My mom and I went to Salt Lake to see Irelyn in her dance recital. She was really cute and did a great job and you can tell she really loves it. I'm a proud Auntie and that has a lot of talented nieces and nephews. Love them all. Great Job on your dance Irelyn. Love you.
When Reanne went into Jr High, she started taking band. She plays the clarinet and the sax. She prefers the clarinet as you can see by her unhappy look in the video, but she plays both well! I had only heard her play once when she had first started. So it was really fun to see her play in the band. They are pretty good. I mean... they are in Jr. High! I was impressed. Reanne is awesome!! So glad that I was able to go. Can't wait for her fall concert.
Sadly the Beta that my cousin Dave bought me (Luna) died. I waited until after I traveled to the Middle East, and Mexico... but now I'm ready to have another Beta. I just like having one I guess. So... I went to buy one.
I went to PetSmart hoping to find the new Purple Rain. When I say new Purple Rain, I realize that no other Beta could replace Purple Rain, but one that has the same energy and hopefully will live close to as long as he did.
I picked one out. Long tail like P-Rain, but this little guy has blue and red. He has a lot of energy and follows me when I am around and gets excited when I come home because he knows I am going to feed him... just like P-Rain did. So I have high hopes for this little guy.
Now... for a good name. I feel like because P-Rain lived so long (5 years which is like a million in Beta years) and had such a stellar name and theme song, I felt I needed to do the same for this little guy.
I thought long and hard and even brain stormed with MacKenzie. I came to a conclusion. I decided to stick with the rock stars that have passed away. The last one was named after a Prince song. Davie Bowie passed away not that long ago as well... so... his name is Bowie and his theme song is Space Oddity. I almost named him Major Tom... but I liked Bowie better. So Bowie it is. I hope Bowie sticks around for a while.
Stacey and I hung out a lot before Christmas because we were both around. On Friday (Christmas Eve Eve) we went and worked out together at the gym, then went to the theater to see Passengers then went home and changed into our onsie pjs and we binge watched The OA on Netflix. In the middle of the show (we ended at 4 am) we decided to take a dance break. And of course we video taped it. Enjoy!
One of my favorite things about Utah Summer's are the perfect summer nights and that you can watch Fireworks every weekend (if you wanted to) in a different city. Tonight I went to Orem Summerfest with some friends to watch the fireworks and they put on a good show. So I'll just leave this here for when you need some fireworks in your life.
Last September I went to Utah's Lantern Fest out by the Salt Flats. I guess they started doing it twice a year now... once in the Spring and once in the fall. Because I went to the last one, I now get emails for when they come back. I don't mind.
I bought 2 tickets because I had planned for Stacey and I to go so that we could add it to our dancing through Utah video. Well... when Stacey bailed on the video, I now had an extra ticket to this even and had no idea who was going to go with me. I already paid for it, so I didn't want to waste the money and not go... although I was no long excited to go to the festival... mostly because I had nobody to go with and it's a big ordeal that I wasn't in the mood for.
At first I almost got my summer adventure club to come with me, but then non of them bought tickets and I found out most of them had a friends wedding that night. Then I asked my friend Amber if she would go with me, and she said she wanted to go but it would depend on if she was feeling up for it since she was under the weather. I kind of counted on that but then didn't hear from her Saturday, so I text her early in the afternoon and she said she wasn't going to go. I then gave up on trying to find someone to go with me and decided to try and sell both tickets. So I posted them on 3 different yard sale pages on Facebook and also posted it on my ward Facebook page. Apparently my roommate MacKenzie saw me posting it everywhere and she text me saying she really wanted to go. Funny... you would think I would ask her first since we live together but I hadn't really seen her much that week and she never really takes me up on those kinds of things so I just figured she wouldn't want to. I figured WRONG! I was so excited.
So MacKenzie rushed home and we grabbed some warm things and left to go to the Festival. It's an all night thing so we of course stopped by Sodalicious to get a drink and treat and then stopped by Freebirds to get some dinner to eat once we got there. The traffic was nuts... but once we got there, we found a tiki torch to set up our chairs next to and we listened to the live music and ate our dinner and watched the sunset. It was a bit windy and a little chilly... but I was content. I was worried that we were not going to be able to light the lanterns because it was so windy. However... it cleared up just enough for us to do it.
Even though I had been to the Festival before and even been to the real Festival in Thailand... it never gets old. It is seriously magical, especially when they put music to it. I maybe kind of teared up a little bit when they were playing Josh Groban. It never gets old... I would go to the next one in a heartbeat. They changed location this time so that they could fit even more people in to the Festival so there were even more lanterns than last time. Such an awesome experience. I'm so glad that MacKenzie wanted to go with me last minute so that not only my tickets didn't go to waste... but it also made my entire weekend. Experiencing a festival like this makes you smile and think of how great life is.
It is so hard to do this festival justice with pictures.... so I decided to include a video this time as well.
I always make a video of all of my trips. My more recent trips, I have been thinking about what I want to do for the video before I even go on the trip so that I can prepare for it and be getting the things I want as I go.
Well, going to Brazil with Stacey, I thought it would be so fun to dance our way through Brazil and thankfully Stacey was all for it since we both love to dance. He was so excited about it in fact that he worked on it the most. He thought of most of the dance moves and edited the entire thing as we went along the trip. It was a team effort though. We both picked the song together (which I think is perfect) on the plane ride there and thought of dance moves and where we want to film and practiced the dance moves and filmed in public and always had people watching us and wondering what the heck we were doing. It was all worth it though, because I LOVE how our video turned out... and apparently so does everyone else because it already has over 1,000 views and it's only been posted for a week. I have watched it a ton of times and never get sick of watch it. It just puts a big smile on my face overtime I watch it because each one of those scenes has great memories for us. Some of the memories we created by making this video and other's bring up memories because of where we were at. Anyway... It will be hard to top this video on my next trip, wherever that may be. Maybe I will just have to keep doing dance videos. Do you think that would get old? I don't know, but this video hasn't gotten old to me. I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.
It's only taken me 6 months... but hey, I finished the video of my last trip. Just in time before I go on another one. It is kind of fun though. Totally get to re-live the trip again. I hope this video makes you want to go to the Philippines. Enjoy.
Remember the other day when I posted about playing Maleficent in a music video for Halloween? Well, RJ finished it today and it is up and running! He was super quick with this one. I enjoyed playing Maleficent. I liked that there were fewer characters this time. Just one princess and her villain. Anyway. Give it a watch. Hope you enjoy. It's fun to be a part of these video's. I'm glad he keeps asking me.
Here is the finished video. I don't love it as much as the first one... and I probably have the same amount of screen time, but it was fun... I'm sure I will be in the next one as well.
Here is the music video I was in. RJ did a great job with it. I have one close up... and I'm in the background a bit if you are really looking for me. Still fun to be a part of. Maybe I will get to be in his next one as well.
I'm still in awe that Purple Rain (my beta fish) is not only still alive, but thriving. Seriously... beta fish don't usually live this long.
I'm thrilled. He is the coolest, prettiest beta with the longest fins I have ever seen. I'm going to give credit to the fact that I named him a rock star name like Purple Rain and that he has a theme song. So I thought it fitting that I made him a video.... so even when he dies, whenever that is.... he will live on forever. He is a legendary beta. He deserves it.
Really I just made this video to send to my cousin Travis for a laugh because he thought it was so funny that I named my fish Purple Rain and every time he hears that song he calls me.
Thursday, Ian and I put on another ward activity. This video of people playing real life Hungry Hungry Hippos has been going around and it's catching on and more and more people are doing it... including us. So glad we did, it is SO much fun. Everyone that came had a BLAST! Stacey and I took lots of video's of the event and I had a fun time putting together this video of the activity. If this video doesn't make you want to play, I don't know what would.
Allison and I started the night before blowing up balloons since we knew we had SO many to blow up. The trick after that was figuring out how to get all of the blown up balloons to the church. It filled up my entire car and I couldn't see anything!
Here is the Activities committee that helped put it on.
After everyone was done playing....
My Calling is a lot of work, but it sure is fun too.
My computer kind of broke RIGHT before I was going to finish this video. Poor Allison had been waiting very patiently for this video to be done. Well... it is finally done and I showed it to her first before I put it out on the web for everyone else to see. She loved it... in which I am glad. It's hard not to love something you are in... but I felt like we did a good job capturing the trip... the good, the bad and the hilarious. For your viewing pleasure... here you go.
I know it took me a while, but I finished it in time for John's birthday. The Peru video is done. I like how it turned out and I'm glad that I used authentic Peruvian music from the Andies!
Putting it together made me miss it. It was like I got to relive the trip over again. It was such a neat experience and I'm so glad that I went. I'm glad that John let me tag along for part of his trip. What a beautiful country. I will never forget it.
