Croatia here I come!

I have put this off for far too long. I am going to head back to the land of my mission next spring. The plan is to go on a Mediterranean cruise that begins in Venice, goes to Croatia, The Greek Isles and Turkey. I can’t think of a more perfect trip. I will probably extend my trip a week and travel through Croatia.

Isn’t it beautiful? Let me know if you are interested and I will give you more details.

Jennifer Mosher

I just want to give a shout out to my girl J-Mo. This is because she is a rock star. Fourteen Years ago she was in a car accident and she suffered a traumatic brain injury. She was recently nominated as Utah’s Inspiring Woman of the Week on KJZZ TV. She is going to be Interviewed live August 19th on channel 14 between 9 and 10 am. She has been working on writing about her accident and injury and hopes to have it published soon. It is titled THE SMILE ON MY FOREHEAD. You can read more about it by going to her blog. http://www.thesmileonmyforehead.blogspot.com/

I suffer from Grasshopperphobia

This weekend for the 4th of July I went to Park City. It was a great time with plenty of good friends and things to do. At one point we were walking in on some trails to get to the Jordanelle Reservoir and there were some grasshoppers jumping around. I remembered that I suffer from grasshopperphobia. It may seem a little strange but I have had too many bad experiences with them. Growing up we lived right next to a field with tall grass that was filled with the nasty things. Often when I would walk into our back yard as I would step down three grasshoppers would jump out of my way. I can’t remember if I ever had the courage to touch them, if I did it was only the babies. I had bad experiences growing up that I can’t even believe really happened these days. Like the time that I was about 5 or 6 walking on a trail in the field with my sisters and a grasshopper jumped in my mouth. I don’t know what my mouth was doing open. Perhaps my jaw just dropped as I saw it jumping towards me. I was trying to blow it out using all of the air in my lungs, but that didn’t work and I quickly realized that I was going to have to inhale at some point. Finally it turned around on my tongue and jumped out. What would you do if this jumped in your mouth? Then a year or so later there was the time I was playing outside with some “friends” and a girl I didn’t know very well put one down my shorts. I proceeded to moon everyone around until I was assured that it had gotten out.

My sister’s share these feelings of mine. One of my favorite stories was when Cate was a nanny for a girl who said to her, “Cate what is that on the bottom of your sock?” You guessed it, It was a flattened grasshopper that must have been in her shoe when she put it on for the day. She had been walking around all day as it's bodily fluids began to dry and adhere to her sock and she never realized it. The sock of coarse went into the trash, because Cate couldn’t bring herself to save it. Cate just reminded me of the time she was rollerblading around Lake Harriet and there was a (in her words) HUGE grasshopper in her path. She pretty much crashed and burned to avoid the thing. These are just a very small percentage of the wonderful tales that I have stored away in my mind that will prevent me from ever having a fondness for the unpredictably jumpy grasshopper.