Randomness.....

Here are a few things that I feel I should be "blogging" about:

CHEERLEADING......ah, cheerleading.  As most of you know, I am the cheer advisor at my school.  It is a HUGE job.  Dealing not just with cheerleaders, but cheer MOMS can be brutal at times, and extremely exhausting.  This summer I spent 4 days at cheer camp.  Of course it's outside, in a huge SHADELESS field at the University of Utah and it is pretty much the epitome of misery.  And I'm not even the one doing the cheering!  This year it was about 104 degrees everyday and I basically felt like I was having heat stroke....and then I look at my 18 girls, out there jumping, stunting, yelling, tumbling and HAVING FUN!  This proves that teenagers are truly psychotic!  Here are a few pictures from camp.....

THE FRENCHIE & LAS VEGAS.......So after cheer camp was over, I took on another week-long adventure.....I hosted an exchange student from Paris!  I was very excited to have Sixtine (yes, pronounced "Sixteen") stay with me and show her some fun things in Salt Lake City (yes, there are a few!).  My cousin's daughter, Jessica, who is 16 years old and lives in Seattle also came and stayed during this time.  Jessica is taking French in school and she was really looking forward to meeting someone from France.  We did several "American" things around SLC.....bowling, a baseball game, The Gap (which is evidently HUGE in Europe.....Sixtine wanted to go into EVERY Gap possible).  Anyway, we also went to Vegas for a few days, which was a lot of fun.  Well, at least Jessica and I had fun.  In stereotypical French fashion, "The Frenchie" was overly unimpressed with EVERYTHING America had to offer.  Yeah, whatever....or Ces't la vie......

From the top of Hoover Dam:

Frenchie is on the left (of course the only pictures she took were of the Paris casino in Las Vegas!).....my cute flesh and blood cousin is on the right....

Jess and her Boppa's mentor and master of the grill.....

PAINTING..........So, I finally decided to face the fact that the interior of my house REALLY needed a paint job.  As most of you know, I bought this home in Utah while I was here "looking" at homes over spring break.  I went back to San Diego and people asked me what I did over the break and my answer was "bought a house".....but, I digress.  Because I didn't look too closely at the paint job when I bought the place, I trusted the former owner's opinion that the interior didn't need painting.  Well, as soon as I arrived to move in, I realized it DESPERATELY needed a new coat of paint.  So, 3 years later, I paint.  Well, I didn't paint....Fred painted.  And painted.  And painted.  Fred is a 77 year old man who lives in my neighborhood and  has way too much energy for his own good.  He likes to keep busy so he does some paint jobs.  Mine was the biggest job he had ever taken on.....and he is extremely proud of the final product!  After 6 weeks of Fred basically living with me (think Murphy Brown and Elton),  he finally finished the job!  I am so pleased with how everything turned out and I almost feel as though I live in a brand new home!  It looks fantabulous!  Here is a "before" and "after" picture of the former "Golf Room" (the room had golf wall paper and a hand painted golf mural on the wall.....ugh!)

The golf mural and matching wallpaper.....ugh!

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The hideous hide-a-bed that came with the house.....nobody could figure out how it got in the room and nobody could get it out!  So, I inherited it (the previous owner inherited it as well.....)

The mural is now GONE!!!  :-)

However, the hide-a-bed remains....but the new wall hopefully makes the sofa a little less hideous!

Ahhhhh.....the power of paint!  Who knew????