Disney Princess Party

Anyone who is friends with us knows at least two things: 1. We absolutely love Disneyland, and 2. Donald Duck doesn’t wear pants. Ever. Which I find hilarious but somewhat disturbing at the same time. Have you ever noticed that if Donald loses his shirt, he instantly gets embarrassed and tries to hide? He seems oblivious to the fact that he is constantly running around without so much as a little pair of duck shorts to keep him BYU approved. Case in point: Donald unwittingly sticks his head down an anthill, and of course the little beasties suck his shirt right off. He looks straight into the camera, turns beet red, and then grabs a barrel to cover himself. You can just see him thinking, “Thank goodness for this barrel or else I’d really be pushing the envelope of children’s entertainment!” Of course he ends up plummeting down Niagara Falls anyway, but that’s beside the point. The idea that I was exposed to partial duck nudity as a child is both shocking and totally awesome all at the same time.

But that is not the point of this entry. The point of this entry is to change your life. And to do that, you need to take the following quiz: Which Disney princess are you? You may find that the results radically change your outlook on life. When Sheri took it, she ended up being the beautiful princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), which of course was no surprise:

I somehow ended up being Grubriel – a cross between Ariel (the Little Mermaid) and Bernie Grubowitz (champion of the 1974 Southwest Wyoming Intermediate Racquetball League). That’s pretty cool I guess - I get the best of both worlds. I can smack a ball as hard as I can and it gives me the excuse to wear my protective seashells…

Enjoy!
Princess quiz:
http://www.greatestjournal.com/quiz.bml?Q=16354

A Midsummer's Night Monsoon

That’s right – Monsoon season. Did you know that the word “Monsoon” actually comes from an Indian word that means, “Gary the Weeping Lizard”? Navajo legend has it that the thunder and rain are caused by a rather surly lizard on roller-skates (hence the thunder) who cries and spits its venom every which way (hence the acid burns…I mean, rain). The belief among the Indians is that the only way to stop a monsoon is to communicate to Gary through the use of sock puppets. It sounded pretty straight forward to me at first, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m either being lied to, or this “Gary” doesn’t appreciate googily-eyed socks with feathery headdresses.

Sedona Seduction

Welcome to Sedona Arizona! Lego Insider magazine once called it “The Most Beautiful Place in America”. Yes, it was very beautiful. But we disagree that it’s the most beautiful. We think it's more like, “Evidence that Arizona actually has trees. And flesh-eating tree shrews.”

As you can see, I’m so excited about being there that I can’t seem to keep my eyes open. I think I was so happy that the temperature plummeted to a nippy 107 that I was ready to curl up for a long winter’s nap inside a nearby cactus.




The city of Sedona is filled with a lot of specialty shops that we browsed through. Sheri and I have a creepy pattern to our pictures. Every time we take one of ourselves, Sheri looks like herself: cute and fun. I look like a severely disturbed cartoon character.





See?!? Even the rabid boar is afraid of me!

We did some amazing hikes while we were there. This one is considered one of the best hikes in Sedona. I'm pretty sure it's called "I peed my pants" lookout. At least that's what it should be called...stupid arch...





I can only imagine what our kids will say after they look at this picture ("Daddy, why did Mommy have a death wish?") But I'm sure I'll come up with a brilliant story about how Mommy wasn't actually on the edge of certain death, but was being protected by Glitterbright, The Enchanted Rainbow Unicorn. Kids like that kind of stuff - you know, lies. That's how people like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Barrack Obama came into existence.



This is our luxurious campsite. Just to be manly I decided that I'd sleep on a mound of rocks with no padding except for a fine layer of rusty nails and a horde of angry scorpions as my pillow. Sheri built herself a waterbed. Now that's camping!




Sheri is standing next to the last known Yellow Bongo Tree in the world. Rumor has it that by merely touching it you will instantly become pregnant with triplets. It doesn't appear to have happened to Sheri, but for some reason I've been getting some strange contractions as of late...




Yes, Mr. Smarty Pants, we are on top of a mountain. And yes, Mr. Smarty Pants, my forehead is the size of a small African country. Unfortunately I inherited it from by younger brother. Don't ask me how that works. It's complicated.



Little did we know that during our escapades we were slowly being eaten alive by either mosquitoes, spiders, or Keebler elves. I tend to believe the latter, because every time you scratched them, you got a whiff of sultry chocolate. All in all we had a combined total of...and I'm not kidding here...156 bites!!!

A Facial Hair Affair

This is me and my friend Oliver right before I moved to "hotter-than-the-devil’s-sweatpants" Arizona. Oliver is an awesome guy, and also happens to be brilliant. In fact, I once heard rumor that the other day his brain exploded. Twice.

Oliver and I recently participated in a school quiz show that was designed to be kind of like Jeopardy. In addition to winning a laminated skin sample from Alex Trebek’s bicep, we could win a free trip to Seattle to participate in the much-coveted "Optometry Super Bowl". It's a lot like the real Superbowl, except the “football” is actually “questions” that are “fielded” by a bunch of guys that have the athletic prowess of Steve Erkel.

Seattle seemed like a lot of fun to me, so Oliver and I decided that our chances of winning were greatly enhanced by sporting our new, fuzzy lady-killers. I mean, just look at my manliness! It's like I'm wearing a sexy black caterpillar that’s just waiting to be caressed. (Sheri loved it by the way. She is constantly begging me to bring it back. I told her I wouldn’t do it because too many people mistook me as the human version of Luigi)

Unfortunately, my plan had a drawback: While trying to answer the questions, I didn't anticipate that brain would spontaneously turn into nougat. I just couldn’t come up with the answers fast enough. I felt like the fat kid trying to fit into his old Osh-Kosh-B’Goshs: I knew that I should be able to do it, but something was going terribly wrong.

In the end, I took 4th out of 8. I don't think that's too bad - I ended up beating a drunk guy, two chimps, and a jar of marmalade. Don’t get too sad, though, because I’ll compete again soon. By this time next year you’ll all be reading my new book: “The Red Fury: Dave’s path to victory through the power of the mullet”.

Ghost Town Hijinx!!

That's right - a ghost town! On our way to hike Big Scary Tarantula Mountain, we stopped by this horrifyingly quaint city of the undead. It was pretty much the coolest thing ever. Just to be on the safe side, Sheri and I brought my plastic ghostbusters backpack and trapper that I had gotten as a college graduation present. Fortunately we only needed to use it once and ended up catching a rather surly tumbleweed. --Sheri and I would love to set up an optometry practice here. For fun on the weekends we can dress up as rattlesnakes and scare all the neighborhood kiddies.

--I don't know what is more scary about this picture: the "I-just-beat-up-your-mom" look on Sheri's face, or the fact that my knees look like I should have been a Ninja Turtle.

--There's just something about Arizona that yearns to be deeply respected - as deep as the infectious puncture wounds that we gladly embrace.



--I suddenly realized why Sheri had agreed to marry me


--This is exactly the type of thing I wish I had room to store (the cart, not the wife). I can think of at least 87 ways this would come in handy. Think about it: if you simultaneously broke both your legs, wanted to hitch a ride on a Winnebago, or needed protection from nuclear fallout, what other option do you have?

--This picture is entitled, "I really, really miss Disneyland"

--Come to think of it, this reminds me of some of the rides at Disneyland. Except, of course, for the fact the ride moves, there are singing animals, and you usually don't get tetanus afterwards.

--They always say, "The only way to tame a woman is to give her your heart." I think a giant bird cage is a simpler option.

--At the end of the day, we did the only logical thing to properly wish the ghosts farewell: riot! Say goodbye to your little ghost house, Spooky!

An Adventure to Remember

What do you do when the temperature outside makes a sauna sound cool and refreshing? The answer: stay inside with the A/C blasting and only venture outside once the ball of fire in the sky says goodnight! I'm not complaining about the heat but it has made us change our lifestyle quite a bit. I'm pretty sure we have degenerated into some form of caveman that only sees the light of day from a window. We try to limit the amount of time our skin is in contact with the scorching environment for fear of total body evaporation. However, we love to be active people and thrive on having numerous adventures so we tried to outsmart Mother Nature and go on a night hike this weekend. 116 degrees, no shade, and wind that feels like its coming from an oven? HA!!! We'll just wait for the sun to go down and skip the thrill of heat exhaustion.

We chose a hike that was in Tonto National Forest in Apache Junction Arizona. Haven't heard of it? I don't think Mapquest had either because it took us a lot of digging around the Internet to find it (Thanks Bryan!).

Crosscut trail is 6.5 miles one way and "well marked" ...r i g h t! The parking lot was well marked. The trail head on the other hand was a guessing game. About an hour and a half into the hike, we discovered that we had guessed wrong when the trail abruptly disappeared into a vast expanse of cacti and sage brush.

I stayed put on the end of the trail enjoying a sky full of beautiful stars while Dave dove over bushes and wrestled cacti trying to find some form of a trail. Unfortunately his efforts were unsuccessful and he returned to me slightly disappointed and transformed into a tumble weed with stickers and weeds stuck into every inch of clothing. Knowing we would have to turn back, we took a few minutes just enjoying the peacefulness of the still and tranquil desert, overlooking the city lights and feeling so relaxed and happy to be together. It was just us for miles. Not even the moon was intruding on our special moment together.

After we had soaked up all the serenity we could, we started the trek back to the car. Somehow we took a slightly different path and low and behold, ran into the real trail! By then in was after 10pm and we felt we better just continue in the direction toward the car and call it a night. When we made it back to the car we realized that we had made one wrong turn at the very beginning and that is why we never saw the real trail.

I guess it is amazing we made it as far as we did on what I will call the Meyer trail because not 10 minutes into the hike we met up with an unwelcome stranger. It was bright enough so we didn't have the flashlight on and Dave was hiking in front of me when all of the sudden he stopped dead in his tracks, flipped the flashlight onto the trail and said as he backed away, " Get back. Get back. Get back!" As he backed toward me, I saw this tarantula scurry off the edge of the trail and into a hole. Yikes! That spider was as big as my palm! I was a little spooked I admit but I didn't want it to stop me from going on. We pressed forward and just made sure we kept the trail illuminated by the flashlight from then on.

Overall, it was so much fun that we are resolved to go back. Crosscut trail has not gotten the best of us yet. We will return, and we will succeed!! Oh yes, we will...

--This post was written by Sheri. Yay for her first contribution! (The taratula really was this big, and so were my guns)

Living in Disneyland

Recently Sheri and I did something really fun. And no, I'm not talking about last week when Sheri knitted me a Superman onesie. We decided to write our own song! Yep, everything from the music, lyrics, and the backup dancing bears are all original. Take a look (sorry about the bad quality. Our classmate filmed it on her camera, but it's the only copy we've got. It's kind of like wearing the same socks two days in a row. They kind of stink, but what other choice do you have?):

We're waiting for Disney to call any minute and demand that they pay us $13 million to buy the rights to the song. So if you call and we don't answer, just realize that we are probably doing something really important with the most powerful company in the world. We'll get back to you as soon as we get settled in our solid gold castle overlooking you and your family.