Jerry brings out the giddy in me.

You know those really embarrassing moments when you do something, well, embarrassing, for lack of a better word. I had one of those moments tonight. I haven't updated my blog for quite some time, so what better way to start then by telling an embarrassing story, right?
This is also probably one of those "you had to be there" moments, but I will do my best to illustrate the event for you.

So tonight was just full of funnies and giggles. I don't remember a time I wasn't laughing my head off. I can only recall one other time in my life when I had laughed so much the entire day that I ended up with a massive headache, much like tonight. So my friend and I attended the Jazz game. It started out really fun. And then got hilarious. As time passed and as we got tired from laughing and having a good time, I think we got a bit loopy. We talked about all kinds of things, from getting CTR tattoos on our backs all the way to dropping out of med school to start a career being an officer in charge of crowd control. Random, but way funny.

On our way home right before entering the freeway, we stopped at a traffic light. I don't know why, and I'm sure many people are the same (ooooor maybe I'm just a weirdo), but when a car pulls up along the side of me, I have the natural tendency to look over to see who's going to be my traffic light neighbor for the next minute or so. So a car pulls up in the lane to the right of us, and I look over and think, 'Holy cow, I know this guy from somewhere. Maybe a TV ad? Teacher from high school? One of my friends' dad?' ...Then I realized, it was Jerry Sloan! This all went through my head in a matter of milliseconds! So being the spaz that I am, I started rapidly tapping my finger on the window, POINTING at Jerry, trying to tell Colby it was Jerry Sloan! I was so shocked that the words coming out of my mouth weren't making any sense. Just total gibberish. "...OH MY! Its! Thats! HEY! Look! Its its its its!!!" And then I noticed that...Jerry is looking straight at me while I'm still pounding my finger ever so rigidly against the window in his direction, and I probably had the most shocked/excited/flabbergasted/I've-just-seen-a-movie-star/spastic fanatic's look on my face. Then. I realized what I was doing. I'm thinking, '...oh. my. gosh...I look like the biggest idiot right now!' Oh Mari. The things I do without thinking...How pathetic. So I crouch over to Colby and try to nuzzle myself under his back/arm attempting to hide, just utterly embarrassed that Sloan caught me pointing at him like a freak. Oh my gosh, and it didn't help that the traffic light was refusing to change to green!!! I had to sit there looking like a fool so Jerry could get a better look at the dumb bum spaz next to him. I didn't have the guts to look back to see what his reaction was, but Colby later told me Jerry was just staring in awe with a confused face at what just happened...pretty sure not many can say they've experienced that. So yep. Basically Jerry and I are tight now. We have a unique friendship.

oh geez.

...But it made for some good laughter to add on to our already sore diaphrams for the drive home. Definitely a great way to end a fantastic night!!

[[*Go JAZZ*]]

Do not be decieved by the power of the sled...

Sledding. It seems like such a simple activity, right? When I think of sledding, I picture friends and family getting together on a sunny winter day, going to a hill at a park, maybe some random dogs just frolicking around, big smiles on everyone's faces,...you know! The whole shabang!

...Yeah, that wasn't the case. When you get with the right crew it is an entirely different sport. This past Thursday, a group of us decided to go sledding up at Deer Valley. When they said sledding I thought, okay, let me just grab my coat and mittens and we'll be on our way...we get to Kevin's house and, holy cow, I was SO unprepared. This kid is intense. He got out boots, snow pants, ski jackets, hats, snow gloves, goggles--the whole enchilada! Kevin's dad even told us to gear up with helmets and such...he wasn't kidding! I had no idea we were going extreme sledding. And let me tell you. It. was. EXTREME. Pretty sure we were breaking some sort of law sledding at the resort, but hey, you only live once, right?

We got up to the top of the resort and walked out onto the slippery slopes with our sleds. Usually, the hills I go sledding on end in about 15 seconds, IF THAT!...I had no idea what I was in for. I couldn't see the end of the hill! So, of course, being the little girl that I am, I decide to wait for the other two people to go first so I could watch them, just to give me some comfort in knowing I could make it out alive. And naturally, they biff it in the first 10 seconds. GREAT!! So much for that idea.

There's no turning back now! Its Denzil's and my turn. I'm already scared outta my PANTS, and it didn't help that we didn't even have a real sled. Yep. We were on the boogie board!! So who knew if that was going to be stable or not. We hop on the board and start bookin' it from the get-go. We pass up the other two and zoom right under the bridge, barely clearing the cement wall on the side, fly past a few bushes and trees, clear a couple ski posts...From then on, its all a blur to me, we were zooming like rockets! My face was covered in snow from our feet trying, and never succeeding, to slow us down. It felt like eternity till we got to the bottom of the slopes. Finally, we came to a stop...

oh. my. gosh. THAT RIDE WAS UNREAL! WHO'S UP FOR ROUND TWO!!

I have to admit, as scary as that was, I'm so glad I did it. Now I can cross "defying death" off of my life's to-do list. ;)

Unfortunately, the next part of the story gets a little scary. I would play 20 questions for you to guess what happened next to make it a little more exciting, but since this is a one sided blog, simply telling the story will have to do.

So. Round two. Same routine. We get to the top of the hill, hop on the sleds, and take off. This time, we weren't as smooth. The very last hill we went over was the steepest, but we handled it pretty well the first time, so we figured, Hey, piece of cake! Denzil and I lifted up our feet to give us more speed, but as we got closer to the end, our speed was getting to fast to control. Immediately, we threw our feet and hands down to slow us down. We got lucky and stopped right at the edge of the slope. If we had gone any further, we'd have slipped down into a gully of trees. Both of us turn around to see where Malorie and Kevin were...I saw them, and instantly, I knew this could not end good. They were going way too fast to control. Before I could even blink, they were airborne and had flown into the trees. I can't even describe how scared I was. We jumped up and saw they had both landed quite a ways away from each other. Fortunately, neither of them got knocked out, but Kevin got banged up a bit. While he was midair, he hit his head on a tree and sort of ricocheted off onto another tree hitting his leg. I was just completely shocked at what had just happened, and didn't know what to do. Mal finally got up and crawled over to Kevin and saw he was bleeding pretty bad from his eyebrow and couldn't walk on his leg. He kept saying he thought he broke his femur. Oh heavens, it was scary. We got everyone down to the car and drove to the hospital to get Kevin checked out.

Can I just say, I hate the emergency rooms. It took so long to just get him past the front desk, even with blood completely covering one side of his face (sorry, that was a bit graphic...). Unbelievable. What's more, Kevin kept saying he didn't need this but they decided to take another 5 minutes to strap him into their little stretcher guy that they'd be taking him out of in the next 5 seconds. I mean, I understand they were taking precautions, but come on. So from then on, we just sat and waited for results. Turns out he just needed stitches and his femur had a deep, deep bruise. It could have been so much worse, so we were all really thankful for that. (I just feel bad it happened right before their wedding!! Yikes.)

Moral of the story is, do not let the simple activity of sledding deceive you.

Seriously.