Closing Out the East Coast

Family. Isn't it about time? As I get closer and closer to leaving DC, I realize that I'm not just leaving a place...or even good friends...I'm moving away from all my maternal extended family. Nanny. Pappy. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. A million and one cousins. Family. Acceptance and belonging just because I exist and for no other reason. This weekend, I went to the Fultz family homestead for a painting party. My brother, Ian drove up from South Carolina to see my mom and sister who had just arrived by car from Cali. We ate, we worked, we cleaned, we partied...we made fun of a crappy talk in sacrament meeting but only after we quietly and reverently participated in the sacrament. It reminded me of everything good about my family. And I cried a little. Of course. Because that's the other thing we Fultz's do.

Three sisters and a cute nanny.

Two sisters and a cute nanny.

Meg and Me. We've always been totally different in our personalities, but that's the amazing thing about sisters...different doesn't stop the love. And look at our eyes! One and the same. Just like our momma's.Aunt Kathy and Great Aunt Katy...Kathy gave me my childhood nickname and Katy took me shopping for my very first NEON outfit. Those are some awesome legacies of love.
One granddaughter and a cute pappy.

And then there is the matter of my other family...these girls. I don't know if it's a function of being single for so long or if it's because I've lived away from my biological family for so many years, but my friends have truly become my family. I've been so lucky here in DC to find such an immediate and perfect for me family.

Thanks for making me laugh so hard that I had to get up and run around the room and then massage my face. No matter what happens, you will always be one T behind....

Thanks for lending me your babies and letting them build crusty baby ponds in our firepit...

Thanks for travelling hours upon hours to eat cookies and play dress up with me.... (not that you'll ever read this, lizzie)

Thanks for serving with me and giving my 14 year old dating advice (which sadly applied almost every time)....

Thank you for teaching me and letting me love you....

Remembering the War

Do you know how life affirming it is to discover you aren't the only one who always wished they had dressed up in fake costumes at an amusement park for those old-timey pictures?

$75 dollars and 15 minutes later.....

It's a Hershey Chocolate World!

I have always loved amusement parks. In fact, when I was a kid growing up in NEPA (that's northeastern Pennsylvania for the un-schooled), there were few things that really signified summer like the nearly annual Hershey Park trip. My brothers and I had a paper route that my mom basically did for us (driving us around with the station wagon tailgate down so we could hop out and toss the papers strategically on porches, flowerbeds and roofs) so that we could earn enough money to go to the place where streets smelled like chocolate and the lampposts were large wrapped and unwrapped chocolate kisses. (Please see below and imagine a young impressionable NB believing it when her evil older brothers told her that those were REAL Hershey's kisses...daydreaming about climbing the pole in the middle of the night and digging my teeth directly into the base of the chocolate lamppost and then falling down fully satisfied with a chocolate face into a cloud of marshmallows...)

When we were too poor to get into the actual park, my family would go to the considerably cheaper (re: free) Hershey Chocolate World, where you get in a little train thing and ride along as they show you how they make the chocolate. I can't do the experience justice here, but just know that there is a nut roaster that actually feels HOT when your traincar goes through it AND big vats of what, to a child, appears to be real chocolate syrup.

ONe of my to-do's before I left the east coast for the west again was to go to Hershey Park. I dragged my roommates and friends with promises of water parks and roller coasters and that reality defying NUT ROASTER...and you know what??? Hershey Park did NOT disappoint us.

In fact, when we discovered that there was a redrobin right next to the park, we dubbed this THE BEST DAY EVER...and it kind of was. Here are a few pictures to prove it.

Bottomless Fries? Never-Ending Roller Coasters? This is a beautiful world we live in.

Just about to go on the tour in our little train bucket thingy....Patti particularly liked the singing cows during the Hershey Chocolate World Exhibit. At the end of the ride, they give you a free hershey bar and then dump you out into a marketing nightmare...millions of hershey paraphernalia and the smell of chocolate being pumped in through the air ducts to lull you into a buying frenzy. As a kid, this part was torture because you always wanted to buy the Worlds! Largest! Hershey! Kiss! but your mom (my mom) was smartly ushering you (me) through the gift shop with pursed lips and a hell no! look on her face.At the park, we discovered Sharyn's gift for ride hopping...She would get off the ride and then skulk around on the other side watching for empty seats at which point she would just jump right back on. Three or four rides in a row later, she'd come bounding out of the exit more excited than a 3 year old who got an M&M for potty training success.
Me and the girls.

There's another surprise picture that I have scan in...so watch for it soon.

Breaking Up with Work

I'm moving to Provo UT to attend BYU. There. I said it. I haven't been able to tell you this until now - not because of embarrassment (harrrumph!) but because I hadn't told work yet and I didn't want it discovered by an unassuming co-worker who was trying to find my rad youtube video of me flaring my nostrils to jingle bells. But today the deed is done. Work knows and so everyone can know.

I'm very excited and will tell you much much more than you ever wanted to know about my new life in Happy Valley.

I have things to say about:
my program (mass communications. That's like talking....to a LOT of people)

my social plans (the cougar cougar project begins September ONE. Know any 21 year olds looking for a sugar momma?)

my new digs (any chance that you know of a cool loft-ish one bedroom in a place that was basically BARFED into existence in 1962?)

my new geography (well not really that new...remember that whole Salt Lake thing? I mean, how DIFFERENT can Provo and SLC be???!!! she asks innocently.)

my impending move (mom is coming. Buying a roof rack for Ray. Trying to reconcile the thought of YET another cross country, shove it all in the back of my- car experience.)

my impending reconciliation with my STUFF that has been in storage for three years (dishes! BOOKS! paintings! chairs!)

my new crush.

You say you want a Stadium of Fire???????? Coming soon, provo...coming soon.