Forevergreen Matrix Idol Audition

So, convention is coming up at work and we're having a special night for our "Matrix" guests. We are having Matrix Idol and are allowing distributors to send in auditions for the big night in March. We have had a few, but still need more people to get auditions in. So, I came up with the brilliant idea to do my own audition and send it out to the distributors in the field to make an impression and peak their interest. This will also be posted up on our corporate website soon. Right now it's just on YouTube. Man, oh man... I'm a dork! I can't believe it's public.

My quarterly update...

Ok Ok... I know, I'm not a good blogger anymore. I started out going strong and it's drastically trailed off. I keep making notes here in a "blogging draft" of things I want to write about and then about this time of night when I think actually updating it, I'm too tired. So... here it goes. :) Maybe I can TRY to put it in a nutshell. I always try to shorten it, but I tend to keep writing.

My little brother Robby has an announcement. He and his girlfriend Amanda are going to have a baby. We are so excited for them. I don't have all the scoop yet but he emailed me tonight and I need to call him tomorrow. ***update since i wrote this is that they are having a boy. they just found out last week. robby visited last night and it was good to have him here.

My friend Heather at work had her baby. It is a mixed baby, part black, and is soooo freaking adorable. Heather works with me. She is one of those friends that has become really close to me, really fast. Have you ever had one of those friendships that feel oddly inspired? It's one of those kind.

Violin Update- Wow. I'm really bad at practicing. I'm not getting through the music to quickly. My little sister Emily started violin way after me and she might even pass me up. (sigh) I need to really make it more of a priority of time if I ever expect to get any better.

Piano Update - I'm actually getting so much better at reading notes, its amazing. It's only taken me my entire life. :) Right now I'm learning a new Jim Brickman song. He is my all time favorite pianist.

My sister Holly in NM had her baby. It was a little girl. Holly and I are talking again, so that is nice to correspond again and no what is going on with eachother.

My Utah Dad (Kerry) has just gone through the temple (in January) and from what I've heard, has made it to the temple every week with my grandparents since. I am so proud of him. He has changed everything around in his life and I look up to him for that.

I was going to go on a trip to Vegas to see Jenya in January and didn't end up going because I had a new roomie move in, her name is Chauni. She is still living here, but to tell you the truth it has been a struggle since then. I also had another roommate move in at the first part of march. That is also becoming a struggle. One of them is always sick or at least thinks she is and the other one I think is lying to me a lot about her life... and about stuff that doesn't matter. I'm thinking of ways to get them out and get other ones in--- GOOD ones. Is there such a thing as good roommates?

I was working out with Angie 3 times a week and that trailed off as "life" happened. However, I have lost 20 lbs since January. Ive been really bad the last couple of weeks at working out. I went hiking with my new boyfriend, not NOT boyfriend anymore, and fell on a rock RIGHT on my tail bone. Ouch! I've been carrying a donut around with me for the most part. I feel like I should be in a retirement home.

I went to SuperCross (dirtbike racing) last weekend in Vegas with Scott, my now ex-boyfriend. We stayed at my friend Jenya's house. It was good to see her because it's been so long. We went to Hoover Dam with Jenya and Preston. I forgot my camera in the car so I still need to get pic's from from Preston's phone cam. SuperCross is awesome! The smell of the gas, the dirt, the sounds of the engines... gotta love the dirt bikes. Here's a couple of pic's we took there. Love my new SX hat? Cute, huh?

This is me and Scott in front of the SuperX track. We are whited out. :( Sad.

Speaking of dirt bikes, I actually got one about a month or two ago. My grandpa gave me one of his old ones because he was going to sell it. It is really old and I mean REALLY old. It's a Honda 126 TL 1976. It still does what it needs to do though. I love it. Next year I want to get a new one with my tax returns, but this will be good for me to learn on.

WORK--- work is going good. Our main product is a marine phytoplankton drink. We are doing an incentive trip for distributors to go to the Sea Farm in Canada next month where they farm the marine phytoplankton and I found out that I get to go. Yay! We are staying in Victoria which i hear is beautiful. Plus we're staying in the Marriott on the bay harbour, then the sea farm is in Van Couver. I'm looking forward to it.

DATING----recap of things since January...fell in love with my best guy friend and got turned down (I'm obviously giving you the extrememly short version and I'm sure Nate would appreciate that). I knew that it would go no where sadly because of where Nate was at in his life, however we have still remained close friends. Here are a couple of pic's of Nate.

Started dating so many people I didn't know what to do with myself and it seemed to be one drama after the next. One weekened I actually booked 5 dates, day dates and night dates... That was a stressful weekend.

In January I went out with my first non member with really, really low expectations of even being interested because I'm not usually interested in anyone I go out with and ended up hitting it off with him right away. Long story short, we've dated ever since til it ended up exclusive and then when reality set in, we actually just broke up tonight. Nothing bad, just don't see where it can go in the long run when our view points are so different. Kind of sucks. Here is a couple of pic's of him/us. He is a Karate Instructor and has his own dojo in Layton. The first pic is of him and one of his students. So cute! One of the things that won me over with him.

Also, I think I want to write a book about my life... but, seeing how I am so awesome at blogging it might be a pipe dream. :)

My Sister Ev... :)

Ev & Tara at Los Hermanos before her and Brad got married. I think this picture was taken in December sometime.

Fondue Party

We had a girls get together in December at my house. It was fun. We just talked, mingled, made fondue, tapioca and Christmas Bark that was egg nog flavored. Below, Mom, Me, Kiley, Emily and Samantha.

Tara & Laura

Jim Brickman Concert

Ok. I look totally chubby in this picture. Yes, I'm totally aware. But, I had to put it up cause I went to the Jim Brickman and Colin Raye concert in SLC when they came for the FM100 concert. Jim Brickman is my favorite pianist. He is awesome. I went and saw him in concert at the beginning of the year at Abravanel (sp) Hall. He is seriously amazing. And then Colin Raye is a famous country singer that I loved in high school. I went up by myself on my lunch break one day to see them at the mall they are now tearing down across the street from Temple Square. :( Then I met Nate for lunch at this pizza place on 21st south and state street in slc. If you haven't eaten there, you should. Yum! It's called, "The Rusted ..something" I can't remember now. But you should try it.

Vegas Baby!

As I was looking through my pictures, I remembered that I went to Vegas for the weekend not too long ago to visit Jenya. Too bad that I got there and got sick. We ended up watching Laguna Beach for 7 hours while I layed there sick on Saturday and ate Bubble Bread and managed to get up and get ready to eat out at The Cheesecake Factory. My Fav! It was still fun though. We used to do stuff like that everyday, but now she is oh so far away. :( (sniffle sniffle)

Mayzie and Franklin playing. Frank is all worn out with his floppy tongue hanging out. They are so fun!

Jen lives right off of Las Vegas Blvd, so everything is really close to her house. The night I got there we went out to eat at Pei Wei and then we went and saw the "Dualing Piano's". You write pretty much any song down on a piece of paper... and song you can think of, and request it with a tip attached. Then they play and sing it together. It was amazing to me that they knew all of these songs. How does someone know that many songs. They played for 4 hours rotating one guy out every hour. I was very impressed. Except for one of the piano guys was creepy and had a really creepy smile. He kept turning around and staring (and NOT inconspicuously) at Jenya. When we got up to leave he ran after us and when he figured that Jenya was married, (because she started talking about "her husband"), he turned to me... Ewww. We hurried and just left. I pretty much wouldn't make eye contact with him. Jenya hit me on the way out and thanked me for making her talk the whole time. hee hee

We tried to take pic's of us on the couch before I left to drive home. We couldn't get Franklin and Mayze to look at the camera. They wondered what the heck we were doing.

...And no, this is not my beer. Got ya though, huh? :) It was left at the table we were sitting at while watching the dualing pianos. The piano guys were giving us a hard time about not ordering any alcohol while we were there. They thought it wierd we'd come to a bar and not have any.

Some More Friends...

Nicky and Lynell. Nicky used to be my cubie buddy at Unicity. I am a regular subscriber to her Snapfish photos though and get to see her daughter grow up online. :) Isn't that what the world is coming to now? I've seen so many people on MySpace that I went to high school with that I won't even need to go to my next High School Reunion. Scary... my 10 year is coming up. Am I that old?

Lynell is also a long time buddy that I met at Unicity. Lynell lives in Boca Raton Florida now. We keep in touch via MySpace and email. She is working now for another MLM competitor, Waiora and is loving it. She is the Recognitions Manager. I almost applied for a job with them because they are going to have a warehouse in SLC, but now I'm yet at another competitor (cause thats just the way of the biz). Miss you Lyntel Bean!

Jina or as we used to call her, Tina Sin. Funniest girl you'll ever meet. Not only my friend, but my old Marketing Boss at Unicity. Now Jina is working at Neways as one of their Product Line Managers. Also, I just found out she is getting married in April and am so excited for her. Congrats Jina! Be easy on him. :)

Lyntel Bean and Carly. I am lucky enough to work with Carly again at my current job. Carly is the Director of Communication and also does the event planning. I think this pic was taken at the Unicity convention in San Diego last February 2006. This is the last event we all worked at together. I hope we can all still stay in touch. Glad that we are all still in the industry. It's a better guaranty that we'll always know what each other is up to. Sad but true. :) Gotta love MLM.

Making funny faces (except Grandma) at Sunday Dinner over at Dad's with Dad, Franklin, Robby, Brooklyn, Grandma Jackie, Grandpa Dee, Me, Kiley and Kylan

The following pictures are in addition to my Halloween post right before this one. I for some reason can't get the pictures to post if I type stuff up first. Weird...

Angie decorating the spider cupcakes that we made at my house.

How cute! Little did we know that these cute little cupcakes that we dyed black for the Halloween spirit would turn everything bright green when it came out on the other end. It must've been part of the Halloween cheer. :) Yepeee!

Feeling the satisfaction in Angie's kitchen and so content with our finished product.


Angie's pumpkin (left), My pumpkin (right)

Surprise Visit!
Raylene surprised me last week all the way from NM and stayed the weekend with me. It was a lot of fun! We got to hang out all day Saturday with her sister. We started our day with some breakfast. RayRay decided that she was brave enough to try some of the organic/no sodium/no preservatives tomato bisque soup in my cupboard from work. I told her it wasn't too good, and offered her some organic salt to go with it. ;) It only had 80 calories, or should I say, "80 energy" as we now call it. She wasn't too thrilled with the soup either, but ate it up. Raylene hadn't seen the new Joseph Smith movie, so naturally we had to go see that (even though I fell asleep through the first 1/2--- It's my 4th time going). Then we had dinner that night at Tepanyaki's which is like Benihana's but better, with my mom, Raylene's sister and neice. :) Then she already had to go home on Sunday. I was sad. I try to convince her to move out here all the time.

Halloween!
Went over to Ange's the other night with Laura and her hubby to carve pumpkins. I haven't done that in years. It was really fun! My carving turned out better than expected.

Tonight Ange and I made spider cupcakes right before going to the movie, "The Prestige". The movie was a little bit weird, not what I expected, but good. It kept me guessing the whole time even though Ange in the middle of the movie said she figured it all out. Then we came back to finish up cupcake making until 3am while chattin'.

Other Stuff...
The other day Ev and I got to take an "Obseved Drug Test" for work. How awful! Yep, you guessed it. It's exactly what it sounds like. We were in this teeny tiny room with the "observer". This lady was like 2 inches in front of me. I didn't know what to do with her so close so I had her hold my cup while I whipped down my pants. I decided to make use of her while she was there. lol But wouldn't you know, I couldn't go. I squeezed out everything I could with all my might and it didn't even fill it up to the line. So, she dumped it out and told me to go drink water and come back to try again. I drank a 32 oz of water in 10 minutes and then waited a whole 1 1/2 hrs, just sitting there in their waiting room before I could go. Personally I think it was just stage fright. It's not everyday you have someone observing you do your biddniz. Know what I'm sayin'. Luckily I had to go so bad by that time that it all worked out for me. :)

Painting

Not only did I make it to the Sand Dunes this weekend but I managed to make it home in time to paint my house. :) Jim and Shanda (and Ashlynn) came over to help me get started and my mom came over to help me get finished up for the night.

Here's a picture of the accent wall I painted in the kitchen. It's Ralph Lauren, Pomegranite Red.

We painted the tallest wall in the living room to be Ralph Lauren, Suede Brown. It really does look like suede. It looks awesome. I bought so much paint that I have enough left over to paint all 3 of the bedrooms and both of the bathrooms. Hopefully I can find roommates to live with me soon. :( Here's a pic of the Living room. You have to be here to get the whole effect though.


CALLING--- Also, I got a calling today in my ward. Next week they will sustain me and set me apart to be on the Enrichment committee. I was Enrichment Leader for a year 1/2 when we were having some sort of enrichment night every other week, I had mostly "less" active people on my committee and I was working full time and taking 13 credit hours at school. So, being on the committee and only having enrichment every quarter should be a piece of cake.

Sand Dunes
This weekend we took a trip to the Sand Dunes. It was a short trip. I went down on Friday after work and met the fam there (Dad, Kiley, Kylan and Gramps) and came home Saturday afternoon. We made a camp out of it and watched Failure to Launch in the tent on my lap top. (Ok. so that's not "really" camping but still fun)

PS. You can click on any of the pictures to enlarge them. Some of you tell me that you cna't see the small pictures when I post them small.

(left) We got grandpa to do the classic Charlie's Angels pose with us. What a good sport!

(right) Me watchin' some of the cool things people were doin' on Sand Mountain. It was packed at the dunes this UEA weekend!

Kylan carried this shovel around everywhere he went to dig holes. I fell in this hole that almost went up to my knee. I'm pretty much lucky to be alive.

Franklin was of course a little nuthead that was out of control. He had to chase every quad that drove by. It drove me crazy. I need to watch more of the Dog Whisperer. (sigh)

Franklin's also smart enough to try and lick liquid up from the dirt. So he had mud on his face the whole time we were there... as you can see from his picture.

Me pretend sleeping. I'm pretty much the actress of the year. You didn't even know I was pretending huh? Well, I'm going to have to post my other pictures in a different posting because it's not letting me add all of the other pic's that I want to.

Pictures from Nickelcade and Karaoke Night!

OK. So I was supposed to PhotoShop all of us in this green wig to be in one picture and I've been really lazy about doing so. So... I'm just putting all of these up separately. This is when we were all messing around at Angies Karaoke night. :)
Party Dave
Alexis
Laura2
Ange
Handicap

Party ALL night long!
Angies Birthday Bash... One of the funnest nights ever!

We started the night off with a little bit of TGIFriday's (Which by the way I ran into one of the girls Adam cheated on me with for 8 months as I was walking into the bathroom there. We didn't recognize eachother right off, but when we did we just kept walkin'.)

Anyway... then we went to the Nickelcade because it's Ange's tradition to go there every year. So I got $5 of nickels which didn't even come close to being used up. There was this game kind of like Dance Revolution but it uses your hands with light sensors instead. Kind of hard to explain, but it was fun. Wish I had one at home. lol jk. They even have video of us paling it. I wish I could add video to my blog.

We played all the old school games like Ski Ball, Air Hockey, Mortal Kombat, Mrs Pacman, Dr Mario, Bubble Bobble, Dig Dug... It reminds me of when I was litlle and used to go with my dad to Fryer Tucks in Provo, where the Flower Patch is now. When I would visit my dad in the summer I always wanted him to take me to Fryer Tucks for scones and to play Mrs Pacman. I'm the queen at that game. I even own it on my own Nintendo 64. :) hee hee

So back to the story here... At midnight we finally left Nickelcade to go to Angies house and we did karaoke til 4 am. It was fun stuff! Out of control... the dancing, the singing. It was me, Ange, Laura, Alexis and Party Dave. Bear and his brother went to bed. They didn't care too much to let loose in front of all of us.

Then I got up early to go to an eye appointment in the morning. My left eye had been bothering me for about a week. It's been sensitive to the light and swells up red at times and starts watering really heavily. When the doctor looked at it he said I had a scratch in my cornea and am lucky that it hasn't turned into an ulcer in my eye. Yikes! He reprimanded me for not coming in sooner but said that it miraculously looks like it's healing on its own. I have to go back this week to have it looked at again. I was sure that it was a result of my never taking my contacts out... ever. I was positive he'd tell me my eyes were going to fall out of my head because of it. I was glad that I just have to wear my glasses for a week and then I'm good to go with my contacts again.

PS. I have some good pic's from Angie's Bday. Keep a watch out for them in future postings. :)

Birthday Bash!
Went out with the old U-gang to Goodwood BBQ. Yumm! It was Amanda's Birthday (and Melody's too, but we're going out again for her bday). We went around the table and told funny stories about Amanda. If you know Amanda, then you know it's pretty impossible to spend an hour with her and not come out of it with a story. lol

My story of Amanda was when we were all playing games one night. Can't remember the name of the game, but it was a game that you have teams and have a word that you have to see if your team can guess it with out saying the actual word. My word was "Line-dancing". Amanda was always trying to get us to go line dancing, so to help my team out I said, "It's something Amanda always wants to go do." Amanda yells out, "ohh ohhhh.... Pole Dancing! Pole Dancing!" LOL The whole game stopped in it's tracks and everyone busted up laughing.

How creepy is this?
So, we had a BBQ at Nat's house last week. I invited Angie and Bear to come over, whom Nat has never met. The similarities between Nat and Bear are wierd.

1. Both are System Engineers
2. Both drive silver Toyota Tacoma's, same body style
3. Both have been back packing at Wind Rivers every August for the last 12 years and go to the same place each year.
4. Both of their August 2006 Wind Rivers trip happened to take place the exact same days and right next to each other at the same camp site... mind you, they had still never met at this point.
5. Both of them are totally into Mountain Biking
6. Both of them are totally into Dirt Biking

Weird, huh? Wonder if my twin is out there somewhere? Someone that drives a silver rodeo, works at corporate network marketing, loves supercross and has a pug. Whoa!

PICTURES

I couldn't get these pictures to post on my earlier posting of the "Little Sibs", I could only get the pic of Kiley to show... so here they are on their own.

Here is Samma (8) at her birthday part at Classic Skating. Woo Hoo... She is so bubbly and fun. She is also going through the "eye rolling" stage. lol Something funny she asked me yesterday is she said, "Tara, what am I to Franklin and Mayzie? Am I their cousin?" I told her that she is Aunt Samantha which she followed with, "Oh. Ok. I can live with that." ...Serious stuff. :)

Here is Emily (10). She is a "mini-mother" and likes to take care of her little sister. She also loves to play computer games with her dad. She is the one that makes sure we have the Tara Tradition routine at sleep overs. Mint ice cream and chocolate chip cookie dough to eat. She can NOT come over with out it. It is essential to the whole experience.

And here's the baby of the family. Kylan is 7 and always says the funniest stuff. You never know what's going to come out of his mouth. And he always says it like a little adult too. Kids always surprise you with the stuff they say don't they? Kylan is everyone's little helper. He is so in tune with everyone's feelings around him. What a cutie!


These two may not look "little" but are still my little sibs. :) Brian,24 (left) passed away in March 2006 and Robby (right), 23 whom just got engaged as mentioned earlier. Love these boys! Robby used to be the cutest little kid and still has those cute dimples. Always the ladies man. Brian and I used to hide his underwear when we were younger and play the "hot or cold" game to see if he could find it. haa Good times!

When Brian passed away, I wrote the following in his Guest Book online and want to share it.

Brian, I'm sitting up thinking about you and all the fun times we had growing up together. I even remember when you were giving me financial advice at the mall one day when I wanted to buy clothes and you told me to never carry more than $10 cash with me. You said, "If it's important enough to buy, then you'll make the extra effort to go out to your car and get more money." Boy, I wish I'd listen to that sometimes! :) I also remember a conversation you had with me when you became a deacon so many years ago. You asked me what you should do to always make sure the gospel was apart of your life. Even at such a young age you were concerned about doing what was right. I remember telling you to be the example and be the strong one. Although you're not with us here physically, I know you still have choices and decisions to make and pray for your strength and peace. You have always been so sensitive and kind-hearted and always the person to give in for others happiness over your own. I know that you've taken all of your goodness and strength with you. I love you and miss you Brian! Even with all the craziness in our families, you'll always been my little brother.

Love Always,Tara

Me and Leah Remini. Someone told me that we look alike and I was flattered. I decided it was blog worthy. hee heee.

Women's Conference
Me, Grandma Pat, and Mom

Tonight's conference was all about feeling the love of the Lord by fulfilling our calling as a member of the Relief Society. PS. President Hinckley is so cute! I'm going to go to the conference center this next weekend for general conference since I've never seen him in person. Who knows how much longer I'll have the chance to do that.