The redcoats are a-comin'.

So, what kind of got me on the blogging bandwagon again was a month-long blogging "challenge" (if you want to call it that) that looked interesting and creatively stimulating (who says things like that?).

"Describe where or what you come from. The people, the places, and/or the factors that make up who you are."

I come from a train-loving, endlessly teasing, swearin' in church father. Shown here.

What is particularly interesting about this photo is that I remember when this happened. I legitimately thought I was going to be eaten by an elephant. I didn't know at the time that the elephant trunk can't actually eat you. I also remember looking behind my dad and seeing this crowd of people and not really caring that there were these people staring at me, because I was going to be eaten by an elephant, for heaven's sake!

Lesson learned.

My first concert ever was with my dad when I was sixteen. And we went and saw Journey and Def Leppard. That was pretty cool. Especially since the new lead singer of Journey (not Steve Perry, unfortunately) signed my ticket stub.

He taught me how to fix stuff until it's actually fixed or until it's so hopelessly broken that you have to call someone. Usually for me, I'd call him. Like when I was changing the outlets in our condo from cream to white. There were times when we didn't have electricity in parts of our house because I'd messed something up. But he would fix it.

Or when I'd call him from school down in Provo because Stella was acting up. Or if I needed help with physics or other terrible subjects in school. Or if I needed the recipe to his super secret spaghetti sauce.

He's pretty cool.
There was a time my junior year of high school where I was leaving with my guy friends, and he said, "Be good. And if you're not gonna be good...be safe."

Sound advice.

I also come from a British, tell-it-like-it-is, handy-woman mother. Shown here.

Unlike the other photo, I do not recall learning to walk in the English countryside. Although that would have been a cool memory.

My mom is pretty friggin' rad. She isn't afraid of anything. Except maybe spiders, but even those she had to buck up and kill anyways, because my dad wouldn't. [Secretly I think he was scared of them, but I don't think he wanted to admit it. Except for the spider that locked me in my bathroom really late at night when I was 13 and when it moved I screamed. My dad thought I was being kidnapped because that whole Elizabeth Smart thing was going down and he came down and was not pleased that I was scared of a "little spider." He killed that spider with an empty toilet paper roll (a pretty amazing feat, considering it was as big as a car). I think the adrenaline of thinking his child was being kidnapped/being irate with said child for the false alarm probably aided in the murder of that arachnid.]

Back to my mother...
She tells it like it is. You can thank the Brits for that one. She is not afraid of offending people and rarely gets offended herself. But the beauty of that is, she's probably one of the nicest women you'll ever meet. She will just tell you the honest truth about something, which means you can genuinely trust her opinion. Basically she's the right balance of being the nicest lady ever without getting walked all over by people.

That's what I'd like to be when I grow up.
She also taught me to cook. And made me persist with the piano, which I'm grateful for. And always believed in me and told me I could do great things. And because of the whole English-tell-it-like-it-is trait, I knew she meant it.

And she and I tiled a backsplash this past summer. We used a tile saw and everything. We don't need men to get a job done.

Half-British. That is my claim to an ethnicity (which isn't an ethnicity at all, really, unless you count our proper pronunciation of "worcestershire" and our habit of eating pork and beans on toast [it's a thing!]). Here's a secret. I always feel this sense of pride when people are anglophiles and I can say, "Yeah, my mom is British. I've got British family. Basically I'm the 5th member of The Beatles."

And if I'm ever not in the mood to be an American, I can switch my loyalties to the red coats. Because, you know, I have that right. Never mind the fact that legally speaking, my mom has American citizenship. Once a red coat, always a red coat.

Except for when I'm talking to my granddad. I like to harass him about how we kicked his trash in the Revolutionary War. Go America.