Kyra Moon

As I've mentioned before, Halloween is one of those holidays that matters less and less to me each year. I think that will change as Jim gets more excited about it, but for now it's still one which is more annoying than fun what with rounding up costumes and buying candy, which is surprisingly expensive. (It's also a little discouraging . . . I thought Tootsie Rolls would be a safe candy for me to buy, but it turns out I like them a lot better than I should.) But there was one year where I really got into Halloween. I decided that my bedroom needed a haunted house theme. Since my bedroom was in the basement, it always had a sort of haunted house feel to it anyway -- you never knew if the blouse you tossed carelessly on the ground would have a wolf spider attached to it the next time you picked it up. But this year I wanted it to be really haunted. I had glorious plans for the decorations, the thrills, and the chills that would await any who dared enter. I got started im...

One spring day when I was about 14, my mom announced, "Okay, everyone, time to get in the car! We're going on a quick drive!" We piled in and she explained, "We are so close to hitting 200,000 on the van. We'll just drive around until we reach it." And so we did, up and down the streets of Providence, heading through the parts that I didn't even know existed. On our way back from the outskirts near the coyote research farms, my mom shouted, "Come quick everyone! Watch it change!" By the time I had unbuckled my seat belt to peer at the dashboard, it was too late.  But at least I had been there for a momentous occasion in our family. Not too long after that, I was at the store with my dad talking about it, pointing out how weird it was to go on a drive dictated by the odometer. He smiled and told me that when he and my mom were fairly newly married, the old brown car was also about to reach 200,00 miles. And so they went for a drive until i...

In October 1985, a young man made a long distance call to a father in Kansas. "Hi, um, I'd like to marry your daughter." The man had no idea that his daughter was dating anyone so seriously, and he asked for clarification. "Who is this? How long have you been dating?" § It began a year earlier in Math 371, the abstract algebra class at BYU. He was recently home from his mission, ready to dive back into math and engineering classes. She was in her second year at BYU, flying through the credits so quickly that she was already essentially a junior though only 18 years old. They never really talked to each other. But that isn't to say they didn't notice each other. She learned his name quickly -- Todd Moon -- and looked him up on the microfiche. This predecessor to the BYU directory was the true "stalkernet" -- you could find name, number, address, and even class schedule of anyone at the school. She saw that there was another female BYU student li...

As I've mentioned before , there was a pretty big obstacle to Kevin and me dating each other. I imagine most people would feel at least a little weird about going out with someone with the same last name as them, and we certainly were no exception. But, as fate would have it, we did end up dating, and even ended up married (4 years ago today!). In a few short vignettes involving our last name, I will explain how it happened: 1. After we met, I was all too excited at the thought of friendzoning Kevin. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with him, of course, just that I was kind of tired of boys and would find any excuse I could to not have to go out with them (especially since I was so bad at saying no that outright prevention was the best policy). So the next time I saw Kevin, I was happy to say, "Hey, cousin!" That, and other similar actions kept things awkward enough for several months that we felt no fear things could progress. 2. And yet, in April, we started ...

During Christmas break, I had the chance to see Frozen. As far as Disney flicks go, this was pretty good. Many of the songs were catchy, the animation was gorgeous, and I was able to set aside my issues with pacing and development until the show was done. (Although, I do have to say, those trolls singing the fixer-upper song sure were annoying, especially because Anna needed help, not a musical number!) source There was one thing that really surprised me about the movie -- Elsa did nothing to save the day! If Anna had been a prince instead of her sister, then this would have been a typical damsel in distress story where the knight in shining armor swoops in and saves everything. As I thought about it, I realized that I appreciated it more this way because it was a story about sacrifice rather than good ol' teamwork. Although I doubt this was intentional, I was really struck by how this was a parable of the Atonement, with Elsa representing us and Anna representing Christ. ...

Based on my last post , it probably sounds like I wanted to do everything when I grew up. I didn't. There were some careers that I always knew were out of my reach. Either that, or I figured it out in time. 1. Athlete. You guys, I have never been on an organized sports team. Never! Not even a little soccer team in kindergarten. Soccer was a boy game, and boys were gross, so I refused. Never even did cross country in high school. I enjoyed running and aerobics well enough, but I have no hand-eye coordination. (The strongest memory I have of PE in junior high is learning how to hit a birdie with a badminton racket. It took several class periods for me to figure it out, and my friend Meagan was by my side basically the whole time coaching me.) This one has never ever ever been on the radar. 2. Hairdresser. If my hair ever looks good it is an accident. It is surprisingly thick, so I had a lot of trouble finding the time to put it up or curl it. Thus, I never bothered to really learn ho...

This post is dedicated to Kaylie, who told me I should publish it even though it's long, and who wanted to be a mailmom when she grew up. Also dedicated to all the people who share a dozen or so things about themselves on Facebook the past few weeks. Here's my response. As a kid, I don't think I ever really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, but there were plenty of things that I wanted to be right then. This led to many short but illustrious careers. Here are the ones that I remember: -I think the first thing I wanted to be was a mom. I can't remember for sure, but it makes sense. I mean, that's who I hung out with all the time. I liked the idea of a job where you drove to the bank and got Smarties for free. In practicing being a mom, I gave birth to lots of dolls that were hiding under my shirt. -The next job I considered was an engineer. I didn't quite know what it was, but I knew there were two kinds -- the kind that drove trains and the kind that my d...