Personal Bio

Garlan was born and raised in Puyallup, WA. After finishing high school he enrolled for a summer semester at Brigham Young University, after which he served an LDS mission to Indianapolis, Indiana from Sept. 2002 until Sept. of 2004. Upon returning home Garlan re-enrolled at BYU where he studied Communications and Business.

He finished his degree in April 2010, getting married that same month to Amanda Hadley, from Connell, WA. They have two daughters- Emma (4) and Sophia (2), with another girl due the first week of May. They currently live in Springville, UT.

After graduating from BYU Garlan took a job at a startup company in south Provo who specialize in selling websites and software to lighting showrooms. He started out as a customer service rep. and within two years worked his way up to company Controller, as well as handling all HR responsibilities. After two and a half years there Garlan applied for and accepted a position in October of 2013 with BYU in their Purchasing & Travel dept. as an accountant, a position he currently holds. He has served on numerous committees within the department, i.e. for a website redesign, a wellness initiative, and for internal process improvements.

Garlan is currently enrolled in the Executive Masters of Public Administration program through BYU. He enjoys sports (particularly basketball), writing, reading (history, non-fiction), camping/outdoors, and has recently picked up turkey hunting. His favorite book is Tom Sawyer, favorite movie is Monty Python's Holy Grail, and favorite athlete is Larry Bird. He hopes to one day own his own motor-home and travel the country visiting historical sites with his family.

New Blog!

so me and amanda made a new blog and want to give ya'll the link so you can check it out. i guess she wasnt too fond of incorporating herself into mine, haha jk. i think i'll still update mine but it wont be for awhile, till after i graduate and get married in april. i dont have any time for this poor little blog, sorry everyone! but look at our new one and add it to your list if you like:

agmccoy.blogspot.com

we just sent out our announcements so you should be getting yours very shortly!

the single guy...... NO MORE!!!

wow, has it really been this long since i've posted? well lets just say its been a rather busy and eventful couple months. yes it is true (in case you havent heard by now, but judging by the 4 people that actually read this blog i'm sure your in the loop) I'M ENGAGED! i couldnt be happier. her name is amanda and we met right before conference weekend. she just told me she's on her way home from girls night out so i'll be making my way over there, but i wanted to let the 4 people know that i havent given up on my blog. sorry its (and you) have been neglected for so long. a lot has happened and i'll do my best to fill you in on the important details. but for now just know that more is to come....

me and the gorgeous gal

Ya Dig the New Style?

life gets a little boring sometimes, right? dont you get tired of the same old routine? i mean, isnt it exciting when you throw in a little something here and there just to throw yourself a curve? i'm sure we've all done it, or at least thought about it. well, i thought about it and decided to take action!

i thought my look was getting too familiar. i seemed to wake up every day and look in the mirror and think "wow, i look exactly the same as i did yesterday..... the day before..... the week before that" and so on. why not take a risk and mix it up? throw in some adventure so that when i go into the bathroom in the morning i could think "now there's a guy who's in charge of things. he's got his head on straight. he knows where he's going with his life." ya know? havent you ever wanted to tell yourself that? me too. and hence the change i made to accomplish just that:

*i call it the baconstrip-less wreath

Read With Caution

during this time of halloween when everyone gets all worked up about being scared and watching frightening movies, my mind reflected back upon a time during my childhood when i endured the longest night of my life. but first some background:

i was the little scared kid all growing up. even my little sis was better at handling the spooky circumstances of growing up in the woods, having older siblings who teased you, the darkness, watching scary movies, dealing with spiders, etc. i had to call her over every time to kill daddy longlegs in my room. she would watch movies wide-eyed while i would be in the corner of the couch with pillow pulled close and fingers half covering (okay, mostly covering) my eyes. how embarrassing is that? i would turn on every light in the house on the way up to my room at night. i would get everything ready so all i had to do was turn off the light in my room and then run and jump real quick into bed. i had a teddy bear that i slept with well into my twenties, and i would place him on the edge of my bed so he would get taken first if something came after us. and when i awoke in the middle of the night and he wasnt by my side, i would debate for minutes on end as to whether i wanted to risk putting my arm down the side of the bed so i could pick him up off the floor, in case something was under the bed and would grab me and pull me under to the dark abyss of nowhere. i would open the closet doors at night so i wouldnt have to worry about them opening up a crack and seeing eyes peeking thru staring at me. i probably lost hours of sleep over the years as i lay awake in bed imagining all the bad things that could happen to me and being too scared for awhile to fall asleep. finally rest would come and eventually the sun would save me, at least for a few hours until night came again to wreak havoc on my consciousness.

i admit, and all my family can attest to, that i hated the dark and scary movies. but i insisted on watching them b/c thats where everyone else would be and i didnt want to be by myself. it took me at least 6 times before i finally made it all the way thru "IT" without closing my eyes. and so this was my mindset as one night our family gathered around the tv to put on a movie i was not prepared for.

oh it starts out nice enough, a pleasant kid who is confined to a wheelchair and is having a grand 'ole time with life. then the moon comes up. but not any kind of moon- a full moon. for those of you familiar with full moons and halloween stories, you can guess the creature i'm about to describe. yes, the werewolf. night descends on this poor unsuspecting town and this beast sets about his business. his business of death! never completely showing itself it carefully, gruesomely goes on in the ways of dismantling and killing the people of this town. unawares, the wheelchair kid decides to try out his new motorized ride his uncle had given him and sneaks out (no, not during the day like any smart person would do) one night. on a bridge he lights fireworks and is having a gay 'ole time (haha, just had to throw in a gay there to completely ruin the mood). alas! the creature is lurking in the nearby woods! it comes out and starts to run after the defenseless child. luckily, just in time, he lights a firework and shoots it at the werewolf just as its about to do him in and he gets the H outta dodge. whew, that was too close for comfort.

the last half of that story about him on the bridge had to be told to me after the scene ended cause i was in all-out cover of eyes, head and body for it. didnt see a thing after the camera angle switched to the werewolfs point of view from the woods. mercifully the movie ends (i'll let you watch it so i dont spoil how it ends) and we head up to bed. i made sure to sandwhich myself between some siblings so i wouldnt be the first one up the stairs or the last one on the end to be snatched away with no one ever noticing. we ready ourselves for a long night of worry and despair at the thought of having to sleep after being horrified half to death. i soon notice that a brother (spencer, i'm sure you were the first one to leave!) grab a pillow and head downstairs. what on earth is that man (moron) thinking? he's seriously gonna leave the comfort and relative safety in numbers to go down to wherever he was going? good riddance to him, nice knowing ya. but wait, others are following suit. such clueless siblings i have! whats wrong with them? i was soon to come to my senses tho after i was the only remaining one. to heck with that, i'm not gonna perish up here all by myself. every single one of us, all 8 kids, went downstairs to sleep in my parents room. what genious! they would protect us from the evils lurking outside, and apparently upstairs.

the oldest, and bravest in my book, brandon took the couch right next to the window. crazy man, but hats off to ya cause i would never have placed myself in such precarious circumstances. yep, i grabbed a spot right next to my parents bed. it would have to go thru 7 others before it got to me, and hopefully by the time it did it would be tired, full, or disinterested- or me and the parents would have escaped by then. thus me and teddy braced ourselves for the night with this on our minds:




















*can you guys blame me for praying not to have bad dreams or nightmares every single night?

College Life

what else can ya say about your meals and food (or lack thereof) when your a single college guy other than that its sketchy at best? my bro-in-law dal recently gave me his mini fridge, since he got married and no longer qualified for its uses based on the unwritten code for having a mini fridge, namely: being single. so i immediately filled it up with the best beverage available to mankind, specifically: mtn dew.

and so of course i had to attempt to celebrate my new acquisition by making a dinner for myself. this is the result of that attempt. i'm not even sure what it was supposed to be. i think it was a chicken breast covered in bbq sauce, grilled on the ever-useful george foreman grill, along with some kind of pasta that was supposed to be beef stroganoff.

altho the beverages were top of the line (i included country time strawberry lemonade in my fridge cause its quite delicious to the taste of buds), the food itself was less than ideal. okay it was downright crap. pretty sure my body rejected it out of mere sight and smell. didnt even have to taste it to know that it would be of no use to my physical being. but whatever, i forced it down and then topped it off with a nice swig of liquid goodness. thus is my diet at the moment.....

but i do need to give a shout out to cousin amy who graciously allows me to taste of real food almost every sunday and has done so for the past couple years. much thanks!!!

The Single Guy

for this installment i'm going to dip into the memory bank- as in WAY back. this little nugget of an experience was the beginnings of this guy's singleness. lets begin shall we?

the setting: graham elementary, home of the grizzlies
the time: kindergarten, where reputations are made
the place: a school bus, yes- the big yellow thing your all familiar with
the girl: tara stephens, major hotty
the guy: none other than..... you guessed it

i was a man with a crush. wow, i'm already off to a bad start. lets try that again

i was a little boy with a crush. i was in afternoon kindergarten, and luckily enough so was this girl, the aforementioned tara s. she had long, curly blond hair. she had blue eyes. or maybe they were green. quite possibly coulda been brown tho. she was the envy of all the k-garten boys who called themselves grizzlies. shoot, i'm sure there were even 6th graders who had crushes on this girl. i wouldnt doubt it, not one bit. that should give you an idea of the magnitude of the kind of girl we're dealing with here.

we werent in the same class, so the only contact i had with her was either seeing her at recess or on the bus ride home. at recess i was too busy trying to look cool on the tire swing to actually go talk to her. on the bus ride i was much too scared to go sit next to her. instead, i employed the super-sly-secret-stare from a few rows behind her. (no, it wasnt creepy like that at all). i would get off and try to smoothly walk by her in the aisle, hoping to catch her attention so she'd notice what a stud-muffin i wasnt. i mean, what girl is gonna fall for a guy that cant even say one word to her, much less actually sit next to her?

thus were the circumstances for most of the year. i couldnt even tell you if she knew my name. oh but i knew hers! and this particular day went much the same as most others. no interaction, just lots of sly staring and day dreaming. so the end of the day came and we started out for the buses. i had to get there early so as to make sure i sat far enough back so i would be behind her. but alas, in this my attempt proved fatal (or fateful???) on this day. i was up near the front. oh no! what am i going to look at for the next 25 minutes? certainly not the bus driver. she was no tara stephens by any stretch of the imagination. so i resigned myself to my predicament and scooted over so i could stare out the window and wonder why life had been so cruel to me this day. but aghast- instead of being able to wallow in my unfortunate luck by myself, someone decides to cate (the opposite of vacate in case you were wondering what that word is or means) the spot next to me. ah man, come on people. maybe they would realize their mistake and quickly move. but they stayed there. deciding i should at least look over to see who it was that i was to share my seat with, i casually glance over......

AND BAM!!!!! guess who just scored big time? you got it, the SG himself just put up major points in the k-garten fantasy hotty contest! miss stephens had decided to grace my life finally and took the open spot next to me. spirits sored, tears were wept, hi-fives given! i was a man (sorry, little boy) whose day dreams were becoming a reality right in front of his six year old face. i felt like forrest gump when he gets on the bus for the first time and the only person who lets him sit next to them was a major babe, only the roles were reversed and she was sitting down next to me. (side note: pretty sure i made that same face forrest did when he turned and saw who it was, if you can remember)

who knew a bus ride would provide the setting for the most influential girl moment of my young life? as we proceeded down 200th street en route to our destinations, i soon felt a foreign object at rest on my shoulder. what is that strange sensation? i turn my head and audibly gasp when i see that the extra weight was from the head of miss stephens herself. and i wasnt even imagining it this time, it was for real! i could see it! i could feel it! i could smell it! this was actually happening to me!

but eventually the fairy tale came to an end, her stop came up and she had to leave. but not before she let me experience the most magical bus ride i had ever known, or ever would know. she sat next to me and laid her gentle, beautiful head- with those lovely locks of blondness- on my wimpy, bony shoulder.... the whole time! after a few moments of trying to regain my composure and grasp the import of what had just happened, i realized i was the only one on the bus still. hey, wait a minute. when i get off there are still stops to be made with children to get off at them. the bus driver noticed my semi panic attack and luckily knew where my stop was and returned to drop me off.

explanation: since i was sitting on the other side of the bus and my driveway was on the other side of the road, when it came time for my stop i completely spaced it! honest to goodness, to this day i remember the bus stopping, me looking out the window and seeing the familiar trees that stood across from my driveway, but yet not realizing that it was my stop. my mind was occupied with much more important things then to register it was my turn to get off. i wanted to ride that snuggle bus for as long as i could baby! even if it did mean missing my stop. oh it was well worth it i tell you. even though my mom wondered why it was i was so late in getting home, i didnt care. i had experienced greatness. i had become a man. then it was i realized my destiny to become a smooth hunk of pimpness. but wait.......

she never said one word to me after that!!!! can you believe it? after all that? she just kicked me to the curb. for the rest of our elementary campaign i had to sit on the sidelines of love as she not once more tossed a morsel my way. tough break you might say. it happens. who cares, its freakin k-garten for goodness sakes (all valid points which i agree with now, but tell that to a young crushed heart and see the reaction you get)

and so i started on the single path that has led me to where i am today. it all started with a girl, a boy, a bus, a cuddle, and a missed bus stop....