City of Champions Part III

PART III: HISTORY

We also did some history-themed activities. We went to the Lexington green, the site of the first Revolutionary War skirmish with actual battle lines and shots fired. There were only 77 colonists and 700 red coats so a few colonists died and the rest just kind of ran away after the shooting began. We had an excellent tour guide dressed in 18th century garb.

Here we are with the memorial erected in 1793 for the men who died in that first battle. There were some incredibly passionate things written. We knew they were passionate because almost every sentence had multiple exclamation points.

We then went to the Concord museum and learned more details about those first few days of the war. We watched a "multimedia" presentation, which I guess was characterized as such because there was a movie screen, use of different lighting for time of day, and voices coming from speakers in the ceiling. We drove a few blocks to the Old North Bridge, an integral part of the second battle of the Revolutionary war. It is a gorgeous spot. We realized we should have taken our engagement pictures there. Oh well, next time. Here are some pictures.
Somebody had paid this guy to be their guide, but we heard him tell those people some errant facts. I guess if you dress up in clothes of a different era you are believable. Daniel told me to make a funny face. I bet you laughed when you saw it. It may not be one of those "silly" funny faces, but it is funny.
I am really not sure what happened here. I just know it is awesome.
We also managed to make it over to Walden Pond. Yes, THE Walden Pond where Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden. I bet you recognized the name, right? Didn't everyone have a whole unit in high school English on him?
This is the spot where Thoreau lived. Daniel's feet are where the hearth would have been. The spirit of Thoreau really touched us and we had to stop and think. The truth of it is, Thoreau was actually about a mile outside of town and people say he went home to his momma's on the weekends. Poser.

My mom and I also went out to visit Westford, the town that my Fletcher ancestors hail from. Meredith and my mom have already found 2 houses still standing that our relatives lived in during the 18th century. The line of Fletchers I come from left when they got baptized and moved to Utah about 1850. There are actually still some distant Fletcher relatives living there.
Here is the church that most of the Fletcher ancestors were christened and married in. It is still in operation as a church and we went inside and looked around.

City of Champions Part II

Here is the second installment of our trip to Boston. If you don't care about the Celtics, don't read this.

PART II: CHAMPIONS

One of the best parts of our trip is that we got to be in Boston to watch the Celtics win it all! There are so many things that made the victory especially sweet (beating LA, Doc Rivers' whole story, beating Kobe, preventing Phil Jackson from getting his 10th ring, etc). Matthew has to be one of the biggest Celtics fans on the planet (he never abandoned them- last year's draft was the worst day of his life until they got Garnett) and the photo below is what he came up to show us how proud he was.

We had a photo shoot in our Celtics apparel after they won it all. We also ran into Glen "Big Baby" Davis in the Cheesecake Factory the day after the big win. He was waiting for a table and we were getting cheesecake to bring home. Daniel wouldn't let me take a picture of him since he was with his family. I guess that is respectful but I am disappointed I don't have photographic proof. Just know that I sat next to him on a bench and told him I hate Vujacic.

A few days later we went to the Celtics' victory parade. I was a little afraid we wouldn't be able to see anything since I went to the Patriots' victory rally in 2002 and waited with thousands of people for hours only to see absolutely nothing.
I guess this is me being afraid. There was no need for me to fear; we waited about 1/2 hour and then the duck boats rolled by. We could see everything and the total time from when we left my parents' house until we arrived back was only about an hour and a half.
The beginning of the parade. I forgot to pick up pieces of confetti for my scrapbook. Dang.
Paul Pierce with his Finals MVP trophy and cigar tribute to Red.
Doc! Who knows who most of the other people on the boat are? PJ Brown is at the front
This was the best picture Daniel got of Garnett with the trophy. Stupid Wyc was blocking him with the championship banner when he was facing our side of the street.
Ray Allen. He is my favorite. That's right Pollard, enjoy that win.
Danny Ainge. Now everyone loves him. Boston fans are just generally fickle. If the Celtics lose next year I am sure the press will be back to hating him.
Rondo looks like he is about 12. Oh Rajon.

City of Champions Part I

Sorry for the recent lack of posts; we have been in the city of champions, Boston, for the past week or so. To avoid my infamous long posts, I decided to break this one up into three parts.

PART I: NEWBURYPORT

Newburyport is a quaint little port city (aka incredibly expensive town with awesome old homes and a posh downtown area) in Massachusetts. We headed there for a beach trip.
The beach was very windy. We were cold. So Daniel, who hates sand, agreed to be buried. He built a wind-blocking wall with boogie boards and informed us all he was quite comfortable. *Long side note- the dramatic way my leg is bandaged is to cover an injury I received while sliding during my intramural softball championship game a few days earlier. My lower leg was swollen and covered in surprisingly painful scrapes that emitted a puss-like substance for a few days. In all the softball I played in high school I never got a scrape like it. Don't worry, it was all worth it- I was safe and it was an overthrow so I probably didn't need to slide in the first place. Too bad I got doubled off on the next play. The best news? We won the game and the much-coveted BYU Intramural Champion t-shirt. *Side note on the side note- I have some great tan lines from the bandage. My dad, who also hates sand, was so tired of Daniel bragging about how warm he was that he insisted on getting in the sand as well. We dug Daniel up and buried the both of them. See the video below.

Booker = George Michael Bluth

*If you don't know Booker, then you probably won't be interested in this post. However, if you do want to get to know Booker (which you should) then you can look at his blog linked at the right and our first few posts on this blog which were all about him.*

I have recently been watching Arrested Development and I came to the realization that BOOKER = GEORGE MICHAEL BLUTH. He looks, and I decided he acts, exactly like Booker will in 15 years. So Clargaret, your son may be in love with his cousin. (Sorry Clark, I incorrectly added an "e" to your name. I think I will only refer to you guys as the collective force of Clargaret from now on.)

Relay For Life

Last Friday we did the Relay for Life with some couples from our ward. For those of you who don't know what it is you can read more about it here. The basic premise of it is that you raise money for cancer research/treatment by walking all night. You do it in teams so only one person per team needs to be walking at any one time. Our team switched off by the hour.

Besides walking, there were multiple other forms of entertainment for us. First, there was the 2-year-old boy from our ward, Grant. He is awesome. He often calls his dad by his first name, Mike, and when he gets angry he calls him Jokey or Shortie. No one knows where he got the name Jokey, but in his mind it is definitely an insult. He also frequently calls his mother babe. Here he is entertaining us with his interpretation of what a headlamp should be used for:


Another form of entertainment was the KISS cover band. You probably can't tell from the pictures, but the lead singer was about 6'5" and had 3 inch platforms on. Daniel and Phil fought their way to the front for some great photo ops.


Daniel and I signed up for walking times of midnight and 2 AM. We each walked at the other's time so we didn't have to be alone. As we walked around the track we realized the event is a middle-schooler's dream. They could stay up all night, essentially unsupervised, with members of the opposite sex. There were groups of middle school kids walking around the track all night; most of them didn't even take a break.

All in all, it was a good experience. We left at 3 AM after we finished walking because we had a breakfast with a recruit at 9 AM that morning. It took a few days to make up the lost sleep, but we would recommend it to anyone who is considering it.

Apology to the World

*****Before reading this understand that Carly is exaggerating this a little bit. She got annoyed with me for saying she is more rude than I am and that led to this post. Anyways Carly has done an excellent job of getting back at me here. Maybe I should buy her this shirt.************

Tonight Daniel informed me that most people would describe me as a rude person. He told me that I say really rude things to people all the time whether I know them or not. How did he describe it? Ah, yes, I must not have the same social filters that most people do. I offend people constantly!

So this is my message to the world: PLEASE point it out when I say these incredibly rude things to you. I would like to know! I did not realize that I fit into a category as a "rude person", but I am trying to claw my way out of it. I know I am fairly blunt with most people and I have definitely said some rude things in my life, but I did not know it was a constant occurrence, one that happens so frequently that most would quickly identify me as rude.

One of my worst nightmares when I was young was that I would figure out I was adopted or mentally retarded and everyone knew but me. This feels a little bit like that. I apologize for being so rude to everyone! Why are any of you my friends?

Cubs Camp

I just want to start off by saying I hate the Lakers and thoroughly enjoyed watching them get beat by the Celtics tonight. I like the Celtics so it is very easy to cheer for them anyways, but the fact that they could win the championship against the evil Lakers only makes it that much better.

This week we had our first basketball camp of the summer. The difference between this camp and the camps we normally do is that it was for little kids which can make things very interesting. I was in charge of the gym of 8 year olds which was really fun because the kids get excited for most any kind of game, but at the same time it was a constant test of patience.

The hard part is the gap between those that have been playing sports and those that haven't is huge. I say this because at 8 some kids have been playing organized sports for 3 years while others are showing up at camp having never played basketball and their parents figure it would be good for them to try it out. This means that on the same team are kids that can shoot and even make 3 pointers and kids that just pick up the ball and run with it. I realized this gap in knowledge was wide when I asked a boy on my team why he just stood at half court while we were on defense and he replied, "What does guarding mean?" At that point I explained what guarding meant, but maybe I should have pointed my young friend to the highly popular clogging camp. At the same time I had a kid ask me why they weren't in the bonus yet. What eight year old knows about the bonus?

With all of that said it still is a blast to see just how excited kids get when they win a meaningless contest. It doesn't matter if there are prizes or not because they just want to win, even the clueless kids got excited about their teams winning relay races. Even though I had to say, "no dribbling while I am talking," like 1,000 times, it was still fun to coach little kids all week.