Wedding Absentee

The fans

The MPSF Player of the Year
Since you were busy last weekend we will excuse your absence this time.
....Oh and congratulations!

A Short Dance Clip

Ta-da! The wedding dancing video. Or some of it anyway. And posted on the next day to boot. I. Am. GOOD. This will just give you a small taste of the wonders the wedding held.

The first song, apparently, is quite popular amongst school aged children and other people who line dance. I'd never heard it before but I was clearly in the minority. If only Amy had convinced Kim to get out there. I would've recorded the whole song and dedicated an entire post to dancing Kim. And it would've been titled "dancing Kim." But, as Nicki would always say "if wishes were fishes we'd all live in the sea." I never quite got that. We'd live in the sea because we'd want to be close to our wishes? ....What?

Anyway. The point is Kim, for someone who claims to want a blog nod you're certainly not trying very hard to earn it. But if you try out for SYTYCD I will forgive you.

The second song in the video is far less important than checking out the K&M moves. Well on their way to being the hit dancers at the stake dances in ten years.

M&B

Yep it's official. They got married. In Vegas. And it was wonderful. Even though I didn't have time to ride any rollercoasters, see Cher (or Donny and Marie for that matter), eat at the Buffet o' Buffets (to which you can get an all day pass), watch the big fight, shoot any semi-automatic weapons you can only shoot in Vegas or in the army, try my hand at poker or even stick one quarter in the slots, I'd still say this was one of the best trips to Vegas ever.

The bride was gorgeous, the groom was handsome, the wedding was beautiful and the reception was awesome. Even the elements cooperated for the evening and resulted in one heck of a party without anyone's perfectly coiffed hair getting blown all over the place by the wind. That may not seem like a big deal, but trust me, at the time it was. But wind or not, I was sold as soon as I saw the bottles of root beer. Woo hoo - lets get this party started!

I'd post more pictures of the reception but I don't want to make everyone jealous like I did with C&B's reception photos. There wasn't much horseshoe playing this time but there was some line dancing type stuff going on. In fact I think I may just have to post some dancing videos here later (when I'm not about to fall asleep...I should stop blogging at times when I really should be asleep; I tend to start making empty promises that I'll feel guilty about for the entire two month period in between when I said "more to come!" and when I next posted about something completely unrelated to the "more to come" post).

In addition to the reception fun, at night in our hotel rooms we also enjoyed our own version of blackjack with Rook cards and peanut butter m&ms as the currency of choice. I started out okay but when Bryn kept getting 21 every time the rest of us soon found ourselves m&m-less. Leah might have given Bryn a run for her money if she could've remembered to stop eating her cash.

Just a sidenote on the trip, I spent a decent amount of time driving around and, no offense Vegas, but your drivers are not good. What's with going 60mph on the freeway and then coming to a dead stop for no discernible reason in a matter of a few hundred yards? One instance of that I can forgive. But multiple? C'mon. ...On the brightside I didn't get into any accidents so all's well that ends well?

I've gotten totally off track from the original purpose of this post which was to say M&B got married and it was fantastic and I'm really happy for both of them!


Congrats kids. And all the best to both of you.

....also, I can stay at your place when I'm driving home from work and don't want to go all the way back to my place, right? ....Right?

30

I decided to leave my 20s behind with a bang. The 20s were pretty good. Probably peaked around 24, but hey, all around not too shabby. In any case it seemed only appropriate to GBOGH (pronunciation debatable). So we did. "We" because it was mostly a team effort with my role on the team being to show up and party. Done and done. The party weekend was awesome (better descriptions for great/fun/hilarious/fantastic always escape me). I ate a lot of my favorite foods, watched a fire & knife dancer try to shake hands with someone while his hand was aflame*, rode a mechanical bull (and got a little motion sick - stupid vestibular system...but it was still worth it!), got two tickets to that thing I love, played games with the fam, watched my March Madness brackets destroy everyone else's, and generally enjoyed myself immensely.

And to think, it started with a web of lies thanks to all my siblings who said they were too busy to fly in to see me. Examples:

Lie #1: "[sad] you chose to have your birthday bash on the weekend B is heading up a YM campout and I am speaking in ward conference....all committed to long long before..."

Lie #2: "I have to run this babysitting night thing for my calling. Sat night the moms in the ward bring their kids..."

Lie #3: [in response to my question about whether money or prior commitments was keeping my sib away] "It really is more a matter of finals/projects. Between this and next week I'm not even sure when I'll be able to sleep!"

Turns out while I believed them all (although I did think things like "didn't you give a talk a month ago? Are you the only one up there accepting speaking assignments?!" and "babysitting on the weekends?! They really DO take advantage of the newlyweds don't they!"....the projects excuse I believed pretty easily. I basically handed that one out to him. Planning a wedding gives you an out?) I should have known better because they all showed up, surprised me (REALLY surprised me) and redeemed themselves from their lying ways.

It was a fantastic surprise and a great start to my birthday weekend. In fact, by the time the weekend had ended I kind of forgot that I hadn't ACTUALLY turned 30 yet. It seemed like any other celebrating would be superfluous. But don't worry - I continued to party on for the rest of the week anyway. In fact the celebrating continued on until just about...now. Because right now it's settling in that vacation is over and tomorrow it's back to work. boooooo

Sometime when my camera is right next to me and I'm on my computer and can reach over and plug the camera in to download pictures from the party and from my trip (i.e. when the stars align) I'll dedicate more time to blogging about the birthday greatness. But for now I'm too old to still be awake on a weeknight. So I'm going to bed.

And so begins the 30s.

*I saw a guy do that in the PCC luau show when I was probably 6 or so and thought it was AMAZING and vowed then that if a fire & knife guy ever tried to shake MY hand like that I would do it because if it wasn't burning him it HAD to be okay, right? Plus he wouldn't offer it if it wasn't safe, right? ...I don't remember exactly when I finally realized that was flawed reasoning but it was definitely a lot later in life than it should've been.

Body Clocks & Birthdays

Having recently (as in...less than two hours ago) returned from a cross country trip, I would expect my body clock to be all out of whack. It should be a little after 3am to me now. But eh, no, it feels like a little after midnight. That doesn't make any sense. Also what doesn't make sense: my body wakes me up by 7:30a at the latest on the west coast, but first morning of being on the east coast? Up at 7:28a. What the? Shouldn't that be 4:28a to me? ...It CAN'T be that I'm young and spry and my body adjusts to this sort of time travel as if it's nothing because (a) I just had a birthday that objectively kicked me out of the "young and spry" club. And (b) I can't go on roller coasters any more because I'll get sick and throw up due to a failing vestibular system. And if that doesn't scream "you're old and your body knows it" I don't know what does.

But speaking of birthdays. Yesterday (as in March 30 even though it still counts as "today" to me because I haven't gone to sleep yet) was my dad's birthday. So Happy Birthday! You don't look a day over 45. No seriously, you don't. Remember how people thought you were my older brother? That's gotta feel good, right? And then there was that time just a couple years ago when one of my friends was looking at the family Christmas (Valentines Day) card and exclaimed "oh he's dreamy!" and we thought she meant Micah but she meant you. Kelly was there she can back me up on that.

Anyway I know your vestibular system is still functioning just fine so maybe in celebration we should take you on a roller coaster! Eh? Well think about it. I'll hold your popcorn and wait for you at the exit.

Happy Birthday Dad!

The Par-tay

Remember when C&B got married a few months ago? And then there was a big party in a walnut grove by a pumpkin patch? And I kept saying I would put up pictures of it? But I haven't yet? And even the wedding photographer had all her pictures up and ready to go and stuff at least a month ago (way before me)? Well. Good news and bad news. Good news: pictures are here! Bad news: there are probably more here than you ever wanted to see. Again, sorry that they're in single-file style. Someday I'll learn how to format things better.

When I say the reception was in a walnut grove I mean it was IN a walnut grove.

Okay some of these photos were not at the reception location, but clearly we were already celebrating in our hearts.

The wedding party. Looking very...wedding appropriate yet casual enough to engage in a little bocci ball later.

Getting tips for their own upcoming nuptials.

If you provide candy, they will come.

It's hard to tell who's winning in this intense game of bocci, but I'm definitely liking Kim's technique.

Bouquet by Kalea

C&B leaving the par-tay to wild applause

D tries to burn the grove down, has second thoughts, makes a feeble attempt to put out the fire and then walks away. But I should just let you watch it.

Roommates

I realized the other day that I've had 29 different roommates over the last ten(ish) years. Yes. I actually sat down and listed them out. For curiosity's sake. And I only forgot the last names of three of them. And yes, for those three I turned to facebook in an effort to, I don't know, search their first names and see if a last name that rang a bell popped out. But there are a lot of girls named Kristy.* Search unsuccessful.

Anyway 29 roommates. And of those 29, I only knew/was friends with/was related to eight of them prior to living with them. That means I lived with 21 people without knowing a thing about them before sharing a refrigerator and a bathroom with them. What can I say, I'm a risk taker. And I count myself pretty darn lucky that I haven't been traumatized by any of them. There were no psychos, no one who constantly cooked smelly food, none who stole money from me (I don't think?), and none who tried to kill me in my sleep.

Some were more fun than others of course, and there was that girl who didn't like that I breathed. Not, like, mouth-breathed or snored or something. Just breathed at all. I only lived with her for a month but I'm pretty sure it was the hardest month of her young life. At least that's how she always acted around me. Luckily she eventually married a sailor and I think she's fine now. I don't know, shockingly we don't keep in touch. ...Maybe I should try to find her on facebook.

I also had a roommate who would hide her food in random places. She was one of those who managed to stay skinny no matter what she ate so she'd bake a cake or a batch of cookies, eat half of the cake (or the cookies) for dinner and then hide the other half in her secret spots around the apartment. My other roommate discovered these secret hiding places and would, naturally, help herself to the goodies. We had a strict "finders keepers" policy. And no, she didn't share her spoils with me. I only found out later that she'd been stealing the hidden food. So. Greedy.

Anyway overall I've been really lucky with roommates. A lot of them have become really good friends. We've gone on road trips together, they've taken me surfing in Hawaii, they've accompanied me on my dates to ward talent shows (awkward but kind of hilarious in retrospect), we've spent entire winters snowboarding, they've tried to straighten my hair, they've written and sung songs to me for my birthday, and they've entertained me by losing all sorts of bets and having to perform various tasks (like wearing just a bathing suit around the apartment complex and asking random guys if they wanted to go hot tubbing). What. I was just trying to teach them the ills of gambling. Mission accomplished I believe.

In a couple weeks I will have a brand new roommate. Except my new roomie is someone I've lived with before so, although I look forward to living with her again (despite the fact that when we were in 5th grade we agreed after a week of fighting brought on by her vicious libel and slander - yes, both - she would write ridiculous accounts of our evenings in her class journal and then read them aloud during the sharing portion of class. ...I think most of the stories involved me speaking like one of Tiger Lily's tribe), she's not technically my 30th roommate. No, lucky 30 is still up for grabs.

This is the part where I should make some hopeful wish that it'll be a boy (i.e. husband - not someone with whom I'm just living in sin) but that feels weird. Maybe because I'm too old to make a sarcastic remark like that and have the family members who read my blog not think "aw, sad. She's trying to hide her pain. Lets set her up with someone we know. What about that guy you met on the subway? The one who looked kind of homeless? What was his name? Dusty buns?" (just kidding Ben, you can set me up with someone who has a nickname that reminds me of dust bunnies anytime). So in lieu of being sarcastic, my comment about hoping to have my 30th roommate be more like an eternal companion would have to be serious (or semi-serious). And that seems...odd. For a blog. For this blog. So lets just avoid speculation as to who lucky roommate 30 will be and I'll just check back in when that person moves in. In the meantime, welcome back roommate 29. Thanks for saving me from breaking my good-luck-with-roommates streak with an unknown 30th. I owe you.

*I'm not even entirely sure her name was Kristy. But I think it was. It was something like that. I remember she twirled batons to that Disneyland Electric Parade song. (does that count for anything?) She was really good actually.