Burn the Witch! Burn the Witch!

Last weekend was epic to say the least.  My roommates and myself and what seemed to be the rest of the world celebrated Holi Krishna aka The Festival of Colors. 

This is a Hindu festival based on some of their beliefs and it is widely celebrated in India.  The legend says that there was a prince who prayed to the Hindu gods.  His father, the king, didn't like the fact that his son was praying to other gods so he decided to burn him as punishment.  He had a witch who was known to walk through fire, carry the son through the flames.  The son prayed to his gods and was delivered while the witch burned instead.  To celebrate this victory over death, the Hindu's have a ritual burning of a witch.

The other legend that inspired the festival is of a beautiful and immortal love between the Lord Krishna and Radha.  Krishna would often complain how Radha's skin was so fair and yet his was so dark.  His mother advised him to throw some colors on her face to see how her complexion changed. And that is where we get the tradition of throwing colors.

We started out the day with a little taste of India at the India Palace. The best food you will ever eat is right there. I think the owner is starting to recognize us we go there so often.

Next stop, the temple in American Fork to throw some chalk. It was a mad house there. Loud music, lots of chalk, and of course...llamas. :)  We all gathered together to watch the burning of the witch and chant "BURN THE WITCH! BURN THE WITCH!"  Then we counted down from ten and threw the chalk into the air. Holy cow... it was insane.  It went pitch black.  You would think that you could hold your breath but no.  It was so long I just had to breath.  In the process of breathing I managed to suck in enough chalk to turn my tongue purple, like after you've eaten an otter pop, purple.  I could have probably spit in 7 different colors if I knew how to spit of course. So anyways, here's the results of the afternoon:

The Roommates. :)

Me and Jared showing off our color pride.

the car ride home

The Fierce-Some warriors. (and Katie Pitts who once again looks like she does drugs. (we still love you.))

Now that our clothes are all officially stained pink and our shower looks like we use Kool Aid instead of water we can officially say  HOLI KRISHNA!!

When It Rains, It Pours

The other day we had quite the rainstorm and in that situation there is only one thing you can do... 

PUDDLE JUMP!!

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.  

One Step At A Time

Ok. It's official.  I'm the craziest person alive.  You're probably saying to yourselves, "Duh Reegan. We figured that one out a long time ago." But seriously I'm a little slow and just discovering how crazy I really am.

So...the other day I got the crazy idea to run a marathon. Yup. The 26.23 miles.  Don't ask me why I thought this would be a good idea because I have no answer for you. So I called up the master aka "Dad" and he made me a schedule to follow so that I will be ready by October 15th to run this:

Cool Right?  I get to have Father/Daughter bonding with this guy so I'm pretty excited. :)

It's only the second week of training and I feel crummy.  How in the heck does one go about motivating themselves to do this? I feel like having some type of reward waiting for me at the end but everything I can think of isn't worth this craziness.  So far I'm running on self-satisfaction but I get self-satisfaction out of the simplest things so it can only last so long. Example: Today I wore shiny shoes. Self=satisfied. 

See? Not hard at all. Please, if you 

have any suggestions for me that would be awesome. :)

All in all, I think this will be a good experience in the end if I don't give up.  I want to do hard things and I want to challenge myself.  I keep thinking about how I'm going to feel when I cross the finish line.  Will I want to cry? Will I want to scream?  Will I want to dance?  Personally I think I may just want to eat a cheesburger but that aside I think I will be proud of myself.  Not the "sinning" kind of proud but the "good" proud.  The proud kind of feeling a parent has after seeing their kid make the winning touchdown or getting a good grade on a test.  I'm going to feel proud that I really can do hard things and that by setting goals coupled with my determination nothing is impossible. Woot!! I can do this. Wish me luck! :)

Also if any of you would like to be at the finish line to see me crawling across the pavement that would be great.  I don't humiliate myself nearly enough.

Scones=Family

You may be wondering how scones equals my family well I will tell you but first this:

The other day my roommates and I were craving some delicious scones so I went to the

masters for a recipe and ended up with some frozen rolls and the the advice to "roll them out really thin. The thinner, the bigger." Thanks Grandpa Baird for those words of wisdom. :) We took his advice and much to our satisfaction, we ended up with some beautiful looking scones that warmed our bellies.

Ok, now on to the explanation of how scones started this family of mine...

It begins with my father, Steve, in college.  He moves into a new singles ward and gets assigned to home teach Shelly Baird.  On one of his visits, Shelly's mom peeks her head in and notices the nice looking young man and begins plotting, or should I say "kneading."  By the time the lesson was finished, the smell of homemade scones was wafting from the kitchen.  The next part went a little something like this...

Well, dad stayed for dinner, and then he stayed forever. And then the world got this

and this

How grateful the world is for those scones.


Bon Appetit!

Please Tell Me You Would Date This

Today I was called a "special needs orphan from a Nazi concentration camp... with a skin disease" in reference to this picture:

Should I be offended or flattered?

I'll choose the latter.

Question.

How does one go about taking notes in a sign language class?

What's in a Name?

An amazing thing happened to me today. I've been waiting for this day since my birth. No one could have prepared me for the thoughts and feelings that came with this glorious event. It is now time for a story...

In my American Literature class today we learned about Christopher Columbus and how he came to the Americas and renamed all the tiny little islands. We got onto the subject of names and what they mean to people individually or as a group.

This of course got me thinking to how cool I think my name is. I mean really, how many Reegans do you know? We are far and few in this world. I even looked it up there's 1,556 Reegans in the United States and only 1 Reegan Lake. I'm pretty unique if I don't say so myself. Sure you've got King Lear's daughter named Regan and then there's the President/actor, Ronald Reagan that I am so often confused with, but that's different of course.

Well, while sitting in class thinking about my name the girl sitting to my left raises her hand to make a comment. The professor asks her for her name to get to know her and what do I hear her say? "It's Reegan." I definitely let out an audible gasp for everyone in the room to hear. In my whole 19 and almost 1/2 years of existence I have never met anyone with my name and now I was sitting right next to her! Turns out she's never met another Reegan either so it was great experience to say the least. I am now able to check that one off my bucket list.

Needless to say, I felt extremely accomplished with my day because of this one event and the best news is I get to re-live it 3 times a week for the whole semester!