica for finally blogging again. Way to be good humans finally.

FAITH IN HUMANITY ESSAYS

We are studying the Holocaust right now with the 9th graders. Last week we watched a documentary on Gerda Weissman Klein, a Holocaust and death march survivor. After watching her story, I had my kids write an essay. The prompt was a) what does "faith in humanity" mean, b) how did Gerda have "faith in humanity," c) and do you have "faith in humanity." These are some excerpts from what my kids had to say:

"I personally do not have faith in humanity. I don't believe in relying on the thought that some one will be there to catch you when you fall. its more safe to catch yourself because there won't always be someone there."


"Faith in humanity isn't something that i can comprehend because it is putting so much trust in humans and our society. To me its only a dream where we can put our full faith into humanity and trust in what we know."


"I think faith in humanity means that we believe in each other. It means that trust is strong and we are willing to help."


"Gerda never ran away or gave up. She had faith that someday, humanity would change they would stop the senseless killing and stop violence. Humanity is not meant to kill or be killed."


"After what happened in the Holocaust, I don't really have that much faith. The NAZIs hurt soooo many people from their own country. I'd rather have faith in myself because I know that if you're strong you can get through anything."


"Gerda was terrified, hungry, and sick while in the concentration camp. She never gave up hope. She even found goodness and kindness in one of the German guards."