Twenty-Two, Babyyy!!

In honor of my recent 22nd birth-moment as of 2:48 this morning, I thought it’d be fun to highlight 22 of my most memorable memories (yay redundancy!), including some pertinent, and not-so-pertinent old school pictures just for kicks.  Enjoy! :) And forgive me for the massivity of this post. Yes, I just made up a new word. And I like it a lot.

1) Learning to ride my bike. (It had The Little Mermaid plastered all over it, with little sparkly ribbons coming out from the handle bars, and colored shells on the spokes!) Anyway, I remember the day my dad tried teaching me to ride without training wheels. ‘Twas one of the more frustrating days of my life. I eventually got it, but only because dad comforted me with potato chips every time I fell off. :) Psst.. Check this bike out! >>

2) Running away and blaming it on my friend. Yup, I was a terrible person. While riding my bike at my neighbor’s house, I saw my friend walking down the street. We started talking and I sorta kinda followed her all the way downtown without telling my mom where’d I’d be. (Mind you, she very had strictly told me to stay at the neighbor’s..) Mom later found me peddling along beside my friend, and so I turned on the tears and told her my friend had literally dragged me along with her by the wrist. When my mom and I got back home, I felt so guilty and apologized over and over and over again (without really telling her the truth). Mom offered me an ice pop, to which I said something dramatic, like, “But I don’t DESERVE an ice pop! I don’t deserve anything sweet ever, EVER again!” Minutes later, I enjoyed an ice pop. The blue kind. Because they are, after all, the best. And years later, I told mom the truth. She laughed. :)

3) Mom cutting my hair and giving me TERRIBLE bangs. My mom has cut my hair my entire life long, as a beauty school graduate and altogether fabulous person. BUT! When I was in elementary school, she gave me these.. << Yeah, mom, that wasn’t nice, although it was the “style!” :)

4) My parents dressing me up as an elephant and laughing at me. Yup, when I was in kindergarten, I was in a 5-minute-long Mother’s Day play, for which I played a singing elephant. While making my costume, my parents thought it would be fun to stuff my grey sweatpants and sweatshirt full of as many pillows as humanly possible, so I could barely move. Child abuse, I tell you. But mom and dad got a kick out of it. And dad fell down laughing. Sorry folks, no pictures here.

5) Finding newts in my backyard! When I was a kid, my all-time favorite pastime was exploring! And my backyard was perfect for that! I was the newt-queen! I know.. I was SUCH an awesome, nerdy kid! :)

6) Finding a huge mound of mud plopped in the corner of my garage, and finding that the mud was actually a HUGE toad. Totally made my life. Obviously.

7) Making bread balls. Recipe: 1) Take two pieces of white bread. 2) Bite off the crusts, leaving only the white part! 3) Roll the two pieces into a small, compact ball of bread with your hands. 4) Eat your bread ball. BEST SNACK EVER.

8) Winning the science fair! HOLLA!! I totally won the overall grand prize for my middle school’s science fair in the 8th grade! HUGE deal, people! I got a $100 savings bond that probably amounts to $4.75 right now! (At the time, though. I was the bomb!)

9) Getting a higher gym average than Rodney! I have never been particularly athletic. But there was this one quarter in high school, when Rodney, the king of gym class and varsity sports, and the kid with whom I’d competed my whole academic life, got totally owned by me and my gym grade. I didn’t mark it on my calendar, but I definitely could have. Very memorable. (P.S., Rodney and I are very good friends!)

10) Dressing Cam up as a girl. With makeup.. Yup, as much as some of you might think this happened yesterday, it was actually when he was 6 or 7. :) My sister Lorae and I dressed him up in a b-e-a-utiful blue dress with butterflies on it, a sweet little hair clip, and blue eyeshadow. When my parents got home, my dad was about ready to bring Cam to the hospital, since his eyelids were turning colors! When I told him the truth, he wasn’t very pleased. But I was. :)

11) Helping baby sea turtles to sea. When I was 9, my family and I went to Florida for two weeks on vacation. One late, late night, while we, along with some friends, were chilling on the beach, we looked down to find what seemed like millions of little black dots scampering towards the water. Turns out the beach patrol had missed this batch of sea turtle eggs! I got to hold them in my hands and help them to the ocean. Such a fun experience!

12) Helping dad get all the horses out of the yard. Dad woke me up one morning at 5am, absolutely freaking out. “The horses from next door – they got out! They’re stampeding all over our lawn and leaving 6″ deep hoof-marks!” Okay, he didn’t say all of that, but it was true! The next hour was spent chasing 7 horses around the yard, to pretty much no avail. Except for the fact that it was absolutely, hysterically funny, and is one of my favorite memories with my dad. :)

13) Flying as Liza in Peter Pan. So this one time, I got to play Liza, the maid, in the musical Peter Pan. There aren’t many perks to being a maid, except for the getting a free trip to Never Neverland! And FLYING there. Legit, I flew. Thanks to ZFX Flying Effects out of Los Angeles, I am one of the few people I know who has literally flown!

14) Cape Cod with Breezy. A few years back, my best friend Breezy and I road tripped it to the Cape for a whole week. It was like we were legit adults. Sorta. We stayed with family friends of hers who pampered us like long-lost relatives. Chocolate-covered strawberries on our pillows and all. :)

15) Almost dying on Sakon Road. Once upon a time, I was driving a car-load of friends back to their respective houses. One of these said friends said I should take a “short-cut,” called Sakon Road. Turns out, this road is not a short-cut for real vehicles, but rather, snowmobiles, dirt bikes, quads, and tractors. The best part about this one-lane dirt “road” was that it had rained for about 10 days prior, making for two miles of fish-tailing and getting mud caked all over our otherwise white car.

16) Catching eight fish while in the same boat as Lorae, and Lorae catching ZERO. Pretty self-explanatory, and honestly, one of the best moments in my life. :) (Don’t worry! It was funny to both of us!)

17) Getting accepted to Newhouse! Good thing, too, because it was the only school I applied to/wanted to get into. I applied early decision, and made it! I found out via a post-it note given me by my dad reading, “You’re IN!” Pretty sure I woke the neighbors that day. :)

18) Blogging ridiculously long posts that might only be fun for me. :) Yeah.. At some point, I thought this was an ingenious idea for a blog post!

19) Carving our tree. The one right outside my apartment. The one where we had to look out for campus police while carving our initials. A tree that now also says, “Marry Me?” as carved by Dylan with a knife a year later. Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty memorable. (Photo copyright Gina Meola)

20) Finding my wedding dress. Which is off-white with orange ruffles running down the sides and lime green polka-dots on its full-length sleeves. No, really. It is spectacular. I’ve almost told Dylan what it really looks like seven times already. I just can’t WAIT to wear it!!

21) Being so glad that this makes 21 memorable memories. Because I am plumb out of them.

22) Getting ready to inhale fondue for my birthday meal! Right NOW. And I’ll leave you with a recent self-portrait so you can remember my 21-year-old self. :)

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! :)