This weekend was one full of barking, wrestling, and foul smells. Yes, friends—I spent the weekend in Fillmore. Jasmine and I were invited to go up with my friend Chase to attend the missionary farewell of our friend Josh. You probably remember that I have a bunch of friends from that ridiculously tiny (and extremely smelly) town. Let’s recap to keep you updated.
I met Rendon and Clay at Freedom Academy in August of 2009. I went to their senior homecoming dance as Rendon’s date, and that’s where I met the rest of the gang. The ones I know best (besides Rendon and Clay) are Chase, Hayden, Josh, and Tristan. Also among their group of friends (whom I don’t know as well) are Nick and Gordon. Last summer, the first 6 came down and spent a few days horsing around at the sand dunes, and came over to our house for Norwegian pancakes. So that was a bonding experience for us all. At the end of the summer, Rendon moved up north for school, Clay moved to Cedar City, and the rest stayed in Fillmore. Chase eventually moved to Cedar City as well, but not to go to school.
So that brings us back to now. Josh is going into the MTC on Wednesday, so obviously Chase wanted to go home for his farewell, and he invited Jasmine and I to come with. This blog post is the story of my weekend adventures in Fillmore.
Friday:
Jasmine and I got done with classes at 1, but we didn’t end up leaving Cedar City until around 3-ish. When we got to Fillmore, we were able to get settled in at Chase’s house (that’s where we stayed all weekend) and Jasmine met his parents. We pretty much bummed around the house for most of the afternoon, and then most of the crew came over and just watched TV with us. After a long time, we decided that we wanted to do something, and the final decision was to go explore the natural hot springs that are in that area.
(By the way, I forgot to take pictures until Saturday morning… sorry!) In the end, it was me, Jasmine, Chase, Clay, Hayden, Tristan, Josh, Nick, and Gordon that went. We had to walk a little ways to get to the “hot pots”, which was kind of sucky because it was like 18 degrees outside, and I was wearing flip flops. (Don’t judge me. Chase told me to come prepared to go to a hot tub, so of course I brought flip flops.) Once we got to the hot pots, I discovered that they are definitely not as exotic as they sound. First of all, there were already four or five people there, mostly between the ages of 25 and 40, and they were all slam blasted drunk out of their minds… it was actually really funny to hear them talk. Other than that, the whole thing was covered in moss and other various mystery slimes and it kind of smelled weird and the fact that it was dark made everything so much creepier when something touched your foot… but it was still a way fun excursion. (: I was very worried about the trek back to the truck, considering I was wet on the way back. Somehow though, I managed to make it back.
When we got back to the house, I realized that I’d left my intended pajamas laying on my bed in Cedar City, so I had to borrow a pair of pajama pants and a Millard (yuck) Track & Field shirt from Chase. I’m not sure if he knows it yet or not, but I have no intention of returning those pants. They’re just too comfy. (: Anyways… thus ends Friday.
Saturday
Saturday, I was woken by Jasmine’s voice saying softly “Jennifer, Chase’s mom made us breakfast if you want.” I’m pretty sure I mumbled something incoherent, and instantly fell back asleep. What felt like 3 seconds later but was apparently 15 minutes, I was woken again by Jasmine’s voice—this time, not so soft—saying very excitedly “JENNIFER! GET UP! THERE’S BACON!!!!” It wasn’t so much the volume of her voice that really woke me up as the pitch of it. (Jasmine gets really excited about bacon…) So that’s how my day started. Also, throughout the entire day, Jasmine was constantly spewing out ridiculous, very quotable lines. The following is a (pretty much) complete list of “You had to be there…” Jasmine-isms from Saturday only:
-It's goblehbleh!
-I think there's a movie called the Spawn of Saintan...
-You owe me for being so awesome!
-Eww Jennifer... he has feet!
-WAAAAIT.
-I shanked you!
-JENNIFER!! You look SOO cute!!! (This one you really had to be there for)
-WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BE LOOKING AT???!!!
-What is happening??
-What am I supposed to do??!
Yeah… it was entertaining. Anyways, we had plans to go to Salt Lake later in the day, but we couldn’t leave until Hayden got off work at 3, so we just hung out at the house all morning. Jasmine, Chase, and I watched some movies for a few hours until we decided we should start preparing vehicles for our journey. I thought we were just going to put gas in Chase’s truck, so I didn’t even bother getting dressed. Turns out though, we had several errands to run, including going to the grocery store where Hayden works to get the keys to his van, and vacuuming out said van. So I got to run around all over Fillmore wearing a tank top with a nice coat over it, some oversized men’s pajama pants, my nice Rocketdog boots, and Chase’s foam trucker hat… I looked awesome.
Eventually, we got everything done, we went back to Chase’s house, I actually got ready, and the time finally came for us to head to Salt Lake. Rendon didn’t see much point in driving ALL the way down to Fillmore from school on Friday, driving ALL the way back up, coming back to Fillmore AGAIN that night, then driving BACK up to school on Monday. So we just decided to meet him in Salt Lake, then have him drive back that night, and then he’d just go back to school on Monday. So I rode in Hayden’s van with Jasmine, Chase, Hayden, and Tristan, while Clay, Josh, and Nick rode in Clay’s car.
The drive to Salt Lake was fairly uneventful. Unless you count the fact that we drove about 15 miles going 11 mph due to some construction on the freeway, so we didn’t exactly make it in time to meet Rendon when we said we were going to meet him. We ended up deciding to just meet him at the car expo that we were planning on going to.
And yes. I just said car expo. If you don’t know these boys, here’s something you should know: they’re all really into cars/ATVs/motorcycles/anything with an engine. So as Jasmine, Tyler (Rendon’s friend that he brought down with him for the weekend) and I walked around and looked at the shiny cars, all the guys were drooling over the insides of the new trucks. Rendon actually went so far as to teach me some stuff about cars… I’m not sure how much of it I retained. Mostly I just remember the phrase “travel shock.” And I think that’s about it.
One thing they did have there was a van advertising a certain brand of speakers. They had two people at a time get in this van (which I’m pretty sure was made up purely of subwoofers) and they played some very bass-heavy songs. They actually provided ear protection, just in case. They also pointed out the Panic button in case it “got to be too much”… yikes. /: I’ll let you judge from this picture approximately how loud it was…
Once we got done at the car expo, it was the unanimous decision that I was hungry. Well… alright, I guess everyone else was hungry, too. Chase has yet to get over the fact that I get extremely lucky every time I go to Olive Garden, so he demanded we go there so I could “work my magic” and get everyone free food. Sheesh… talk about pressure. /: Anyways, so we went to Olive Garden, and no, I did not get anything for free. BUT. I only ordered soup, salad, & breadsticks, and the waitress told me that my soup would be brought out with everyone else’s entrees, even though everyone else who got a soup as a side would have theirs out in a few minutes. I was kind of upset about that. But when she brought out everyone else’s soups, she accidentally made one extra, so I got my soup like 15 minutes earlier than I was supposed to! So even though I didn’t get anything for free, per say, I still got pretty lucky. (:
It was a close call, but everyone made it out of Olive Garden alive. A few of the boys got the Tour of Italy, and Italy came extremely close to winning. But the boys conquered, and celebrated the victory by eating some chocolate cake. Does anyone else think boys have zero brain power? Anyways, we made it back that night safe and sound. Everyone came over to Chase’s house hoping to catch the end of some race that they were all following, but I guess we just missed it. Instead, Clay decided to try on one of Chase’s dad’s old prom tuxes. Since Clay is a good friend of mine and I fear for my life if I posted it, I won’t post the picture that I have of him in it. Let’s just say… it was a little snug. And very baby blue. And extremely polyester. And I’ll let you do the rest of the math. (:
Sunday:
After such a late night, it was kind of rough getting up early enough to not only get ready for church at 9, but be there early so that all the friends could sit together on one bench. This is a “congratulations” to Jasmine and I for getting ready in under half an hour. We’re awesome. Anyways, we ended up getting the whole back row to ourselves for friends of Josh, which was kind of fun. I was sitting between Rendon and Jasmine, and whenever it was time for a hymn, I shared a book with Rendon. He and I both sing the parts written into hymns, and after the meeting, his friend Tyler told me that he quit singing after the first song because he liked hearing mine and Rendon’s voices together. That comment made me miss X-Press an awful lot, but it also made me feel pretty good. (:
As for the talk, Josh did a really good job. He’s a really quiet guy, so he was extremely nervous about giving his talk in front of so many people. At the end, he kind of started choking up, and as I looked up and down the row at his best friends, I saw that a lot of them were tearing up as well, and some of them were actually crying. It was really touching to see how much these boys care about their best friend, but it’s also good to see how much they love each other.
After sacrament got over, everyone headed over to Josh’s house to help his mom get all the food together and get it ready to take over to the senior citizen center, where the lunch was to be held. However, she pretty much had an army of helpers, so we ended up shifting over to the senior citizen center just to get out of the way. The lunch was AMAZING (carne asada tortillas… mmm), and the company was pretty good as well. (:
Once we were stuffed, Chase took Jasmine and I back to his house, where we all crashed on the couch while watching Transformers. At like 3:57, Chase woke us up by reminding us that his grandma had made dinner for everyone, and we were supposed to be at her house at 4. Thank you, Chase, for the heads up. /: So once again, I stuffed my face with some ridiculously delicious food that was not even close to being fixed for me. Goodness… I’m such a mooch. /: haha
After our second dinner, we reverted back to our natural positions on the couch. Around 6 or so, I got a text from Rendon saying that his family was going to play some games, and did we want to come over and play with them? It took some convincing for Chase (he almost let me drive Jasmine and I in his truck over to Rendon’s house just so he wouldn’t have to get dressed), but we ended up going to the Shields’ house to play Phase 10. That family is so much fun. (: Obviously I’ve known Rendon for a while, but I’ve also been friends with his little brother, Dallin, for about a year or so. I met his parents when I went up for their homecoming dance last year, and have seen them at other various competitions and events since then. However, I did get to meet his older brother, Aaron, for the first time. Turns out his family gets almost as ridiculous during card games as my family does. (:
When everyone got burnt out (and by “everyone” I mean “Rendon’s dad”) of Phase 10, everyone kind of went their separate ways. Jasmine asked about the likelihood of getting a tour of Fillmore, and we decided that wouldn’t be a bad idea. So me, Jasmine, Chase, Rendon, and Tyler all piled into Chase’s truck and we drove around for like an hour and a half exploring the back roads of Fillmore, Utah. By this point, we had decided there wasn’t much point in going back to Cedar a day before we needed to, since there was no school on Monday. Jasmine and I are professionals at overpacking, so we happened to have enough clothes to last us one more day before we left. This being decided, we thought it’d be fun to go exploring on four-wheelers the next day. With that plan in mind, we decided we were all beat (why, I’m not sure. All we’d done pretty much the whole day was eat and sleep.), and headed back to Chase’s house and called it a night.
Monday:
I woke up around 10 to Jasmine telling me that Rendon was at the house. I took that to mean “Hurry up and get dressed, we’re leaving soon.” So I didn’t even bother taking a real shower or even really getting ready. I took a quick rinse-off shower, pulled my hair up, put on the bare minimum of makeup, and got dressed. Little did I know it would be another 3 hours before we left, due to the fact that Chase’s gas tank got flooded with water over the winter and wouldn’t stay on, so we ended up having to borrow his grandma’s Polaris. Also, he and Rendon had a GREAT time trying to bolt down a seat in the back of the Rhino so that someone could ride back there. It was entertaining at first… then extremely boring.
Finally, we were ready to go. Jasmine rode with Chase on his grandma’s four-wheeler, while Rendon, Tyler and I rode in the Rhino. I’ve gone offroading with Rendon before, and it was… an adventure. I was pretty excited for this excursion. (:
The ride was SUPER fun. The mountains in that part of the state are very different than what I’m used to, but they’re pretty in their own way. Also, there was a bunch of snow left on the ground, so that made things interesting. Jasmine and Chase got SOAKED from the knees down, but the Rhino’s half-doors kept me fairly dry. Also, I hadn’t come prepared with appropriate shoes for four-wheeling, so I had to borrow a pair of Chase’s shoes. And a jacket. So I wasn’t too worried about getting wet/muddy. (: Eventually though, Rendon and Tyler had to head back up north, because it’s a pretty long drive to where he’s going to school. After he left, the remaining three of us didn’t have much left to do except say ‘bye to Josh one more time, then head back to Cedar City.
Overall, the weekend was definitely a success. I had SO much fun hanging out with my Millard boys… but then, when don’t I have fun with them? This was the most I’ve ever done in Fillmore, but that’s probably due to the fact that I spent 4 days there. I plan on spending another weekend there in a few months when Hayden prepares to leave on his mission (fun fact: Hayden is a very tall, kind of pale-ish redhead that is going to be serving in the Philippines… tell me that didn’t make you giggle to visualize), so I hope that one will be as much fun, if not more.
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