Oh Malad Idaho where I used to spend my Easter holidays with my parents and my great grandparents. Where we had apple battles in my great grandma's backyard with my Donny Osmond look-alike Great Uncle Mike, where I held a firecracker in my hand too long and it exploded. Such fond memories do I have of Malad. Well. Almost. To be honest it's one of the smallest towns I've been to in my life. You think Rexburg is small? Go to Malad, go ahead, have a laugh. There was never a whole lot to do, and when there wasn't other family there to keep you occupied, you definately started to go a little stir crazy. I do have good memories of it to be honest. For instance, I fondly remember going with my great grandpa to see some horses, I LOVE horses...by the way. I remember I got to pet them and my grandpa cut his thumb on some barbed wire. I can't have been that old. Probably not much older than 3...but I do remember it. It's one of the fondest memories I have of my great grandpa. It was because of that memory, when I was told of his passing, I cried like a little baby. It's a memory I'll never forget. I don't actually remember this next thing happening, but my parents like to bring it up. I guess I was a rambunctious little kid, I liked climbing into, on top of, and under things. My grandparents had a lovely fireplace and as all little kids do, I climbed right into it. My parents, seeing this as a problem(?!) would pull me back out and I have to start all over again and climb right back into the fireplace. I guess I got so frustrated at my repeated failed attempts to play in the dirty furnace that I turned to my dad and said "NO BILL" If any of you know my dad, those words...especially the one that starts with an N could get you beaten pretty bad and pretty quick. He especially won't tolerate children calling him Bill...understandable right? Well thanks to my cuteness I was spared his wrath and they probably all had a good laugh at the attitude which if retained till now would get me grounded for a month.
I bring up these stories because my Family Home Evening brothers (it's an LDS thing, ask me about it!) are all from Malad, save one. I kind of laughed about it when I first heard where they were from because I thought "no body's from Malad...they go there when they're old before they die." Sure enough though, they were from Malad and they invited our apartment (or more, we invited ourselves) down to Malad for conference weekend. Most of the boys have some sort of farm and I suppose that is typical of most Malad inhabitants. Lots of farmland and farm animals. I love animals and so that is pretty exciting to me, but when I found out that one of our FHE brothers had horses I all but jumped and danced for joy. I was nothing less than ecstatic. I don't claim to be a horse expert, but I do love them and I'm nowhere near shy around them. I love to ride and I just think they are the most beautiful animals. We had a fantastic time riding them, it was definitely the highlight of my year. I'll post some pictures only if you promise to ignore the fact that my blond roots are coming in and my hair nearly matches the mane of the horse I rode. My horses' name was Texas but of course someone had to make fun of Texas and started calling him T-bag. For those of you poor souls who haven't had the pleasure to watch Prison Break I've included a picture of T-Bag below. In season 2 he bleaches his hair blond so as to not be captured by the "Poh-leese" anyway, as my hair has so gracefully demonstrated, his black roots started coming back in and he was left with a very lovely two-toned hair do for about 2 seasons. Texas is a buckskin horse and so his mane is part black, and part blond...ergo Texas christianed T-bag. I don't want to talk about it!
I bring up these stories because my Family Home Evening brothers (it's an LDS thing, ask me about it!) are all from Malad, save one. I kind of laughed about it when I first heard where they were from because I thought "no body's from Malad...they go there when they're old before they die." Sure enough though, they were from Malad and they invited our apartment (or more, we invited ourselves) down to Malad for conference weekend. Most of the boys have some sort of farm and I suppose that is typical of most Malad inhabitants. Lots of farmland and farm animals. I love animals and so that is pretty exciting to me, but when I found out that one of our FHE brothers had horses I all but jumped and danced for joy. I was nothing less than ecstatic. I don't claim to be a horse expert, but I do love them and I'm nowhere near shy around them. I love to ride and I just think they are the most beautiful animals. We had a fantastic time riding them, it was definitely the highlight of my year. I'll post some pictures only if you promise to ignore the fact that my blond roots are coming in and my hair nearly matches the mane of the horse I rode. My horses' name was Texas but of course someone had to make fun of Texas and started calling him T-bag. For those of you poor souls who haven't had the pleasure to watch Prison Break I've included a picture of T-Bag below. In season 2 he bleaches his hair blond so as to not be captured by the "Poh-leese" anyway, as my hair has so gracefully demonstrated, his black roots started coming back in and he was left with a very lovely two-toned hair do for about 2 seasons. Texas is a buckskin horse and so his mane is part black, and part blond...ergo Texas christianed T-bag. I don't want to talk about it!
ANYWAY Texas was a beautiful horse even though his first impression was soiled by T-bag's less than like-able persona. We had a grand ole time and rode for a couple of hours until a storm chased us back indoors.
Overall we had a BLAST in Malad, we did a lot of driving around in the car because like I said, there really isn't a whole lot to do there. We were told some scary stories about places and happenings in Malad, we took field trips to those places and got the snot scared out of us. We learned how to make jam, we went cat hunting (calm down cat-lovers, we were unsuccessful) We drove some more...Oh! we left our mark on a tunnel
OH DUH! We also got the wonderful opportunity to watch General Conference which was also FANTASTIC. That was the real highlight of the weekend. Conference is always great :) So yea Malad. Population 4,100, animal head count 7,000. Good times.