LeAnne Rimes Christmas Concert

My good friend Rich worked for Nu Skin. On Wednesday they had their work Christmas party. That party was a LeAnne Rimes concert and Rich invited me and a couple of others to come to the concert with him. I have not really kept up with LeAnne Rimes over the years... but I own all of her big hits, so I was in. I never pass up a free concert or spending time with Rich.

The evening started with getting appetizers and then getting to our seat. After the concert was over (which she performed for over an hour) they did their Nu Skin stuff... gave away millions on prizes to say thank you to their employees. I forgot what it was like to work for a company that is doing well. Novell is for sure NOT one of those companies. They wouldn't even let us spend money on a Christmas Party this year. ha ha Anyway.., they gave away a lot of awesome stuff.

LeAnne Rimes was great live. She was a little awkward on stage at first, but then she warmed up and got a lot better. Her voice... awesome. She performed all of her hits that I wanted her to including "Can't stop the Moonlight" from Coyote Ugly. She also performed many Christmas songs... which I loved. It is a Christmas Party after all. Anyway, she was great. Can't believe we are the same age.

We all had a blast and were so glad Rich invited us to the awesome party. Can't beat free concerts! Thanks Rich!

Flashback Friday 145

1st Grade Christmas performance. We made our own reindeer hats.

Confessions of a Brunette on the Internet 198

The weekend of Thanksgiving was so nice and sunny. It was a great time to recover from my trip. It wasn't until Monday that I fully felt like I was back on my normal time.

I saw Catching Fire with my mom. It was SO GOOD! I LOVED it. I loved the first one and thought they did a great job with the first one, but I liked the second one even more! They did such an amazing job casting it and the actors did such an amazing job acting. I just really felt the emotion and fear of living in the districts and going into the games. What a great movie. I want to see it again.

Monday I got my hair done. Nicole does such an amazing job. She knows my hair and what looks good on me. I always trust her to do whatever she wants and I have never been disappointed. I even get compliments from strangers. I did this week. That is when you know your hair is awesome and other people wish their hair was as awesome as yours. ha ha.

Tuesday the sunny days ended. It got cold... real cold. I got ready for work in the basement and walked upstairs... to find this. Yuck! Winter has begun and mother nature sure didn't ease us in this year. It snowed... all day...

I'm already over the snow and it just started. I just hate being cold, and scraping snow and ice off of my car, and driving in it... that's all. Really, if I could hibernate...

I'm back to pilates on Monday. Why? Because Jeanie is back! Oh how I have missed her. Seriously... I'm starting over since I have not done pilates in about a year and I'm excited for Jeanie to whip my core back into shape. Her class is so fun. SO glad she is back.

Wednesday I went with Rich to his Christmas work party at Nu Skin. Oh how I forgot what it is like to work for a successful company. Novell... they won't even let us spend money on a Christmas party this year. Nu Skin was giving away millions in prizes to say thanks to their employee's. They also had a concert... but I will get to that later.

Today I had dinner with John's family. You never know how other people's families are going to be. John's family is so great. Even though I have only met his parents one other time and two of his siblings one other time, I was welcomed like family. I felt so at home there, even the people that didn't know me welcomed me with open arms. So nice. That is the type of family that I would like to marry into. John has yet to meet my family. Maybe this weekend or next. I'm sure John will get the same welcoming feeling. Or at least I hope. I think my family is pretty good at that.

My roommates and I decorated for Christmas. A lot of the things that they put up... I wouldn't have because I like things to look good and classy. I guess not everyone has my good eye for fashion and design. I'm a little OCD about it... but I am trying to learn to let go and not make a big deal out of it. It makes them happy... and that is all that matters. I just know when I have my own place... I will be doing things VERY differently. ha ha.

I made a Winter Bucket List that I am pretty excited about. Maybe it will help me like Winter this year? Probably not... but at least it will make sure that I don't hibernate.

So the trend right now is the patterned leggings. I bought some but have not been able to get myself to wear them. Nicole told me I should wear them this week because I would be able to pull them all. So I wore them the next day. It felt good. I think they are cute. I may even want to buy another pair in another pattern. ha ha. I think people liked them and I pulled them off well. They are comfortable, that's for sure.

Photo of the Week 196

One of MANY pictures I took at Angkor Wat, Cambodia. What an amazing place!

Scuba Diving Racha Yai

One thing I was excited to do in Thailand was go scuba diving! It's not very often that I get to scuba dive and I had heard that Thailand was one of the top places in the world to do it. I told everyone in the group to get certified before our trip so we could all go. Regardless of what any of them did... I was going. Daniel was the only one that ended up getting certified before we left so we were both pumped to go! Ellis ended up coming with us and doing "Discover Scuba" which is a crash course on scuba diving and you stay with your own Dive Master the whole time (which is why he isn't in many of our pictures. It ended up being a little rainy while we were there, but we were still able to go. We were pumped!

The ride to Racha Yai island (where we were going to be scuba diving) was a couple of hours, but it was beautiful. The water is a beautiful teal color and so clear and the islands are so lush and green with jungles that meet the beach. What a beautiful place.

When we got to Racha Yai, all of our stuff was put in a bag, but we had to put all of our equipment together and get our wetsuits on and then we were ready to get into the water.

Despite the rainy and overcast weather, the water was really warm (70's) and very clear. Daniel and I ended up getting our own Dive Master to show us around the waters of Racha Yai. He was also awesome and took pictures of us and things we saw on our dive. I had my GoPro and got awesome video, but the pictures are not as great... so I'm using our Dive Master's pictures.

We did two different dives and ate lunch in between. Both dives were beautiful, my second dive was a little more comfortable, not only because I was more used to scuba after not going in a year and a half... but also because my mask was tighter so it wasn't leaking the second dive. There was so many beautiful fish! I thought of my cousin's Trav and Dave and their salt water tanks and how some of these fish would be awesome in their tanks. They would have loved it. Here are some of the cool things we saw on our dives.

Daniel and I had a blast... and our Dive Master was awesome. I love scuba diving. Not only is it discovering this new world that hardly anyone sees... but it is so peaceful. There is no talking... the only noise you hear is the sound of your breathing. The slow weightless motion through the water is so relaxing. There are so many interesting things to look at. Scuba Diving is awesome.

Post dive smiles. We are so happy that we went! What an experience!

Tiger Kingdom

I still have so many pictures to go through from my trip... so I have decided to not post in order. Rather I will just post what I have done and the most together/ organized.

We went to Tiger Kingdom in Chiang Mai, Thailand (Northern). We were about a week into our trip when we did this. I was pretty excited about this... but I really love animals.

I know this is something that the majority of people do when they visit Thailand. Therefore, I wasn't nervous. They seemed to not care too much about the people around them. They are beautiful animals aren't they? I got some good action shots of one of the Tigers while I was in the cage.

I saw this one sleeping... it just looked so cute and cuddly that I just had to snuggle up with it for a minute. I just rubbed his belly while I hugged him.

We also had lunch at Tiger Kingdom. It was a blast! Along with the rest of the day... but we will get to that later. :)

Lehi Christmas Parade

Yesterday my new friend Allison and I were looking for something fun to do. She thought it would be fun to go to a Christmas Tree lighting. She saw online that Lehi was having a parade AND Christmas Tree lighting that day. So we decided to go. The website said that the parade started at 4.

We got to Lehi at 4 and didn't see a parade going on. In fact, we didn't see any streets blocked off or people waiting on the side of the streets. We double checked online to see if it was really happening today. Supposedly it was, but we got the time wrong. It was at 5. Still... at 4 you would think you would see some sign of a parade waiting to happen.

We saw two men in the high school parking lot (where the parade was supposed to start) by their tractors. We ask them about the parade. They tell us it starts at 5 and the Mayer said to meet at 4:30 (which is was) and he was going to meet them at the school on his tractor along with everyone else that was supposed to be in the parade. We thought that was strange. I suggested we get something to eat while we wait. I had just recently eaten at Emmet and Ethel's a few weeks ago with Nate and Steve and suggested we go there. We went and it was closed... for the parade. So we went to Arctic Circle. I asked them if they knew if there was a parade going on (because it was getting closer to 5 and we still didn't see any signs of a parade. The people there had no idea what I was talking about.

As we sat by the window in Arctic Circle eating our food... we saw some people gathering at the high school. There were finally signs of a parade. It's 5pm and the police show up to block off the road. Then the first tractor starts off the parade. We see that the parade has started and decide we will finish our food and then head out and watch the rest from the street. About 5 tractors/ floats go by and then the sixth has Santa on it. We realize quickly that is the end of the parade! We thought that couldn't be right.... but it was. The parade was over after 5 minutes! No wonder people didn't know it was happening. I laughed so hard that I cried. I kind of don't love parades... so this was my kind of parade. I just didn't know such short parades happened. We decided we better hurry if we were going to make it to the tree lighting! ha ha

We got to where they were going to light the tree. We made it in time. Santa was on the roof wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and then started counting down from 10. Then this pole with lights around it to look like a tree lit up. HA! We laughed again. We thought there would be an actual tree. James wanted to get a picture with Miss Lehi, so I took their picture. She was on one of the 5 other floats besides Santa I guess. Then we left.

We were home by 5:45. The parade started at 5 and it is a 10-15 minute drive back. I'm still laughing about it. We were all so glad we went. Great way to start off our Christmas season!