love your stug!

someone very awesome is having a birthday! do you know who it is? here is a clue: she is in this photo and it's not me.



need another clue: she is the greatest sport on earth and she's not tennis or swimming. she seriously plays along with EVERY single practical joke, stupid idea, crazy lie, creative moment that i have. here she is throwing dirt in her own eyes so i can get a very realistic action shot. (what? you don't think it looks real?)



yes, jalynn is going to be a year older tomorrow, may 14th. i don't know how other people feel about having their ages broadcast to everyone, so i won't divulge that information. honestly, jalynn, it has nothing to do with the fact that i don't know how old you are. i mean, what kind of friend doesn't know how old their nearest and dearest are? okay, you caught me. i don't know how old she is. all my friends are ageless in my eyes. i do enjoy celebrating their wonderful lives, but if i keep track of their ages it just reminds me that i, too, am growing older and that the grandfather clock that's hogging up all my internal space is slowly losing it's tock.

for those of you who don't know jalynn, here's a sort of reader's digest version (and by that i mean, really long, but touches on some of the highlights) of my relationship with her. during my second attempt at college i was living with some friends in an apartment in logan. well, within that apartment complex there was an apartment i really wanted to go into, because from the window i could see that it was literally wallpapered with tinfoil. i thought it was some sort of space/trekkie/probed-by-aliens-a-few-too-many-times weirdo's lair. so, of course i tried to break in to have a little looksie. too bad, the occupants were home. they let me in and told me i could draw on their tinfoil wall. i traced my hand, which sounds sort of boring, but i traced it in the "bird" position. turns out the girl who answered the door was my new relief society president. whoops. well, that bird was easily transformed into a peace sign...which is a dove, so that only makes sense.

anyway, one of the rs pres's roommies was jalynn. seeing as how she was not the rs pres, we had a really good time getting to know each other and we proceeded to tell every new person we met incredible lies about ourselves. there are people out there who still believe that we're half sisters who paid our ways through college by stamping the smiley faces on goldfish crackers at pepperidge farm...or selling appliances for big and friendly hooker. (which is a real appliance store, no lie.)

anyway, jalynn and i never became roommates...and i had like 38 roommates over the years, so it's strange that we weren't. she was, however, always one of my favorite friends. we have done a lot together. here are a few pictures of j and me, which will help to document our past, our real past, not our made up one:

the first time we ever really got the chance to hang out was in 1997 when a group of cambridge court neighbors took a trip to flaming gorge. it rained and rained and rained some more while we were there. we played a lot of cards and j and i goofed off a lot.



here we are hiking in the uintahs. this was such a fun/miserable trip for me. it was fun because of the company and scenery. it was miserable, because our first stop on the trip was bear lake so i wore my swimsuit. unfortunately, i forgot to pack any over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders in my backpack, so i spent a weekend hiking in a swimsuit. i was soooooooo hot, but the girls can not go without some sort of support. i didn't want to be sporting 2 black eyes on monday. jalynn was the only girl to hike to the top of the giant, rocky peak. she's so tough.



one thanksgiving we went to denver with our friend, matt. on our way back we drove through vernal and stopped at the dinosaur museum. can you say, "ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz"? it was so dark we couldn't see anything, so j and i decided to pose as dinosaurs for matt to photo. oh, and i paid to get a squished penny from the museum lobby...then, instead, it just gave me a dumb souvenir coin, not a squished penny. jerk. it did inspire me to start collecting real squished pennies, though.



in 2002 i joined jalynn and a bunch of her friends from washington on a trip to visit bob barker. we spent all dang day at the set of the price is right and none of us even got to be the next contestant. stupid, drunk frat boys and byu-recently-engagees, stole our spots. we still had fun, though. and jalynn ended up marrying the one and only boy who joined us on the trip. he had his choice of like 7 of us and he totally got that price right, he wooed jalynn, that's better than winning the final showcase.




after jalynn and brooke got married, they moved to england. so matt and i went to visit them. jalynn took us to scotland. i had never been to scotland, so it was very exciting. people in scotland are really skinny, because they have to eat hagis, so the movie theater seats were almost too thin for me to sit in, for sure i wouldn't fit now. because i don't eat meat that tastes like barf. oh, jalynn and brooke lived in a town called prickwillow. let's just say that my photos of their town sign and the one of matt by the sign for cockburn street are next to each other in my photo album. those brits are funny.




here is my all-time favorite photo of jalynn, who is now the mother of jake, the smarty-pants, and Grace, the rock-eating-princess. they don't live in england anymore, but i still never get to see them in person. they did stop by my house on their way to albucracky, once, but that was when jake was just a bebe. i sure do miss them.



happy birthday j! i will truly and forever love your stug!