Farewell Spicy Valencia

The time has finally come to say goodbye to my faithful (well, at least it has never really died on me) blue beast, the '91 Chevy Blazer, lovingly known as Spicy Valencia (my old roommate helped me come up with the name).

On Monday, Rich and I will be traveling Spokane, Washington, to spend some time with this family. While we're there, we're going to buy a car from a man in Rich's family's ward who owns a car dealership. This means that the Blazer is going back to my parents on Saturday.

This was the car I drove in high school, and then it came down to BYU with me. This really has been the only car that I've considered mine, and it's been mine for over 5 years.

And yet, I'm not really sad to see it go.

Why? Well, the picture might say enough. But, to back up my case a little better, here is a list of just a few of the things I am NOT going to miss about Spicy Valencia:

• The complete lack of air conditioning. It is the worst car to drive at 3 PM on a 97 degree day in stop and go traffic.
• Along with no air conditioning, the necessity of driving with the windows down on the freeway in the summer.
• The way the windshield wipers turn on when I signal. It always happens more often in warmer weather.
• The way one of the headlights points almost completely sideways and is threatening to fall out.
• The passenger-side speaker in the front seat only working about 25% of the time.
• The oil leak and how much oil the engine burns.

• The clear coat coming off the paint so that it looks like the car has leprosy.
• Never being able to roll down the backseat windows since the day my family bought the car.
• The window to the back hatch squeaking so obnoxiously that you just want to tear it out, also a problem from day one.
• The back seat's squeak that developed in the past year.

• The complete lack of a rear bumper. I am not exactly sure what happened to it.
• The way you run out of gas at 1/8 of a tank, or somewhere around there. It's never the same everytime.
• How the tinted windows just trap in the heat in the summer, making the car an oven.
• The glove compartment front that falls off when you try to open it. Every time.
• The spare tire sitting in the back, rather then underneath where it belongs.
• The way that it sounds like the engine is going to fall out when you go over any sort of bump, even bumps that you don't notice at all in other cars.
• The handle to roll down the window on the driver side falling off when you pull on it too hard.

This car has been through a lot. All of my siblings drove her car at some point, and it was both Tyson's and my first car. It has been backed in to a lake, driven cross country from Kentucky to Utah, towed our boat countless times, and been through who knows how many trips back and forth between Ogden and Provo. Really, it's just been a well-used Fredrickson family car. That's enough life for any vehicle. And still Spicy Valencia has not gone kaput. Rich and I are getting rid of her while we can.

She's putting up a good fight. I don't think she'll ever die.

A Little Laugh

I love finding random websites that make me laugh. It's the best. You might have noticed that some our "Favorite Links" happen to be such sites. My newest find, thank you Facebook, is AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. Always good for a laugh. Here's why I find it so entertaining.

Anyone know of any other good sites?

Happy Independence Day!

Our 4th of July weekend started early Friday morning laying sod at the grandparents Fredricksons' house. That project turned out pretty well considering that only one of our group had ever laid sod before. We finished their backyard in about an hour and a half, which is pretty good considering we thought it would take about 4. I have to say that sod is amazing. At 7 AM there was no grass on the ground, but by 9:30 my grandparents had a beautiful green lawn that looked like it had taken months to grow. It's nice to see the product of your work so quickly.

Friday night, Rich and I went out to eat with some friends of mine from high school that I haven't seen forever. Brianne Eyre and her husband Tim were up in Ogden from St. George, and we met up with Trevor Barker and his wife Blaire for dinner. It was great to see those guys again.

Friday night, Tyson and Krystle came over for the Fredrickson family fireworks show, where we all got eaten alive by mosquitoes. You should see the bites I have on my legs, my toe, my finger, pretty much anywhere they could get me.

Tyson and I have this tradition of doing a tank war with those little firework tanks. We buy a bunch of them, put armor on them (aluminum foil), put extra guns on some (taken from other tanks), and line 'em up to fight each other. We only fought with four tanks this year, and we tied. There seemed to be equal damage to our tanks.

Preparing the tanks (with cute pregnant Krystle!)

These were my tanks. I named them after Mariners' players for Rich (he thought Tyson and I were nuts).

Getting ready for war

The aftermath

We ended with a wonderful display of fireworks from Costco. Nothing too huge because they were all legal. Tyson and Rich were the official fireworks starters because they love fire. I thought it was funny when my dad realized he was missing out on the fun and went to join them at the end. We also had sparklers, on my request, because I feel it is not really the 4th of July without them.

Saturday, the 4th, started with a breakfast with my parents' ward. I felt a little goofy there because Rich and I don't really know anyone. This isn't the ward I grew up in, so I couldn't talk with old leaders or anything like that. But there was good food and fun times. I got to ride in their childrens' parade on the back of my dad's motorcycle. This consisted of a bunch of primary kids riding their bikes around. Think that's awesome? We just rode around the church parking lot. Now that's awesome. I got to throw candy to all of the adults because the children were in the parade.

Later on Saturday, Rich learned to drive a motorcycle. I was a little scared at first, especially when they were just going for a ride around the block that took like 20 minutes. My mom suggested that we call to see if they were okay. Finally, they got back, and we eventually took a drive out to Little Mountain, pretty uneventful because you have to stop at a random point in the road where it becomes US Air Force property.

Saturday night, we didn't really get to see a big fireworks show. We were just going to see what we could see from my parents' backyard, but everywhere there was a good show there was a bunch of trees or a building or a hill in the way. Oh well. There's still the 24th of July to look forward to.

Okay, that was a long post. Sorry. I'll try to keep them shorter. But anyway, hope you had a happy 4th of July weekend!