Flashback Friday 54

Goleta Valley Jr. High Graduation. 1997! This was my group of friends that I did everything with. I still keep in touch with the majority of them. So funny to see how little we were.

Cody and Austin were my best guy friends that I did just about everything with.

Confessions of a Brunette on the Internet 107

What an insane week. I already wrote all about Vegas. That was crazy and tiring... but most of all fun and I am So glad that I didn't get sick after. That sometimes happens to me after hardly getting any sleep many nights in a row. My roommates both did... I did not. All the healthy eating and exercise must be paying off?

There was not one night this week that that I went to bed before 1:30 or 2. So much stuff going on. Monday night went to FHE (the wrong one... but whatever) and then to buy food, do laundry, unpack, etc... Tuesday we had a Relief Society Activity about hair and beauty. It was good, one of the hair stylists in our ward gave us lots of great tips and showed us how to do knew hair styles (I was the hair model.. so unfortunately I didn't see anything). After that we went to a movie night. Hugo. Love that movie. Wednesday was Institute and chillin with my roommates and adopted roommates. We were laughing so hard... we were up late talking about all the different scenarios that we have been rejected by guys in the ward. In fact.... maybe I will do a post about it. Maybe it would only be funny to us. New guy in the ward, Jay, was over as well... I think he thought we were crazy, but he keeps coming over, so he must think we are somewhat cool. ha ha. Tonight I watched Hot Rod with Jay. I love it when people love that movie as much as I do.

Okay, Tara introduced me to a new game on the phone. It is called "Draw something". Kind of like pictionary between you and a friend. One person draws, the other person guesses and then they draw, you guess. It is fun because you can see the whole processes of their drawing... every time they erase and everything. I was cracking up because Rachel started drawing scene by scene so I could guess one word. Anyway, it is fun and we were all playing each other and cracking up. If you want to join in on the fun and play against me, download "Draw Something" it's free... and then look me up by username Zmomma and play me. :)

I have always loved connections. The crazier the connection with someone, the more I love it. Seriously. Connections in Provo happen all the time. I mean... you live here long enough and your friends know someone else's friends, you met so and so at a party once and now they live in your ward. So and so grew up with your friend you know from such and such, etc... those are fun, but not that surprising. The ones that I love are the people you see again and you say to yourself "What are the chances". Of course being LDS does make it a little bit of a smaller world when it comes to running into someone again but... Well, for example. When Lori and I were in Costa Rica for two months, we tried to go to church every Sunday we could find one. One Sunday was fast and testimony meeting and the elders in that ward came up to Lori and I and said that if we wanted to bare our testimony they would be happy to translate for us. We chatted a little bit after church and that was that. A year or 2 later, it is summer and EFY is going on at UCSB and so all the counselors came to our singles ward. One of my friends points to one of the guys and says he is cute. I look at him and all I can think of is how familiar he looks. I decided to talk to him to see how I knew him, because those kind of things bug me until I figure it out. While talking to him he had no idea who I was.. I started asking him questions and then asked, "Wait, where did you serve your mission?" Costa Rica he says. BING!! I think the only reason I even recognized him is because I remember him kind of looking like my cousin Travis. Anyway... I told him we met in Costa Rica on his mission and it was crazy awesome.............. Okay, so most recent connection that I think tops them all. Jay moves into my ward in January. I never really talk to him until this last Sunday. I was trying to find him on facebook so Tara and I could tag him in our bowling pictures. I asked him if he was on facebook because I couldn't find him. He says, not sure why you couldn't find me... we have 12 mutual friends (or something like that). He saw some of our mutual friends were people from Minnesota. He asks me how I know them. He says he is from there. I say... oh cool. I went there once for a week for my friend's Abby and Ryan's wedding, do you know them? He said he knew them and was really good friends with the Clark's. Then I go on saying, oh yes, I know the Clark's. I am friend's with Kim. In fact, I stayed at their house one night when I went out there for the wedding. Then there is a pause and he stares at me and with excitement says "I have met you before!" I'm like Whaaaa? No way. Where? "At the Clark's house when you stayed there with Kim. I was over and I remember being introduced to you and you saying that you were there for the wedding". All of the sudden my mind flashes back to that exact moment, and I remember... and I can even picture him there. I mean... it was crazy because it was a hi, nice to meet you see ya later conversation almost 7 years ago. We both would have NEVER remembered each other, but because of our conversation, he remembered. It was SO crazy awesome. What are the chances? I just love thinking... you just NEVER know who is going to reappear in your life. Even if it is someone you briefly met in a different state almost 7 years ago. It's a small world.

Photo of the Week 105

Having just been in Vegas, I thought it would be appropriate to have a Vegas picture for my photo of the week.

Purple Rain

It all started when we went to the Lady Antebellum concert. Darius Rucker sang a cover of "Purple Rain" by Prince. He rocked it. I am not going to lie, I had heard the song before, but I wasn't that familiar with it. I didn't listen to a ton of Prince growing up and it is just not a song I heard often.



But let me tell you... since that concert, Purple Rain keeps appearing in my life. When we first got to Vegas we went to this karaoke bar. When they announced that Randy would be singing Purple Rain, we knew it would be good. This guy was drunk of course. Talking drinks in the middle of the song, also answering his phone asking where his friend was but all of this at the same time of singing his heart out. We were dying of laughter. After this performance... we decided that Purple Rain was going to be the theme song of our trip. It was just meant to be.



That night as we were trying to fall asleep I thought of an idea. We should see how many people in Vegas we could get to perform Purple Rain for us and then we would record it. The possibilities were endless and ideas just kept coming to my head. Here are some of the ideas I came up with (some obviously very unrealistic but thinking big because we were in Vegas).

#1- Go back to the Garage Boys and get them to perform it.
#2- Put in a request to Celine Dion to perform it at our concert (that she canceled)
#3- Bellagio Water Fountain Show to the song, with purple lights on the water. Legit no?
#4- Have Thunder Down Under dance to it.
#5- Karaoke (check)
#6- Random street performers performing it for us.

That might be everything I came up with... I don't remember.

Well... we asked many people. Some people just didn't do it. Some didn't know what Purple Rain was. We gave up after a while... however, we did get one street performer to do it.



And of course we went back to our favorite Garage Boys. They take requests, so we asked them on their break if they would perform Purple Rain for us. They said they weren't sure... it had been so long that they had to remember how it went. Then they said they would do it and before they started they would give us a sign so that we could start recording. The sign was touching their nose. ha ha.  It was awesome. They rocked it and we loved it. I don't think we would of been able to find anyone to top that.



To make things even better... as Vicki and I were walking on our way to Serendipity, Vicki spotted a car with a banner. A Banner that was purple and had a picture of Prince on it.... and it said Purple Rain!!!! No way!? What are the chances? I guess there is a Prince tribute show. The car stopped at a stoplight and we ran to take a picture. Purple Rain was SO meant to be our theme song.

Vegas Getaway

For about a year, Rachel and I have been talking about going down to Vegas to see Celine Dion in concert because we grew up loving her and we had heard that her show in Vegas was A-Mazing! So... about a month ago we finally decided we were going to do it and bought ticket's to her show. She doesn't perform all of the time, so we had to find when she was performing and then plan our trip accordingly.

We decided to make a fun girls trip out of it. Even Ashley flew in from AZ. Originally we were going to go with our friend Jason who is from there and he was going to drive and we were going to stay at his parents house... but he bailed out a few days before the trip. Awesome. Thanks Jason, your a champ. That didn't stop us though! We were determined to see Celine and have a fun weekend in Vegas. *In the picture below we are doing our Vegas Happy Dance*

In the end, we were actually really glad that Jason didn't come. Otherwise I don't think we would have done a lot of things on the trip that we ended up doing, like meeting The Garage Boys for example. Since our place to stay was no longer coming, we booked ourselves a hotel on the strip. We stayed at the Flamingo! Not the nicest of the hotels on the strip, but who cares... you are just sleeping there. Plus, it was right by many of the places we wanted to go. Including being across the street from where we needed to go to the Celine Dion concert. Besides the convenience, our favorite thing about the Flamingo hotel was the pink elevator. Holla!

Oh! I also can't forget that I loved staying at the Flamingo because it made me feel more at home. Why you ask? Well, because that is where Donny and Marie perform. Therefore, there are pictures of them everywhere there. Since they are LDS and from Utah... it just made me feel more at home. Everyday as I would pass the life size picture of Donny I would say... "Hey Donny! What's up? Good to see you again. Don't worry... CTR".

How to summarize the weekend. We did so much... I mean what didn't we do? Oh yeah, I will tell you what we didn't do. We didn't go to the Celine Dion Concert... the whole purpose of our trip! Why? She cancelled the show the day of. I guess she was sick. However, on our way out of our hotel that night I also saw that Donny and Marie had cancelled their show as well. A little fishy don't you think? Our theory was that Celine was out partying with Donny and Marie somewhere. Regardless, I was super sad and everything wrong that happened that night I blamed on her... like the blisters on my feet. Totally her fault. Oh yeah, and I put her on STO (Singer Time Out) until May. Even though we didn't get to see Celine, we did get to do a bunch of other stuff and had a blast. We ate at some super yummy places such as Serendipity. Ever been there? Best Frozen Hot Chocolate EVER!!!

Also went to Stripburger. SUPER good burger place. Everything I ate was amazing. We had the garlic fries. YUM!!! Oh and please take note that I ordered the Mexican Burger and that it is almost as tall as my water glass. Even after squishing it down, I STILL had a hard time fitting it into my mouth! P.S. Best waitress ever (which is why we got our pic with her. ha ha)

We saw Garage Boys perform every night. We shopped and walked around the strip. We saw some free shows on the strip. Went to a karaoke bar (SUPER funny). Girls night outback. We got photoshopped into some Vegas dancer pictures.... learned some magic tricks from a magician that didn't know who Prince was OR Celine Dion and kept calling Celine a he. What the what?!!! Anyway... fun was had and we were super tired EVERY DAY!

I also got to see Lolly, which is always one of the highlights of going to Vegas for me. I usually stay with her when I go, so this was my first true Vegas experience. I wished that I could have spent A LOT more time with Lolly, but I was so glad she drove to the crazy strip to visit me for an hour or so. She is such a good friend. Love her.

When I was packing, I was told that I needed to wear a sparkly outfit for the Celine Dion concert. Celine may have flaked out, but we still all wore our sparkly outfits out our last night. The Garage Boys noticed and said we all looked extra nice that night. Disco Ball at your service! ha ha. Me and Vicki's shirts are so bright that they reflect off of each other!

Roommates!

Thanks for such a fun trip girls! It was just what I needed!

The Garage Boys

So we went to Vegas over the weekend. We get there Thursday night and we check into the Flamingo Hotel (where we were staying on the strip). The night was young. We wanted to check out what was going down on the strip. We heard there was Karaoke at the Hotel/ Casino next to ours so we went to go check it out. On our way into O'Sheas, we pass by this band that is palying. Our mind is set on karaoke... so we continue on. We find karaoke and are entertained for a half hour or 45 minutes and then are done and head back out. We notice a lot of good looking men in O'Sheas. While we stopped to look around we hear the band saying something about our group of girls stopping. So we went over to listen to the band for a little bit. They are good AND super funny and entertaining, so we decide to sit and stay.

*This is when they played "Rock Band Style" ... you know... star power*

Their band was called The Garage Boys and we ended up staying until they were done playing for the night which was 1am. They just played cover songs and you could request just about anything and they would play it. They asked us a couple times what we wanted them to play and they played it. We loved them. Had a blast and told them thank you for the show, they told us they would be there all weekend and then we went back to our hotel. We decided that night as we were talking before going to bed that we had so much fun that we wanted to go back the next night and request more songs... including "Purple Rain" which you will hear more about later. So we planned our night accordingly. We showed up the next night and they were on their break from one of their sets. We went right up to them and asked them if they remembered us from the night before and they said of course and we requested our songs and they played them. Friday night they played even longer! They played until 3:30am and we stayed the whole time. With all of that time jamming out with them, we got the chance to talk to them a little bit more and get to know them a little. They were so much fun. When giving us attention during the show they would refer to us as the ladies from Utah. We mostly talked to and got to know Bryan, the leader of the band from Canada and Mike... who Vicki nick named Hottie McMohawk. He was pretty cute. Since they were becoming our Vegas BFF's we decided to get pictures with them.

When posing with Bryan, he wanted to do a sassy picture and "The Family Photo". ha ha. He is so funny.

With Mike

When the show was over that night, we thanked them again for another fun night and great show and hugged them goodbye because we were not sure what our plans were going to be the next night since we were going to be going to the Celine Dion concert and everything. They said we needed to come back again and that they would be playing late again... so we said we would see how the night went.



Well, our last night in Vegas did not exactly go according to plan. Celine Dion cancelled her show and I was a little mad. We missed our Vegas BFF's and just had to go back on our last night. It was what we did every night, why stop now? So we went back, they were happy to see us and gave us a little shout out and asked us how our concert went, we told them she cancelled and asked them to perform a Celine song for us... they did a little which was funny. Bryan said she gives Canadians a bad name. ha ha. We stayed until 3:30am again that night and even though it was crowded and full of crazy drunk people... we had a blast and sang and danced a long. On their breaks they would come and sit with us and chat the whole break which was fun. Bryan made sure to give me his card with all the info on it to keep in touch so we could become groupies and he asked me if I would put the video I recorded on their facebook page (check). I also dropped a note in their request bucket that they should come to Utah and they said they would if we found them a venue (we are working on it). We were sad to leave them. I know that seems silly, but we spent many hours with them. They were free entertainment that we know would be there and not cancel on us and we knew we would have a good time there and they enjoyed us (probably because we were the only ones that were not drunk) and we loved singing a long to the music and talking and hanging out with them. When you are not going to gamble or drink... this was a great place to go. They were our hero's of the trip. They made it really fun for us. Now we are all facebook friends and having fun chatting on there. ha ha

Thank you Garage Boys! We hope to see you jamming out soon!

LOST

Thursday I finished LOST. I didn't ever watch it when it was on tv because I wanted to watch it from the beginning and I knew I would be hooked... and I was right. I started watching the last week of December as a group (my roommates and Jason). We watched the first 3 Seasons together, but the further into January we got, the busier we became and the harder it became to watch together and it started to become drama. After a lot of stuff went down, I finally got permission from the group to watch on my own. It was super fun to watch as a group... but I was so excited to watch on my own because I could watch it as fast as I wanted. I was so excited in fact that I watched the 4th season in 2 days. Of course it was a shorter season... but still. It was only a couple of weeks after that that I finished the 5th and 6th season.

First I want to say that I LOVED the show. Seriously. I fell in love with the characters right away. I know most people watched it on TV for 6 years, but I was pretty attached in two months time. I loved it enough that I am going to want to watch the whole thing again. Not right away of course... but I will. I mean, I have with Alias several times. It won't have the same thrill as watching it for the first time, but I think watching it the second time will be cool because more things will make sense, I will pick up on things I didn't before. This all being said... since I have just finished it, I have a lot to say and questions to ask. If you have never seen LOST and want to... stop reading, if you have watched it... I would love your thoughts.

The first 3 seasons were my favorite, then it started to get a little weird. I loved that the first couple of seasons gave you background on each character and what lead them to that flight that ended up crashing. I liked that in the different seasons they switched up how they did their character development to the future and then as though the plane never crashed. I felt like it always had me guessing what was going to happen... but I really never knew. I know that a lot of people didn't like the way it ended, but I was actually okay with it. Of course you want to think that they all lived happily ever after... but even though they were all dead, I like how everyone reconnected at the end and were all together in heaven. PS the last episode I was totally crying my eyes out in my office while I watched. Maybe it was because I was touched with people reconnecting and seeing all the flashbacks, maybe it is because I found out everyone was dead. Maybe I just didn't want it to be the last episode... I don't know, but I cried.

As far as the characters of the show went, I liked a lot of them. I of course loved Jack. He was cute, was the hero and leader from the beginning, so I wasn't that surprised when he was still the leader and hero at the end. Although I did think that he reacted emotionally most of the time. I always liked Kate, but I didn't like her going back and forth between Sawyer and Jack. I just wanted her to stay with Jack, so I was happy they ended up together.

Sawyer I liked because he was cute and funny and even though he came across as a tough guy, I always knew he had a good heart.  I didn't want him with Kate... and when Kate left the island and he stayed behind I knew he would hook up with Juliet... but I wasn't really attached to them being together either.

John Lock. I know that people had mixed feelings about him... but I always liked him. I always thought he had people's best interest at hand. I would never do anything to hurt anyone and he was super smart. He knew what he was doing... so I always trusted him. Up until he turned into the Monster.

Sayid is the man. I don't think a lot of people would have survived without him. I always believed everything that Sayid said. The only thing that I didn't understand from him is why he fell in love with Shanon. She was SO annoying and her relationship with her step brother was SO weird.

I never could look at Charlie without thinking of him as a Hobbit. Sorry, just couldn't do it. I got annoyed with Charlie's heroin addiction, but overall I liked him and was pretty sad when he died. I think I may have cried. I love how much he adored and took care of Claire.

Hurley is nice and lovable. Everyone loves Hurley. His relationship with Libby was sweet. The only thing that bugged me was that he never lost weight. I'm sorry... but you would lose weight in a situation like that being there for as long as they were.

Ben gave me the creeps the moment he came on the screen for the first time. Ben as a child gave me the creeps. Ben ALWAYS gave me the creeps. I NEVER trusted him, even in the end when he was supposed to be good, I still didn't like him. ewww

I LOVED Sun and Jin's story. I started out thinking that Jin was a jerk and didn't care for him, but I loved seeing the transformation and how they totally fixed their marriage and really came to love each other and forgive each other. When they died... I cried like a baby. Seriously. Sadest thing ever. It was so sweet... but so sad. I was also in my office when I watched that just hoping that nobody would walk by as I was crying my eyes out. How embarrassing.

 I wasn't sad when Anna Lucia died, or Shannon. Boone a little... but not much. Mr. Echo always kind of weirded me out, but I was a little sad when he died. I was VERY happy when Michael and Walt left because Michael was seriously starting to get on my nerves. I know a lot of people die or leave, but these were the ones I thought of at the top of my head.

Now I have questions. Okay, in the end, obviously they are all dead, but were they dead in the plane crash before they ever went to the island? I can see why people think that. I wouldn't have thought that unless someone told me and I am not sure if I agree yet or not. If the island is just like spirit prison while they try and figure out whatever lessons they need to learn before they go to heaven... then why did the people leave the island for 3 years and then go back? And then why say they staged the plane at the bottom of the ocean if they really didn't. Why would the dog need to be there? Don't all dogs go to heaven? On the last episode... why was Anna Lucia not ready? Why did Ben not feel comfortable going in the church? Where was Michael and Walt? How about Mr. Echo? If Hurley became the new Jacob, that means he would not die, so how long was he on the island until someone took his place. Maybe the writers don't even know. Even though I have lots of questions... I feel like they answered a lot of questions and gave great closure to the end of the series. Sorry that was kind of scatter brained... but I guess I just want to know what other people thought when it was all over. I heart that show.