Wendi's World

Will she find love in 2012?

2012-01-16T15:02:00.000-08:00

For my birthday this year I am trying a fun experiment. A friend of mine told me something that her friend did a couple of years ago, she turned 30 and so went on 30 dates with 30 guys. I am going to try it and see how it goes, however I am going to need everyone's help with this. Since I am turning 27, I am going to try and go on dates with 27 different guys this year. So think of the people you know, is there someone you could set me up with? If you do, leave a comment, email me (jones.wendi@gmail.com) or if you have my number call or text me. It will be interesting to see how this goes, I know it will be fun. Hopefully I can meet some cool new guys or even the "one." So start spreading the word and lets see what we can do! Thanks for your help!

Another Wedding!

2012-01-16T14:56:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of the year the Riding family was planning a trip to Disneyland. It soon panned out that my friend Tiauna would be getting married the same week of the trip. After I bought my plane ticket to Utah from California, I decided to go on a cruise, so a 3 day trip turned into a 15 day trip! It was so much fun! Not to mention I had been offered a teaching position three weeks before I left on my trip, that I would be starting as soon as I came home. Tiauna was my sister Tiffany’s roommate the last time we were in Florida. She became an adopted sister.

It was very fun to have the opportunity to attend a sealing in the Logan Temple. I love being able to attend sealings.

I have always wanted to go to the Salt Lake Temple, and finally had the opportunity to do a session there. I told Tiff that she would have to take me to Salt Lake while I was there so that we could. It was such a neat experience and I'm glad I could share that with my sister.

On the way home she took me to see the Up house. A contractor up there made a replica of the house from the movie. It was so much fun to see all the detail that they put into the house.

Then sadly the 15 day adventure was over and I had to return to real life. Boy was it a hard adjustment going from partying to a brand new full time job. I'm loving my new job, my students are amazing.

October Adventures

2012-01-16T14:42:00.000-08:00

In October I had the amazing opportunity to go on a two week vacation of a lifetime. I started out on a Disney Cruise down to the Mexican Riviera with my friend Erin that I met the first time I did the Disney College Program back in fall of 05. She has been able to stay full time for Disney since then. Her friend Maribel also came along to celebrate Erin’s birthday. Erin’s roommate Patrice has been a scheduler on the Disney Wonder for a few months and really hooked us up on this trip. First off since the ship was pretty empty that week we were unexpectedly upgraded to a Verandah room. We were living the dream for the week, especially when Patrice’s friend, the Concierge manager had treats delivered to our room every afternoon.

We went to Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas with three gloriously relaxed days at sea. In Puerto Vallarta we did a Disney Excursion to Las Caletas, a private beach area. We had a delicious lunch and then a beach all to ourselves to snorkel, paddleboard and kayak. Usually they take 160 people on this excursion, but only 30 signed up that day, so we were again spoiled!

In Cabo the first day we walked around a bit and then went on a water taxi out to the arch and chill on the beach for a bit. On the second day Erin and I decided to be adventurous and we went parasailing. It was so much fun! I would definitely do it again.

Erin does photopass at Disneyworld, so she loves photography. We took a lot of pictures on the cruise and even splurged and bought the photos from the ship photographers. It is so worth it, many great memories were made on this trip!

After we got of the ship we said farewell to Patrice and Maribel, and then Erin and I headed from the port in LA to Anaheim to meet up with the Riding family for a few days at Disneyland. We had a ton of fun, especially since it was Erin's first ever trip to Disneyland. She enjoyed it, but it was quite crowded. I can't wait until the construction at California Adventure is done, it won't feel as crowded, there were walls up everywhere. After a few days in the parks I flew up to Utah for a Wedding.

Standing on Corner

2011-07-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

Marilee's husband Mikell is from the thriving Metropolis of Winslow. It is a very windy place. This particular weekend we were there the wind was blowing extra hard and it blew so hard that the power went out for a couple of hours. It is really hard to set up for a reception with no light. We were able to set up ok and then the power came back on.

We stayed at the Quality Inn, and there wasn't anything too quality about it. The guy who was in charge of the breakfast was very stingy and wouldn't bring out too much food and you had to ask for some things, lame. We did have some fun swimming in the pool with my nieces and nephews. It was an interesting get away and I don't think I will be returning to Winslow anytime soon, there was nothing making me want to go back.

We had to have Mikell take us to "the corner". You can't go to Winslow and not go visit it. It is really kind of funny, because there really isn't a building in the picture, it is just a wall.

Here is my beautiful cake again. It lasted all week! Since it was fake, it was stored in my parents room so that it could make the journey to Winslow, and it survived! The people of Winslow were impressed with my cake decorating skills.

And then there was one

2011-07-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

On May 19 my Baby Sister got married. It was a busy weekend of festivities. They got married on a Thursday, and had their reception of Friday. Since this school year I have been working part-time three days a week, Thursday was one of the days I taught. It was very interesting finding a sub, I was very nervous about it, but I found a great lady to cover my classes. I felt bad getting a sub that day just because I only see those kids once a week and the next Thursday was the last day of school and not all of them would come to music again. Oh well, such is life and it all worked out great.

The cake turned out great, and I think they said it tasted good as well.

Surprise, Surprise, I caught the bouquet. Now lets see if its powers will work. I am the next to get married in my family, since I am the last one standing.

Spring Break

2011-07-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

For spring break this year I went with my cousin Emilie, her two daughters and friend Kelle to Oceanside California. We had a blast. I also got a little taste of motherhood, because Annie, the youngest was about 6 months old and so I would sometimes wake up when she would in the middle of the night.

Here are some of the pictures I took, and my attempt of being an artsy photographer. I love the beach and just sitting there listening to the water, so relaxing.

Brisa is a hilarious two year old. Here she is playing with my sunglasses. We became good friends on this trip, and sometimes she still likes to play with me.

We took a stroll down the beach one morning and saw all sorts of things. We had to pose in front of the beach, its kind of obligatory. There were tons of moms out taking their kids for a job by the beach in their jogging stroller. I decided that maybe I should move to the beach and start my own mom and me jogging group. We also saw some very attractive military guys out for jogs. I wouldn't mind taking one of them home with me!

We drove up the coast to see the sights, and it was so beautiful. Too bad I don't have a million dollars to buy a gorgeous house on the beach, that would be living the high life.

We wanted to find some more beaches to explore, so someone recommended the childrens beach to us. We were kind of confused as to why it was just for children, I'm sure adults would like it too! Well when we got there we find out why it was the childrens beach. Each year that beach is where sea lions return to have their babies, and a treat for us, it was baby season. The beach was roped off a little so that we couldn't go and disturb the bonding time with the little ones. It was really neat to see. Kelle and I made up our interpretation of the conversations some of the baby sea lions were having with their parents as they were just sitting on the beach soaking up the sun.

I really enjoyed our time in Oceanside. Each Thursday they have a farmers market in the morning and a Sunset Market at night. It is a really cool atmosphere. We didn't make it to the farmers market since we were sight seeing, but the sunset market was fun. They had a stage for local bands to perform and tons of vendors. We couldn't stay too long because the little girls were getting tires. I can't wait to go to California again, visit the market again and go to the San Diego temple. I have wanted to go there for so long, and now that I can I really need to go. Hopefully at the end of summer I can find a time to go.

Abby and Disneyland

2011-04-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

In November I had the chance to go with my parents, sister, brother-in-law and adorable niece Abby to Disneyland. Abby is obsessed right now with Mickey. When I say obsessed I mean OBSESSED! Anything 3 circles together is Mickey, it is really cute. Kim thought it would be fun to take her to Disneyland and meet Mickey while she is in this obsession stage. It was a really quick trip but tons of fun!

It was cold and rainy which made the park not too busy which was a plus for us! Kim wanted a good picture with Mickey so we went straight to Toontown so that Abby's hair wouldn't get messed up before she got her picture.

We got to Toontown right as it was opening and went straight to Mickey's house. Toontown was really empty and that made us really happy because usually it can be really busy and we didn't want to wait in a really long line but knew that we may have to. So we started walking through Mickey's house and then all of the sudden Mickey came around a corner and Abby was so shocked to see him, her reaction was priceless. It was kind of like wait, am I really seeing you? Is this for reals? He then took her by the hand and walked her back to his front room where he was doing the meet and greet. She was in awe of meeting her obsession. She enjoyed walking through the rest of his house. We then went to Minnie's house and she had fun meeting her. We also got to meet Pluto and Goofy the 2nd time we went to Mickey's house.

We rode a couple of rides, and knew we weren't going to ride too many with a 2 year old. We went on Winnie the Pooh and the cast members let us go twice in a row without getting off. Kim, John and I then went on Splash Mountain because we figured we were already wet, we couldn't get too much more wet! Half way through the day we decided to go back to the hotel and change into some fresh dry clothes so that we wouldn't get sick. We had fun hopping between the 2 parks catching the must sees that we wanted to ride.

Here is Mom and I waiting for the fireworks. Unfortunately we didn't get to see them because they said it was too windy. Oh well, I guess I have seen enough fireworks in my day, and I will probably get to see them again someday.

Here is Abby and I waiting to see "World of Color" Disney's new nighttime spectacular at California Adventure. It was a long wait and you have to stand the whole time too. It's an ok show, not the biggest fan, but it was good and I like the newness of it having the newer movies that Fantasmic doesn't have.

Here we are browsing through the shops to see if there any souvenirs we would like. She was very tired at the end of the evening. She is really silly and loves to stick her hand down her pants so that she is touching the diaper, but not inside it. We all went back to the hotel and crashed. We found a ward down the street to attend church in the morning and then headed back. It was so nice to visit Disneyland again, hadn't been in a couple years. I love that it was decorated for Christmas. I love Christmas and love how Disney decorates for Christmas, it makes me super happy and giddy!

Another wedding

2011-04-02T22:06:00.000-07:00

On January 1st my little sister Marilee got engaged to Mikell Decker. They are a super cute couple and met in choir down at Eastern Arizona College. They are getting married May 19. It will be nice to have time to plan this wedding unlike my dear sister Tiffany.

The proposal was kind of fun. Marilee had no clue it was coming, it was awesome. Mikell is from Winslow and spent a few days during the break down in the valley, and Mar spent a few days up there with him. Her and her friend Devon had fun getting to know his family. Mikell took them to the "corner" and the girls really enjoyed it. So her friend Devon clued me in as to what was going down because she was working with Mikell to get things done. He wanted to propose at the Temple at sunrise. So New Years morning I woke up at about 6:45 am for Devon to take Mikell and I down to the temple. Mikell found the perfect spot to propose where they could watch the sunrise after popping the question. I went as the photographer. I hid behind some trees and got some fun pics. Devon went back to the house to get Mar and woke her up telling some sob story about needing to go help her sister down at the temple. I knew that Mar wouldn't want to get out of bed that early and warned Devon of the struggle it would be to get her up. They finally made they way back to the temple and Mikell found Mar and then said some gushy stuff and popped the question. Mar was kind of upset because she was in pjs and he was dressed up in a suit and she hadn't brushed her teeth or put a bra on. It was really funny to hear her reaction about the whole thing.

The happy couple will be getting married May 19 and then we will have the reception on the 20 since we do everything and we need the time to not go crazy! Hopefully my day will come sometime soon, I know it will. Just have to keep being patient and help my mother keep her sanity planning my little sister's weddings.

Temple Groundbreaking

2010-11-14T15:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we had the amazing opportunity to attend the Groundbreaking Ceremony for the Gilbert Temple. We weren't originally going to go, but when Dad got an invite for VIP parking and seating, we jumped on the chance. It was a beautiful day for a groundbreaking, the weather was gorgeous, it could have been better if there were a few clouds. There were a lot of people there as were expected, but it wasn't too bad.

I love how they had the golden shovels all lined up with pictures of the temple on them, a really neat touch.

The choir did a great job. I love the picture of the temple, its going to be a magnificent building! Hopefully they'll get it done super fast and not take the 2 years they have planned.

We just thought that we got to sit in cool seats, but then it kept getting cooler. They were recognizing all of the dignitaries in attendance and not only did they call out my dad, they had him stand up too since he was representing the city of Mesa. That was cool. Then when it came time to ceremoniously break ground they had all of the Church officials go, and then they were having the dignitaries come up and they called up my Dad to come and have a turn. It was a very neat surprise for him, and it will be a wonderful memory for him and a highlight of his time in office. Dad got to shake hands with Elder Costa and Elder Walker.

It was a great day and then we rushed off to Abigail's 2nd Birthday Party. It was a wonderful marathon day. I love temples and having them so close to me. Sometimes I feel a bit spoiled to have temples so close. They spoke of people that travel days to attend the temple. I have one 5 minutes from my house and soon another one about 20 minutes from my house. I hope the saints in the area realize this and take full advantage of the wonderful blessings they have so close to them.

When stuck in Charlotte...

2010-11-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

So on our way home, it first appeared as if it would be no problem getting back to Phoenix. Somehow between our flight from Orlando to Charlotte everyone decided to head to Phoenix that day and basically suck up all the empty seats that we were to use. We were starting to get really nervous that we would be stuck in North Carolina till who knows when. Our nerves were getting to us after like the 3rd or 4th flight that we didn't get on, tears were starting to flow and fear was starting to set in as we bounced from gate to gate that had flights to Phoenix flying out of. Carly called and told her boss she wasn't going to make it to work on Monday, I was about to call my sister and see if she could sub for me on Monday. We were getting to one of the last and final flights of the day, I decided to go and stand by the gate so that I could over hear everything that the gate agents were saying, there was a small glimpse of hope and so I went and got my stuff and Blaine and Carly. They started paging people on the stand by list ahead of us and some of them weren't coming. Miraculously we got onto the flight and we were on the same row. It was the last row of the plane, but it was a seat home. We barely made it on the flight, they closed the door after the guy behind us. We didn't even know when the flight was to land in Phoenix, and that really didn't matter, we were making it home that day! We quickly called our families to let them know of our good fortune in the like 2 minutes we had to use our phones before we had to turn them off before the plane took off.

I don't think I will ever fly on the back row again, it was quite interesting. I can't complain too much because it was a seat on a flight and we weren't going ot have to campout in an airport with no luggage because everything went with Emilie and Irving since they can check their luggage for free. The one good thing about that airport is their bathrooms. They have bathroom attendants whose full time job is to keep their bathroom clean. Carly and I would have a great laugh each time we used the restroom. We used Valerie's happy bathroom. Her slogan is, "Everyone pees happy in Valerie's Happy Bathroom!" She had the funniest things to say as people were in there. My favorite were her songs she sang. There's nothing like sitting on the toilet having a hilarious black woman sing "You are my Sunshine" Blaine told us the mens restrooms weren't as entertaining as the womans with their attendants. So if you're ever stuck in the Charlotte Airport, use the bathroom and get a good laugh!

Yes, another trip to Florida!

2010-11-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

During October break I had the opportunity to go to Disneyworld with my cousin Emilie and her little family, and her brother Blaine and his wife Carly. It was kind of an interesting group that I went with, but it was tons of fun. Emilie had her 7 week old baby and 18 month old daughter, so I was kind of the nanny at times and helped with them. Then with Blaine and Carly it was their "honeymoon" and I was the tour guide. We all stayed in the same condo and had our own rooms so it was all good. I was also the designated driver and chauffeured them in the soccer mom van around town. We had a great time and would do it again. It was my first time in like 5 years having to buy a ticket to get into the parks and that hurt my bank account, not used to paying so much for a little piece of paper!

We went to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party (Thanks Brad for helping us get the discount tickets!). I love going to the extra parties and seeing all the fun extras they bring out. I was finally able to get my picture with Tarzan and Jane. My camera did something funky and it didn't turn out very well :( Irving happened to get one with their camera and then tragically during Halloween weekend it got lost, and she hasn't found it yet, I hope she can find it! Such is life and we move on.

The Haunted Mansion looked really cool during the party, they kind of go all out. The cast members working at the Mansion during the party get their hair and make up done to look creepy. Outside they have Madame Leota talking with the guests and just adding to the funness of the night.

I love, love, love Mickey's Boo to You Parade. It starts off with the Headless Horseman riding down the parade route, that is a really neat site to see. Most of the characters have Halloween costumes on and it is super cute. One of my favorite parts of the parade is the Haunted Mansion section. They have the guy with the lantern and the dog and then some gravediggers. The gravediggers do the coolest thing, they take their shovels and scrape the ground in a circle so they spark, it is so cool.

They have a bunch of trick or treat trails so you make out with lots of candy. The quality of the candy is so much better this year than it has been in the past. Brisa had fun trick or treating after she learned what you do. She thought it was the coolest thing to be able to hold out a bag, say trick or treat and then have people put candy in your bag. We got the best candy when we left, Werther's Mousse candies. If you thought Werther's Originals were good, wait till you try this. A think chocolate shell with caramel mousse inside. They are delectable, we went to all the people who were passing those out so we could get quite a few.

This year I actually spent some time and money and enjoyed Epcot's International Food and Wine festival. I had never tried any of the samples. I don't know why I never did because they were so good! I tried baklava for the first time, delicious! Food is good and even better when you sample different countries.

Another super cool thing in Epcot is in the Germany Pavilion they just opened the most divine shop ever, Karamel Kuche (Caramel Kitchen) It is partnered with Werther's and oh my goodness, so good and bad for you! I won't even begin to mention the delicious goodies inside so as not to torture anyone!

Blaine got to be one of the volunteers during the Backlot tour. He had fun getting tons of water dumped on him, check out the video to see his acting debut. Hollywood Studios is so much fun because of its 3 best attractions, Rockin Rollercoaster, Tower of Terror and Toy Story Mania. The fast passes for TSM run out super fast and you basically have to be in the park within the hour it opens to get one, that never happened since we were park hopping. TSM is a must and so we had time and sucked it up to stand in the 80 minute line. It is so worth the wait, so make sure you plan time to ride it. We walked into the line and as we were another group was leaving and the lady looked at Carly and said "The line is really long!" Really you think the line is long? It only says when you walk in that it's an 80 minute wait. Didn't you read that as you walked in? People are so silly when they are on vacation at Disneyworld.

We had a great time and like everything good, it must come to an end. Getting home was quite the adventure! We flew standby because Irving works for USAirways and we could fly cheaper. We left for the airport at 5am to try and make the 7am nonstop back home. Emilie and Irving barely made that flight and the rest of us would had a family (Carly and I now curse their name j/k) not barely made it through security and ran to the gate, grrr. Oh well we got on to the next flight to Charlotte to connect to a flight to phx sometime that day. As we waited the hour for our flight we met this guy. He was a very happy newsstand dude. Every time someone bought something he sang them this awesome song or some variation of it.

I love the guy's reaction to the dude singing to him, it was like, did that really just happen? Thanks to Carly for sneakily recording that on her phone as it would be much needed the rest of the day.

Grandma's Wedding

2010-11-02T14:38:00.000-07:00

Since Grandma's Wedding was almost a month ago I figured I should finally put some pictures up. I don't have too many, that wasn't my job for the day.

Tex is so in love with my Grandma right now, its so cute. The bishop who married them had to tell Tex it wasn't time to kiss her yet, he had to wait! Tex also wrote a poem for Grandma that he read during the wedding, super cute.

Here's the beautiful cake I made for the wedding. I think it turned out quite nicely.

Here's some of the gorgeous flowers my mother made for the wedding. Watching everyone in the family get ready for this wondrous occasion was hilarious. My dear Aunt Becky finally had a wedding to help plan, since she has 4 daughters and guys are lame and they are all still single. The day turned out wonderfully, except for the part when we were introducing all the families to kind of get to know everyone, his son that lives here, they go to Mt View. It was funny to hear all of us gasp as they said that, since we are a Mesa High family! I guess we can forgive them for that, it's just funny how things like that are a non serious issue, even though its not a serious matter, it just makes for fun conversation.

Spiritual High

2010-09-26T23:23:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been getting lots of spiritual highs. I go to an amazing institute class each Thursday. The class I picked this semester is "Great Woman of the Scriptures" taught by a really good instructor who I go way back with, way back that he was my Tee-Ball coach. It is hard to call him Bro. so and so. Each week I leave having learned so much. Institute can be hard at times because you sit there for 90 mins each class and sometimes I don't have the attention span to sit that long after teaching all day. This class is very insightful and I feel myself not looking at my watch to see if it 8:30 yet so that I can go home, I'm always engaged. Studying the scriptures is important but sometimes it can be boring and its stuff you've heard before. This class is taking a different spin and making it a lot more interesting. I love the spiritual high I am on when I leave each week.

The next spiritual high came from the Relief Society General Broadcast last night. It was so good and gave each of us women a little "you go girl" moment to lift us and say way to go for being a great woman. I think President Monson's talk was his best ever, so good, and twice today people quoted from it. He spoke about many things but mainly to be more charitable and so so judgmental. There are so many members of the church who are unkind and get complacent and look down on others who don't share the same beliefs as them. We need to be more understanding and accepting of all. We don't know everyones story and where they've been. All we can do is help them along their journey and to become the best that they can become. People our brought into our lives for a reason and us into theirs for the some reason as well.

I can't wait for conference this weekend and for the spiritual high I will get from listening to inspired leaders. I kind of hope they continue on with the theme with being more charitable because I feel its a thing members of the church need hear. Its hard to do missionary work if investigators come to church and don't feel welcome because they are different.

I will post pics from grandmas wedding later, I don't have them on my computer yet. It was great fun, they are so cute together and now its over!

Community

2010-09-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

I am having a blast in my new schools this year. I am a much happier person and life is good! On monday at one of my schools they were having a constitution assembly I went to it to see what it was all about and because I felt I needed to be there since I should have been teaching but my class was there. Every Monday the whole school gathers around the flagpole courtyard and recite the Declaration of Independence and the Pledge of Allegiance. It is so cool to hear them say that. The Principal then shares who is having a birthday that week and any other announcements. At the assembly on Monday they did that and then the 5th graders recited the Preamble. Doing stuff like that creates a sense of community. Having that sense of community makes a huge difference in the way a child learns. The teachers care more and everyone wants to be there. I am really impressed by this sense of community, and love what that provides for the students. That is the end of my ramblings for today. Get ready for fun next week, my Grandma Riding is getting married on Saturday, so we are enjoying a roller coaster of emotions this week!

Quick Get away

2010-09-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

This past Labor Day weekend I traveled to Utah with my parents to take my lovely sister and her husband their stuff they didn't have room to fit in their car.

The newlyweds have a nice little basement apartment that they live in that is super close to BYU. For those of you familiar with the area they are kind of across the street from the Creamery on 9th. They are having a great time.

One of the best parts of the weekend was being able to be reunited with Tiauna. She is kind of like an adopted sister. She was tiff's roommate in FL and the three of us became really close and did a lot together. I haven't seen her for a year since my last trip to UT. She came and stayed with Tiff for the weekend as well and we had a great time catching up and hanging out again.

There were some very funny experiences this weekend. Provo and the whole BYU experience are very interesting. It is like its own little world up there. We went to their BYU Married students ward on Sunday. I thought I have seen a lot in my days of singles wards and attending church at my lovely Sheraton Safari, but this is a whole new experience. During church Tiauna and I were the only ones who did not either had someones arm around us or holding hands. I'm glad she was there so that we could be alone together. I have never seen such a high concentration of young couples and either pregnant women and newborns. It was fun. It is a very good thing to have that kind of ward for all of the married students at the Y. Another thing that made me laugh very hard inside was during Relief Society. There are some really young , and I mean REALLY young girls in that ward. They had all of the new move ins introduce themselves. There were some who had been married like 2 weeks. My favorite was this blonde from Southern California. She is going to have a great time adjusting to life in Provo! I laughed the most at booked they passed around with all sorts of information, including who in the ward is expecting, when, boy or girl and the hospital they are delivering at. It was awesome.

Saturday was the first BYU football game of the season. Since Tiff and Jeff live up the hill from the stadium we passed by it a couple times before and during the game. It was hilarious to watch people arriving to the game. I saw a lady, who is not very skinny, wearing a BYU jersey, white shorts, REALLY high heels, tons of make-up and huge hoop earings. Really? Is that necessary? She was walking up to the stadium, and I'm sure she had to walk pretty far, how did she do it? Oh the college life in Provo!

We had fun seeing Jones family that lives up there. On the way home we stopped in Parowan to see my mother's friend. After taking that detour we got to drive up to Brian Head and Cedar Break. It was so gorgeous up there and made the trip a little more enjoyable to have something pretty to look at. When we got closer to home we hit really heavy traffic. It took us 2 hours to go 20 miles as we got closer into Phoenix. It was ridiculous. Traffic coming out of Payson has never been that bad. We will never go to Flagstaff or anywhere using I-17 on a 3 day weekend, it was awful. It is amazing how impatient, rude, and inconsiderate drivers are when there is lots of traffic. We all have to sit in it and you aren't any cooler or more important than the others driving. We finally made it home and I got to sleep in my bed. I got the honor of picking the air mattress that had a hole in it and got some interesting sleep while up there. It was a fun trip and how its good to be home. Life at BYU is very different and it own thing. Now its time to see what adventures await this week!

Farewell Summer

2010-08-29T22:31:00.000-07:00

Summer ended all too soon. Luckily I was able to find a job for the school year, it came very last minute, but it is so worth the wait! I got a job with Mesa Schools, it is currently only part time, 3 days a week, but it is still wonderful. It is 100% better than last year, so amazing to see such a change in the different schools. I teach at 4 different schools, I'm kind of like the clean up teacher, picking up different general music classes that the full time teacher at the school couldn't fit into their schedule. Nothing against where I taught last year, staff morale is so much higher and I feel more valued and respected. On the other days I'm not teaching I will be able to sub or just chill at home, I'm really excited for this change. One of the best things about my new job is my first school on Mondays and Fridays is 5 minutes away from my house. No more 45 min of rush hour traffic! I can leave my house an hour later, which means I can sleep an hour more and it also makes for a happier Wendi! I did take a pay cut only working part time, but its still enough to get by with and I'm living at home so I don't have too many expenses. Life is good! Now I just need to find people who want to take a trip Oct. break because I need a vacation. As much as I love my little sister Tiffany, she ruined my summer vacation plans, so I need to get away. Luckily I'll be leaving AZ this weekend to go take some stuff up to Tiffy and Jeffy up in Provo, I'm not looking forward to the drive. It will be a quick fun trip and a chance to get away for a little bit and to see my dearest Tiauna whom I haven't seen for a year and miss dearly. Summer was too short, good thing I'm not working full time so the school year isn't too intense yet!

Oh What do you do in the Summertime

2010-08-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

This summer has by far been one of the craziest yet most amazing summers ever! My sister Tiffany had been dating this guy Jeff for awhile and he was conversing with Marilee of when he was going to propose. Well he finally proposed on June 1 when his family came up to do some shopping. Jeff only has one brother and he was leaving on his mission June 30. So to be accommodating we planned the wedding for June 25. Let me tell you how intense those 24 days were between the engagement and the wedding, there wasn't much time to come up for air! It is amazing everything that we accomplished in such a short amount of time. The next day we went dress shopping and didn't have too much luck there, since we aren't made of money. Luckily we found the dress from China and it came just barely in time, as in Tuesday 3 days before the wedding. (See previous post for more info) We quickly became a sewing factory making 8 bridesmaid dresses and amazingly finished them all. Tiff and I also were able to get our temple recommends because I decided it was time for me to go to the temple. I've been wanting to go for a while now and was just waiting for the perfect time to go, which I thought was going to be the end of summer. Tiff wanted to go through the Gila Valley Temple since she had been going to school down there and being a part of all the temple festivities, it was a part of her now. So I went to the Mesa temple June 18, and then the next day we drove down to Thatcher and Tiff went through down there. It was such a neat experience. It was the best decision I made, and it wasn't just so I could go to Tiff's wedding. Then the next Friday Tiff and Jeff were married and I was the lucky one to walk around with them after the wedding to take pictures. I was going to die. June in AZ is killer if you are outside for more than like 10 minutes. When we finally made it to the family dinner I had like 10 cups of water before I even started eating.

The next day we traveled back down to Thatcher so that his side of the family could have an Open House before Taylor the brother left on his mission. It was a fun little party and a nice little get away for us. This wedding ruined my plans for a vacation so staying in a hotel in Thatcher is pretty much all I got. The cake the Patty, Jeff's mom made for the open house is amazing and super cute. I loved the idea that she found in magazine.

The awesome cake at the open house. It was so much fun to watch Patty's Father and Brother who are engineers piece it together. It was a big puzzle for them

We waited 2 weeks to have the reception back in Mesa so that we could plan that and get ready for an awesome party. It turned out so beautifully. We don't have too many pics of how beautiful it was because we epically failed taking pictures. It was very simple and elegant.

The happy couple with the beautiful cake that Emilie and I made

The reception was decorated very beautifully.

I love my nieces, they are so cute and love to hang out with each other and do what the other is doing

My nephew was having a blast in his walker roaming around the cultural hall. He thought it was the greatest thing ever, and then my niece had to join in and push him, they were having the greatest time playing.

They have such a great relationship can't you tell?!

My mom is an amazing florist.

Sisters, sisters!

Made in China

2010-07-21T23:22:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in a very long time, and I will go more into that at a later date. My sister got married and it was a rather short engagement and very intense.

I have discovered the coolest new thing, ordering your wedding dress from China. I hadn't heard of it until my cousin, who is also getting married this summer, got hers from China. Since we didn't have much time to get Tiff a dress we went out to the different shops around town to see if they had anything that worked. We found a few options and Tiff found a dress that she fell inlove with. The bad part about that dress is that it cost $1,000! Who in this economy has money for that? Not us! So we left the shop pondering what to do. We had looked at a website for a chinese company and found a dress she was interested. When we got home from dress shopping we found a knock off of the one she fell in love with that would only cost us around $200 including shipping. So we took the gamble and ordered the dress from China. It came in the week of the wedding and mom put sleeves on it and she looked stunning on her wedding day.

I think from now on I will suggest to people to order a dress from China. The dress doesn't need to last forever because how many times do you wear it? Tiff has worn hers 3 times now and it still looks amazing. There are 3 cousins on the Riding side getting married this summer, and they have all purchased their dresses from China. It is the thing to do now, I swear. What I say to do, is go shopping and find what looks good on you, and then find a knock off from China and you're good to go! Take a look, what do you think?

Expensive Dress

Cheap China Dress

I can Spell! (sort of)

2010-04-28T20:56:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we went down to Thatcher to see my lovely sisters perform in the "25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" It was a fun yet interesting show. It's not your traditional broadway musical. It was kind of weird. The best part was I was called up to be on stage with them. They call up 6 guest spellers to be a part of the spelling bee. I got to sit by Marilee the whole first half of the show and it was great fun. The other 5 spellers they called up were really odd and extremely annoying. One of the guys sat there and was acting like he only spoke Spanish. You could tell that Tiff ( who was one of the moderators) was getting annoyed by him, luckily the comfort counselor spoke Spanish so he started talking to the guy. It was hilarious, and if you knew the comfort counselor, his character would alone make you laugh. My first word to spell was cow, so luckily I made it through the 1st round! I was the last guest speller to get out at the end of the first half, and ended up getting serenaded to by the cast. I later found out that Tiffany had full control in keeping me that long. They wanted to get rid of the others first since they were so annoying. I had a blast being on stage. Its been a longtime since I've been in a show and it felt so good to be on stage again.

Rona Lisa Peretti, Me, Logainne Schwartsandgrubbiner

Adventures in Handicap Parking

2010-04-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

The past 2 weeks I have been a Pageant Warrior helping with the Easter Pageant at the Mesa Temple. It has been a great opportunity to help again this year because I didn't get to help last year since I was in Florida. I spent a couple of nights at Handicap parking. Some nights were stressful and other quite comical. Some people really abuse the whole handicap pass and it makes me sad because then those who actually need to park closer can't. Sometimes some members of the church frustrate me especially when the lie and think that paying their tithing entitles them to closer parking at the pageant.. Hello it doesn't matter to me if you pay your tithing or have a temple recommend, those are things you should do anyways and they don't entitle you to anything but blessings that the Lord has for us. Then there are some who actually do have a disability and don't just bring grandma to use her pass. One of my favorites was this awesome motor home that was full of people. I just had to take a picture of it, you don't see too many like it anymore.

It was kind of like a clown car seeing all of them leave. Please be sure to say "Hi" to Napoleon for me when you get home!

The next car was my favorite. This lady pulls up on a golf cart and tells us she has a permit but didn't want to leave it hanging on her mirror because it would just blow away. I believed what she said because I had a class with her once at MCC and knew she had some problems. After she parked she came up to us and said she only used half of the parking spot so if another golf cart came they could park in that spot as well. I was just dying laughing inside. A few minutes later she came back telling us she needed to go to Walgreens and grab some tortilla chips but she would be back. While she was gone a guy on a Harley pulled up and parked in her spot so when she returned we told her to take the other half of the spot. She was excited to hear that she wasn't completely wasting a space. She first had asked if we had any specific parking for golf carts. Yeah no, that is the only golf cart I've seen driven to the pageant!

Thats the lighter side of handicap parking. I was called a liar because some old people thought they saw a spot. I do know how to count, I do have a college degree! I also had to deal with crazy anit's as they were passing their crap out and then the liar sales men from Living Scriptures. I do love the Living Scriptures movies but I do not like the way they do their business. If you subscribe and then have to cancel they keep calling you. It is annoying.

Anyways the pageant was great, I love it. It is so amazing each year. There are more adventures to share at a later date, there is lots to do on this wonderful conference and Easter Sunday. Yay for having family parties at my house!

It's Wendi with an I

2010-04-04T15:35:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to the swearing in of the new Mesa Police Chief with my parents, it was kind of our fhe activity, we are weird like that with just me at home. We are sitting at a table with other city council peeps and the superintendent of Mesa schools came and sat at our table and my dad starts talking to him and introducing my mother and I, then my mother points to me and says "My daughter needs a job!" I think my face turned bright red when she said that. We then chatted about what I teach and if I have all of my certifications and other stuff. When I said which district I'm presently working for he said yeah we need to get you over to Mesa. Hopefully that little exchange will help my chances of getting a new job much higher! He did say they are wanting to start show choir at some of the schools if I would be interested in working with that and I said yes. He then asked what my first name is because he knew what my last name is. I told him it's Wendi with an I. Hopefully having a "different" spelling of my name will help him remember me and get me a job! I updated my application so now I play the waiting game.

Could Someone Pinch Me Please?

2010-03-16T16:22:00.000-07:00

I had a moment of shock the other day at work, it was a great moment and a Pinch me Please moment. At my "other" school, the one I'm only there 2 out of the 6 days my room has been messy from a project that was started at the end of the school year last year and never finished. It has caused me much frustration. I finally got to use half of my room about 10 weeks into the school year and figured it would be like that the rest of the school year. So this day I walk into my room and about have a heart attack because it is completely cleaned out. I didn't know what to do with myself, I almost started jumping up and down with joy! That week I didn't get to spend much time in my room because the kids were taking a district test and I got to go babysit, I mean help proctor during the morning. The kids were also very excited to see the room empty

Before shots. It is a really nice big room for me to do fun stuff with the kids.

And here is what she looks like today! I can't believe that everything was finally taken out of my room. So this next part you can all laugh at me, but I kind of find it ironic. I then realized that my room being cleaned was all thanks to Disney. I remembered them saying something about a campus beautification project that people could sign up and help with the Give a Day, Get a Disney Day Free promotion that was going on. It's very awesome to know that the company I enjoyed working with so much continues to help me out! Having that huge act of service done for my classroom made me so happy for the rest of the week, it made the week go by so fast! The next day at a staff meeting our new principal showed us pictures from the volunteers working on our campus over the weekend.

That is my excitement for a while, I fill my days going to school and looking for school districts that are looking for a new Music Teacher. Hopefully I'll be able to find something closer to home for the next school year.

Now I'm enjoying a wondrous spring break of not having to drive into Phoenix! Its quite splendid to have the chance to sit around and not really do anything for the week. There will be some adventures, but those shall be discussed at a later date. Its time to enjoy this beautiful weather!

Anything Can Happen

2010-02-21T21:49:00.000-08:00

The past week has been CRAZY! There has been all sorts of drama, but mainly at work. Monday was a splendid day off work, thank you George Washington and Abraham Lincoln for having birthdays in February. We had the family over for dinner and just hung out for a while and celebrated Abby's 1 year anniversary of being home from the hospital. I love my nieces and nephews! I also saw the movie When in Rome, super cute. Tuesday was an interesting day. I spent the whole day kind of stressing out about that night because I was singing at stake enrichment. I love to sing, but not always a solo and especially for the really talented people that I have grown up with in my stake. During dinner before the meeting started the power went out. I was excited for a moment thinking I might get out of it. But alas, the power came back on and we were able to resume. Luckily I was first so I didn't have to sit and worry while others were talking. It went great and I got many compliments, so I guess it wasn't too bad! I'm glad that was over.

On Wednesday I went and saw Mary Poppins, it was amazing. I had seen it in NYC, and most of it was the same, you can't do everything with a touring set as you can when you are a resident show. It was a date and I won't go into all the details about everything, but it was kind of an interesting date. Me and some cousins got a mini subscription to the Gammage Broadway Series this year and decided to buy 2 tickets to Mary Poppins and be ambitious and find a date. Yeah the ambitious part, what where we thinking? It turned out ok. The guy I ended up taking had never been to a musical before. He said he enjoyed so I hope he did. I love live theater, so that is something that whoever I marry needs to enjoy.

Also that day at work I found out about a lot of drama that occurred during the week. Hold on folks, this is quite the tale and I think I should write a novel about my adventures this year, it's been crazy! So at the school I'm at 2 days a week my principal's husband passed away in October, I have seen her off and on since then and can't really remember the last time I saw her. Well she resigned and so now our Assistant Principal is now the Principal and an Assistant Principal from another school will be at our school 2 days a week. Then a 3rd grade teacher had a mental breakdown and she quit as well. One of the 6th grade teachers moved down and took over her class, and the 6th grade class was then split between the 2 7th grade classes. It has been crazy! There are also all sorts of budget issues going on right now as well, and I will discuss those later. If anyone knows of any schools looking for an amazing music teacher for next school year let me know!

Friday my sisters came home for weekend and to see Mary Poppins. It was fun to have them home, it had been a while since they came for a visit. When they got home from the show friday night they were all giddy because they are big nerds and went to get pics with some of the actors. Gavin Lee, the guy who plays Bert is so attractive, and even cooler because he is married and his wife is in the tour cast as well. That makes me super happy because most guys on broadway are gay, so this realization makes me happy. So they got their pics with Bert and Mary.

Saturday we had our Riding cousins party. We were flying kites at the park and we were going to play kickball but it was too cold and windy and then it started raining. It's so much fun to hang out with my family and just chill with them. Then after that I went to a baby shower for a friend of mine and her mother was my mentor teacher. I was so excited to see a bunch of old friends. When I was talking to my mentor teacher she told me a really funny story that totally helped me get over the drama I had experienced the beginning of the week! Last semester she had another student teacher and I guess a bunch of the kids kept calling her Ms. Jones. But the best part is when she was prepping the kids on thursday for her to be gone friday for Regionals one of the kids said "It would be better if Ms So and So ( the student teacher from last semester) were here" and then another one said, "It would be even better if Ms Jones were here" It made me so happy to hear that. I knew most of the kids liked me, but I didn't think I had left that big an impression on them. When you hear things like that it reminds of why you do what you do. Now I need to just find a school where I can truly do what I love and appreciate me more!

Then today at church it was Ward Conference. It was amazing. I am recharged and ready to go. It is amazing how inspired our leaders can be and know the right things to say to help you along your way. Going back to our enrichment meeting on tuesday the theme was "Finding Joy in the Journey Now" We will have trials some more challenging that others, we just have to wait and have faith that everything will work out. I love going to meetings where the spirit is so strong. Although you may have been sitting there for so long, you don't want to leave and have that spirit leave as well. You want to always have that feeling. So now lets see what adventures are out there for this week!

Happy Birthday Arizona!

2010-02-14T16:38:00.000-08:00

While most people celebrate Valentine's Day, I like to celebrate Arizona's Birthday. Someday I will celebrate and have a Valentine, but for now I celebrate my state. I am proud to be from Arizona. I always loved meeting people from Arizona while I was in Florida. The great state of Arizona is 98 today.

I have some thoughts on Valentines day. Lately little stands have popped up on the side of the road selling cheap stuff for your Valentine. Would someone please tell me how a 3 foot tall teddy bear or other stuffed animal says "I Love You?" To me that is not romantic, plus what do you do with it after Valentine's Day? There are many more romantic things you can do.

Also talking about someday starting a family I have an aunt who claims her self as the bonding coordinator. So when I get married I have to make sure his birthday doesn't interfere with another family members birthdays or anything else on the calendar. She sent an email the other day that I shall share it because it made me laugh, this is just a taste of my funny family.

I just wanted to share with you concerns that Grandma and I were talking
about last night. It appears that the majority of babies being born in our
family are males. This creates a long term problem for grandma because she
cannot make gifts for boys like she can for girls. Boys actually require
spending money and buying gifts. So when you are carefully planning when
to have your children (to avoid calendar conflicts) could you also
carefully choose to have the female gender, unless you would like you sons
to get doilies, dresses, or pretty hair flowers. It is only a suggestion
to help grandma out.

Last night our stake had a sweetheart dance, I went to fulfill my church calling, left after eating and watched a movie with friends. We watched Julie and Julia, super cute. I really like it, it might be a one I will buy. A very good movie, with a great story line and for the most part clean. A lot better than what you normally see. I give it 2 thumbs up!

Tales of a Kind of Only Child

2010-02-08T17:22:00.000-08:00

Right now I am the only kid at home, it is really different after there being 5 of us for so long, but over the years that number has gotten smaller as some get married and others go away to school. Sometimes it is really nice, other times a little awkward and others I can't wait to move out again. One of the best things right now are the fancy city functions I attend on occasion with my parents. A few weeks ago we went to a reception thingy before at the art center. They had some really really good little appetizers and desserts to snack on. The presentation at these fancy events are always amazing, the servers were serving some of the stuff out of cigar boxes, it was way cool. We had some chicken flautas with prickly pear, mmm delcious and lots of other good foods that probably aren't very good for me! Last night I hung out with my parents at a super bowl party that some of their city friends throw each year. It's kind of a who's who in Mesa, we basically went for networking purposes and to see how rich people watch the game.

Those are some of the fun things, it isn't always like that. Sometimes they will go to some function without me and leave me with nothing for dinner and they say you'll be ok. Its not that bad but just funny at times. Another not so fun thing about there only being 3 of us, family prayer. I have nothing against praying but you go through the rotation a lot faster when there are only 3!

Something I find really funny is that not too many people in my parents ward know who I am because I go to the singles ward and so when I answer the phone or the door they get confused when I answer and its not my mom. I felt real old when I went to lunch on the day I took after my birthday and one of the ladies who lives down the street and younger than me and about to have baby #3. Yeah don't worry, I'm done with school, not married and still living at home! Another thing that makes me laugh is some of the moms that my mom watches for sometimes aren't comfortable if it is just me at home with their baby. Hello I am old enough for them to be my child so I think I can take care of them just fine! Those are all my stories for today.

PS This is not meant to be a negative post. I hope I'm not coming across that way but to some it may sound that way. Life is good right now and I'm not too excited to have my sisters move back home in May!

Happy Birthday to Me!

2010-01-25T09:27:00.000-08:00

I am now 1/4 of a century old, halfway to 50 woohoo! Everyone keeps asking me if I feel older, nope. I think I felt older when I started teaching and everyone started calling me Ms. Jones. My car insurance will now go down and I can rent a car all by myself and that makes me really happy because it makes going to florida a little bit cheaper!

I had a busy birthday weekend. There was a huge YSA Conference on Saturday. It was pretty good and I learned some great stuff on finances, saving for and buying a house, info from a Biggest Loser contestant and the ever so exciting dating panel. Some things get so redundant and ridiculous to hear at times. One of the guys said that girls can't complain about not getting asked out if they don't go to any of the activities, but when asked about why girls who don't get asked out yet go to activities don't get asked out he didn't have an answer. Boys are just dumb and get freaked out when they get asked out on dates. Ahh the drama just makes me want to be single forever, not! Then satuday night there was a dance. It actually was a lot of fun, because we all know that dances can be lame. People were actually dancing at this one, amazing! They also had game rooms with rock band and other games so that those who don't like to dance can still hang out with people.

Sunday I got to sit through what seemed 5,00 meetings. I had one at 11, 12, church at 1:45, rush home for my Birthday dinner at 5, meeting at 6:15, 7, and fireside at 8. It was a great day, I just wish I didn't have to spend half my birthday in meetings! I did however have some friends come over for cake after the fireside. Not too many came because it was kind of late and they thought they needed to go home and get some sleep. I probably would have done the same but I decided to have fun and take today off work, I have days to use up so why not? It has been wonderful so far!

I went shopping last weekend with my mom to get my presents. I got a nice new pair of pants that were normally $89, and I got them for $27 and a new jacket. I got some other fun stuff and then the new Michael Buble cd, because I am in love with his new song, listen to it, you will like it too!

Here's to you 2009

2010-01-17T17:11:00.000-08:00

A lot has happened during the year of 2009. I wanted to take a moment and highlight some of the stuff. There is a lot more to highlight than I thought! Many things changed this past year, some for the better so not so much.

So the beginning of the year Tiff and I left on our 3 day trek across the country to Florida. We were so happy to make it to Florida and not have to drive through Texas for a very long time!

The end of January we had the opportunity to come home for my Grandpa Riding's funeral. It wasn't the happiest time to come home but I did get to hold my Abigail for the first time.

Also met Tiuana, Tiff's roommate, she is our new adopted sister.

I had my golden birthday and celebrated with the Princesses in Norway. It was quite magical!

In March we discovered a new hobby, hotel hot tub hopping. You should give it a try sometime. Some resorts are easier to get into than others and not look like you are doing something that you probably shouldn't!

Also Mar came, and we enjoyed having her come play with us and our friend Hannah came and joined in the fun.

Another hobby we discovered was movies on the beaches at the different resorts. There is just something about sitting on the fake Disney beaches and watching a movie on the inflatable screen. They have a campfire before the movie. Here we are showing the Italians how delicious s'mores are, they enjoyed their first one!

In may I got to meet my favorite mr. and mrs. Incredible. They know who they are and thats all I will say. (ps this was not my first time meeting the incredibles, just these particular ones)

Also Andy, Chelsey and Cali came to visit. I am so glad they came, going to the parks with little kids is so magical!

On Easter Tiauna and I were sinners and went to see the Easter Parade at the Magic Kingdom. I remember watching it on TV growing up. They don't show it on TV anymore but I thought since while I was there I should go see it. I'm glad we did. It was great fun.

We also had a girls night at the grand. I believe we had about 13 stay in our room. I can't go into the details or else I would have to kill you, you know how girls nights are!

In may we continued to play around the resorts and we enjoyed a deliciously fattening Kitchen Sink.

May also brought the end of festival season. We had our last awards ceremony which was a blast because we are all nerds and learned the dance to "We're All in this Together" it was awesome!

Then it was time to say farewell to Tiffany and other friends as they ended their college program, so we threw in some time at Star Wars Weekend, more great fun.

One of my highlights of the semester was going on my first cruise. It was amazing and I can't wait to go on another one!

Then came June and it was almost time for me to go back home to AZ :( Got to play in the parks a couple more times with cousins that came to visit and Brad.

My last weekend in Florida there was a YSA activity at Daytona beach. We had a lot of fun and we saw where the Daytona 500 takes place. Then Emily and I packed up my car again and headed back home. We really didn't stop, we just wanted to get home!

I didn't take too many pictures during the summer. Just came home, started lifegaurding again, went to a Family Reunion in Utah and looked for a teaching job.

In August we went to an old teachers wedding. It was kind of awkward and fun. Then school started, you can kind of say thats fun, but it pays for me to have fun!

September I found my favorite new toy, the FlowRider. It's awesome and I've gotten to ride it a couple times, I'm getting pretty good. Hopefully by the end of the summer I will be a pro.

October was a busy fun month. I became an aunt again to my adorable nephew Treyson. He is such a cute baby and keeps getting cuter and more fun to play with everyday. Then I went back "home" to Orlando for a much needed visit. Lindsay and I had a blast hanging out with Brad and some other good friends that are still there.

In November Emilie and I made my cousins wedding cake. We have started a cake business, you should check out our blog WE do cakes.

December came and left really fast like it always does. I survived my first concert as a teacher. It was great fun except for my kids giving me pink eye. Christmas was fun and spent with lots of family.

So there's to you 2009. You were good. Lots of changes were made, now its time to see what 2010 has in store!

First Grade Funnies

2010-01-15T20:13:00.000-08:00

Today one of the funniest things happened. For some reason my classroom has a bathroom in it, well really it is pretty much a little closet with a toilet and there is a utility sink right outside. Well today one of the first graders started doing the potty dance so I let her go to the bathroom. As soon as she shut the door she started singing. I was trying to not to laugh but we could all hear her, it was really hard to go on with the lesson, so we kind of just stopped and waited for her to finish because she was quite loud. She is also kind of short so she had to pull a piano bench up to the sink so that she could wash her hands and so that made more noise! Good thing we were talking about animals and the sounds they make!

Random thoughts again

2010-01-06T20:51:00.000-08:00

I've had a couple random thoughts lately. The first one really intrigues me. The Vice Principal at my "other school" is a really nice guy. One thing I don't get about him is that his kids are home schooled. How are you a vice principal of a school yet home school your kids? Doesn't make any sense to me.

Another thing that I laugh at is the reality shows about beauty pageants. The parents of these poor little girls are crazy. You can tell they had a weird child hood and so they are trying to live through their daughters. We just sit and laugh at them. The thing that mostly creeps me out is at the end of the pageant before they crown the winners and the flaming gay host sings a cheesy pageant song to the girls. What parents would do that it is so creepy. Here is a spoof that some people have done. I love it so much because it is so true!

Christmas Break

2010-01-03T11:03:00.000-08:00

Christmas break is over. I'm not too excited to go back to work in the morning, boo and especially because it is an all day training for stuff I won't ever use since I teach music and not reading. The break has been nice. This past week I went and saw the musical Annie with some of my cousins. It was great and poor little Annie in her big solo, Tomorrow she had hiccups. She did a great job singing through them and kept her composure very well. They had a cardboard cutout of the progressive lady so I just had to get my picture with her.

Christmas Eve was a great night. Last year it was interesting because Grandpa Riding was at a care facility so we didn't dinner like we normally do. It was wonderful to have it back at Grandmas and do our annual Nativity. They had all of the older cousins be Angels since everyone is growing up and it is traditionally done by the younger cousins. It was fun though.

A bunch of us posing with Grandma after the party.

Me and my Abigail Christmas morning. She is adorable and I think I'm her favorite!

Winter Wonderland

2009-12-28T13:19:00.000-08:00

My first concert went very well. It was a very crazy day because I woke up with Pink Eye and I should not have gone to school that day but I had no choice, what would they have done without me? I felt just fine but I looked like crap! Luckily some of the wonderful ladies told me to rub lemon juice on my eyelids and she even had a lemon sitting in the fridge. It took the itch away for a bit which was wonderful. I got the stage looking as nice as I could for what I had. Ahh the joys of working in the ghetto! The family resource center which is run by parents decided to have a big all school potluck before the concert. It was a great success and I didn't have to worry about getting fast food in my ghetto neighborhood! My eyes at this point were so red and puffy it looked like I had been crying all day. Some of the teachers were asking me if I was ok, if my nerves were getting to me. I told them I was fine and that I had pink eye. They just laughed. My assistant principal was like, you do know thats contagious right? Haha yeah I know, but what was I supposed to do? The concert went great. There was a huge turnout. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, and I think more showed up than they had planned. One thing I need to work on is audience behavior. They were horrible, it was so noisy the whole time. I had everything mapped out but since more people showed up things didn't go as planned, but it still worked out just fine. Everyone was pleased and the best part is that its over!

Then as soon as we got home my dad and I went driving around to find an urgent care that was open so that I could get some drugs. My eyes felt so much better after that. They asked me if I knew if I had been in contact with anyone with pink eye. I told them that I'm a teacher and that earlier that day one of the kids said "Ms. Jones, your eyes look just like mine did the other day when I had pink eye, that's why I wasn't here!" It was splendid. The joys of being a teacher.

During that next weekend I went on a day trip with my mom and dad to Snowflake to deliver flowers for a wedding. It was a fun little trip, but so cold! Snowflake is so windy it makes it even colder. It was nice to see the snow and then go back to Mesa where we don't have the snow!

The last week of school before Christmas wasn't as crazy as I thought it would be. The activity that I was doing with the older kids went better than I thought it would. It made me so happy and it was something they could learn from! I am now enjoying 2 weeks of bliss not having to drive to phoenix everyday! I will post more of our lovely christmas adventures later.

December = craziness

2009-12-06T21:42:00.000-08:00

December is here in full swing! The craziness has already begun. Tuesday Emilie and I made 2 delicious cakes to donate to the Mesa High Orchestra Dinner on Wednesday. They turned out awesome and I hope they tasted as good as they look. Wednesday was the delicious dinner and we enjoyed Outback, yum yum. Thursday I went to institute and Friday I hung out with Linsday and caught up on drama in our lives! Saturday my mom had gotten tickets to a free screening of Disney's new The Princess and the Frog. It was so good! Great story, great music great fun! Can't wait till it comes out, will see it again. My concert is on Thursday so I am in freak out mode. I know it will all turn out fine. The teachers have been very helpful and supportive, its been great, making my life easier. They have let me know things that the other teacher had done in the past they they would do every year. I don't want to break any traditions since they guy was there for 35 years! There is a quick update, I will add more later, but its my bed time I have a super busy week!

A little catch up

2009-11-27T18:16:00.000-08:00

October was a really fun month, from my amazing trip to Orlando to all the fun stuff for Halloween. I carved a pumpkin for school, ahh the joys of being a teacher!

I really enjoyed my face painting from Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party. She did just what I wanted, I was really sad to wash it off. It would have been nasty if I slept in it.

I also enjoyed my Hallween costume. The kids at school really didn't know what I was dressed up as. Ms Jones what is a flapper? I bought the dress at Savers for $3 and then sewed on the fringe which cost me about $20. When I decided I was going to be a flapper I was super excited to wear my awesome black heels with it. They are kind of retro and I love them, super cute. That is what went down the end of October.

I heart my ghetto kids! part 2

2009-11-17T20:41:00.000-08:00

My students continue to say some of the funniest things. Here is another installment of some of the greatest.

A couple of years ago my sister in law made me an amazing crystal necklace to christmas. I love to wear it because it is so pretty. My students like to ask me if it is real and are always telling me how pretty it is and how much they like it. I replied to one student one time and said yes they are real. They then told me that I should pawn it and get money for it. I just had to laugh. I would never pawn that necklace, I love it so much and I am not desperate for money right now. They were like 10, how do they know you can pawn stuff and get money, I didn't know what pawn shops were until later.

One of the funniest stories happened yesterday. So I have a cold right now. One of my students told me not to get him sick, and I replied, "Well I'm not going to get you sick, you got me sick!" They then tried to play the you are being racist card. I told them I am defintely not racist, hello my niece is half mexican and my grandma was born in mexico. I told the kids I would show them a picture of my niece. One of the guys got really excited and then asked how old she is. He was kind of disappointed to find out she is only 5. I started laughing to myself when I realized why he asked her age. No you will not go out with her, she is way too young for you!

Here is another story, this is a kind of sketchy one. So my other school is on a dead end street inside of the durango curve of the i-17. The past like 2 weeks there has been a bunch of cars parked on the street and I couldn't figure out what they were from. I think I might have figured out it was some landscaping business and everyone would park there and they would get in trucks and leave to jobsites. Well this week the cars are gone and the lot were all the landscape trucks were parked in the afternoon are gone. The property is locked up and there is a for sale sign. Does anyone else find this a little skecthy? Illegal operation going on? I do work in wondrous ghetto phoenix!

One more to make you laugh. Today I was teaching them a song for our concert and it is about caroling. I asked if any of them had been caroling before. They replied, no, you don't do that in this neighborhood, all you hear are gun shots. I heart my ghetto kids!

Yes, I went to Florida again!

2009-11-15T21:02:00.000-08:00

Going to Florida during Ocotber break was so much fun and much needed! Call me a weirdo, but I needed it! I went with Tiffany, my cousin Lindsay and her friend Jessica, we all work at schools so it was easy for us to take time off to go, except for Tiff who still goes to school. We truly had a blast.

We stalked Tiff on Main Street while she worked to keep her seasonal statues so that she can continue to get us in for free! She took our picture in front of the castle, didn't she do a great job?

We watched the American Idol Experience. It is one of my favorite shows, well at least the finale show. You get to see the top 7 singers from the day. I love the judges, especially since most of them I have seen somewhere before at disney.

Next off was the Magical Kingdom where we met the princesses. This Cinderella was not one of my favorites. She was quite ugly, casting what were you thinking? I don't mean to be so harsh, but hey thats life.

Animal Kingdom was a blast for the short time we were there. The thing that was wonderful about this trip was that we had all be numerous times so we just hit our favorites. We only did Everest, Finding Nemo and Dinosaur. Sorry Festival of the Lion King and Safari, we didn't have time for you, we will hit you again on another trip!

Tiff and I on our way to the Magical Kingdom!

Watching Muppets 3-D. Why is it that people always have to take pictures with 3-D glasses I don't know why but it is always fun!

Here we are after a lovely florida afternoon downpour. The rain can be nice and overly excessive at times. It was just coming down in sheets during this particular storm, luckily we came prepared with ponchos. That is one thing I learned, always have a poncho or umbrella with you in Florida! It was funny to watch everyone hiding under buildings waiting for the rain to stop and then stare at us smart ones who could still play because they brought ponchos. One little girl wasn't too fond of wearing a poncho and told her mom "I look silly in this" We told her no you don't we are all wearing them!

Here we are post ponchos when we were far enough in the line where we were safe from the pouring rain. Don't we pull off the wet look just wonderfully?

UP, need I say more, my favorite movie right now. Too bad Carl had to go in, but Russel will do. If you haven't seen the movie, pleae do, you are missing out on a great adventure!

Another one of my favorites, MISICI, or for those that aren't literate in Disney lingo; Move It Shake It Celebrate It. It is more than just a parade, you get to join in and dance, great music and great fun. Make sure you wait for it to circle the hub infront of the castle to join in the celebration.

Fresh baked chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich = heaven! So good.

Old man at the Grand Floridian, just had to stop and take a picture with him.

Enjoying our Flame Tree BBQ pulled pork sandwhiches. When we were deciding where to eat at Animal Kingdom or DAK, we unanimously all said Flame Tree. Their BBQ sauce is so good. They don't even use the same sauce at different restaurants around proptery.

The birds have started becoming really dependent on people feeding them, it is bad. They have started giving you a card with your meal telling you not to feed the animals.

Kitchen Sink, enough said

We have now made it to Universal Studios. I love how Universal is definitely not Disney. They are really hurting right now, which was nice for us. We got a 2-day park hopper, but could have done it in 1 because the longest we waited for a ride was 20 i think, but on average everything was like 5 min.

This picture is for my sister Marilee. We were in Seuss Landing and saw this and had to take a picture. It is the egg that Mayzie had Horton sitting on.

The last nigh of our trip we went to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party. It was a blast, you pay extra for it, but there are awesome firworks, amazing halloween parade, candy and face painting are included in the price, and special characters are out. We had a great night.

Modeling our awesome face painting. I asked the lady for fun whimsical halloween and this is what she gave me. I loved it!

Cindy and her Prince. She was a lot prettier than the one the other day.

Here we have Susie and Perla. Can you name what movie they are from? (hint: the picture above)

The creepy ghost keeper of the boat. He looked super creepy. The barbershop that is on main street also was decked out as a dead quartet and on their costumes you could see how they died.

The headless horsemen starts of the parade, it is pretty awesome, one of my favorite parts of the Boo to You Parade.

As you can tell we had a blast. I can't wait to go again. Mesa High is going in the spring for Festival Disney. I volunteered to be a chaperone, because who better could go on the trip. Hello I am Festival Disney and I could fill everyone in on all the totally awesome things down there. Who knows. Until next time!

Boo to you!

2009-11-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

Halloween is an interesting holiday, it is kind of a love hate relationship. I'm not always a big fan, but there are somethings I am a big fan. One of them is how creative people get for their costumes. I saw some really interesting things this year. One of my cousins whom I love dearly and we have had a love hate relationship had an awesome costume, he dressed as the artist Bob Ross. He has been growing out his hair for this occasion and fluffed it out quite nicely, he also had a paint palate to complete the ensemble. It was awesome. As we were at his sister's house for the intense cardboard maze her husband does each year,I was talking Bob and his friends as they had just finished the maze. This teenage girl looks over and says, "Hey your the guy from Channel 8 (for those in AZ you know that is our PBS channel)." We all just busted up laughing, it was hilarious. Another girl said something similar later, but the first reaction was the best with the was she said it. He was quite pleased with her reaction.

Bob was not the only one of my family to have a cool costume. I have an aunt who likes to dress up in different ways. For my sisters wedding since it was Cinderella themed she came as the Fairy God Mothers, for my cousin's wedding when she was marrying a guy from Canada back before the election, she dressed as Hillary Clinton. Friday night as we were at my cousins house having a party and people were previewing the maze, my aunt showed up as Obama, she had painted her self black and had a black wig on. As soon as I saw this dark figure walking up I knew it was her. Again I was laughing hysterically. It was pretty much priceless. Highly entertaining as we Jones' like to be!

As I was looking at the paper today I found a costume that I love from one of my favorite movies, UP. This kid had built a replica of the house and blown up like 30 balloons and was carrying the house with a hose. He had scouting stuff on and his dad even decked out in a suit to be Carl. I might have to take that into consideration for next year, pretty awesome, I love it! People can be so creative.

Being Loved

2009-10-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I really like my other school, and today was one of those days. There is a teacher who teaches 5th grade, and she is like my favorite her class is one of the most well behaved and well mannered classes anywhere. I enjoy working with them, I feel most of the time that I have them right in the palm of my hand eating every word I give them. It is an awesome feeling. Today I was teaching them a fun line dance I learned to Thriller, yes Thriller. I thought it would be a great treat because the kids are all obsessed with Michael Jackson. All of the classes enjoyed the dance. While I was eating lunch this one teacher was talking to me and she told me how she had told her class how lucky they were to have me, because I guess the other guy wasn't very good (maybe thats why he was a sub and he didn't last the whole year). She told me that she can tell I am a very good teacher. I hope I can live up to that, but it makes me feel happy and appreciated when teachers tell me such things. I enjoyed finally having my own room at my other school. Yes it finally happened, well I have half of my room, they just condensed the huge book mess to half the room, because it is a rather large room. The first day was kind of interesting because there were no chairs, so I had to improvise because the 7th and 8th graders would have had a fit if they had to sit on the ground. I was pulling out piano benches from the digital pianos, random stools and then some of risers. I felt at that moment that I truly was in the ghetto working with highly underprivileged students. So yeah it is good to feel needed, gives you the boost to make it through the day before Halloween!

Mi Familia

2009-10-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

I love my family, they are absolutely amazing! I will post more of my trip after I finish getting all of the pictures, oh how I also love digital cameras. So this past weekend was a ton of fun. We started off saturday morning with a breakfast with the Riding family. I love spending time with the fam. Then on Sunday morning my cousin Ethan gave his talk in church before leaving on his mission aka missionary farewell. It was fun to see a lot of the Jones side of the family. My sisters came home just for sunday to see ethan talk in church. Afterwards they were going through closets looking for halloween costumes and other dress up stuff for EAC's spirit week this week. We got a little crazy as sisters do and it was just tons of fun. We hadn't really done anything like that for a while and it was so much fun to be super goofy! I got to see all of my babies this week and just spent part of the night holding Treyson (my adorable new nephew) and playing with his older sister Cali who I love so much. Abby is turning one soon which is crazy from what she was a year ago. You sometimes forget how small she was because she is not small anymore! Well it's bedtime and I will post florida stuff as soon as I can! No promises.

I heart my ghetto kids!

2009-10-04T22:04:00.000-07:00

Let me start of with a CAUTION! This post will contain some language, if I were to edit the language it would take away from the story, and in all honesty it is not offensive in the context of my story.

This week there was the quarterly district testing know as the AzAC, I forgot what exactly it stands for, but anyways on wednesday all the teachers got together to grade the writing portion of the test. As we were sitting in the cafeteria grading, one of the teachers started freaking out about what she was reading. I became very curious as to what she was "Oh My Gosh"ing. She let us read it, and the paper went a little something like this, and I forgot what the prompt was for the paper.

The teacher told us she had a shit for us to work on. We worked hard on our shit. The substitute told us that our teacher had some shit for us to work on.

I was like wow, this student must not like going to school, but then another teacher read the paper and she thinks the student was meaning to say sheet. Yay for my ghetto English Language Learners, who knew that i could make the same sound as ee?

Ok no more issues, just more funny stories!

That was exhibit a, now here is exhibit b. On my lovely id i get to wear, and I have a different picture on each id for my two schools. One of my students said "Miss Jones, you used to be really tan" How I wish I were still that tan.

My final story of the evening and it is my favorite so far. So we are about to start week 9 and at the school I am at 2 days out of the 6 day cycle I still don't have my room. It is full of textbooks from a barcoding activity that was supposed to be completed in July. So I have been teaching in the art room and trying to come up with fun things to do with the kids in the art room until I get my room, which is a really nice big room that I would love to utilize! Anyways last week the 8th graders were being punks like 8th graders like to do (let me tell you jr high general music is interesting because they have to be there, it isn't an elective like I'm used to) I told them that I was upset I didn't have my room yet and I could tell that they really weren't liking what we were doing. I am trying my hardest, but I am about out of ideas what to do with them. So anyways later on that day after I sent my principal my lesson plans for next week, she sent me an email saying that she wanted to see me sometime that afternoon. I was little scared thinking I had to fix my lesson plans or something. When I went to go talk to her it was about what had happened earlier in the day. Some of the students went and told her I was unhappy I didn't have my room and she asked me if that were true and I told her yes. There isn't much more I could do, and I asked her if there was anything I could do to get my room. She told me that she had some parents scheduled to come work on the room. We will see what happens when I go back there in the morning, I am still planning on being in the art room because I don't want to get my hopes up!

Woohoo!

2009-09-28T21:39:00.001-07:00

This past week was pretty fun and very busy. Legally Blonde was hilarious, there were some parts and innuendos that aren't necessarily needed but some think they are! It is always fun to go to the theater. I love people watching and going to the theater is a great place to do such things. The population of Arizona is rather quite diverse state, and when you go to such places you witness that. There was a lady sitting on our row who reminded me of Edna Mode from the Incredibles, except her glasses frames her square not round and she had white hair, but everything else was about the same. Unfortunately I didn't get to hear her talk. I laughed to myself a little.

I "officially" graduated friday night and that was fun. Walking kind of helped close that chapter of my life. I am done with school for now and probably a long time. I got to meet the president of my school who I had really never heard of and I haven't taken any classes there for a year now since I was student teaching a year ago and then we sang the Alma Mater. The ceremony was nice, there were about 120 getting their Bachelors and about 100 Masters so it wasn't too horribly long and it was at a really nice Baptist church in Phoenix. The bad thing is I sat next to a guy that was a little bigger and a smoker, so I was starting to die towards the end. We then went to Culvers to get some custard. Abigail had ice cream for the first time and it was so cute. She was unsure of it at first but then she wanted more.

Random thoughts

2009-09-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

I have had a bunch of random thoughts in my head. First off I will be back in Florida in less than a month for a much needed visit. People laugh at our family for our countdowns to disney, but it is my second home and it is time to go back for a visit. My cousin and I are going to have a blast, even though she has she might have other reasons for her trip that might be discussed at a later time.

I miss driving my red mini van soccer mom car for festivals. They were really fun to drive and I miss Stitch and Mickey, thats how we distinguished between the two. It wouldn't be bad to drive one someday.

Sadly my social life was better in Florida, I think part of that is in the ward we are all kind of forced to make friends because we don't know anyone and thats how we roll. My ward is kind of in a funk right now, I'm trying to do the best I can, but its hard.

Continuing with my social funk and longing to be back in florida I pass by the airport everyday on my way to and from work. I just want to go jump on one. Don't get me wrong I enjoy my job it is tons of fun, there is tons to explore. I think I might have like a post disney depression or something.

My nieces are super adorable and keep getting cuter and cuter and I can't wait for my nephew to arrive, only a couple more weeks.

Next week is going to be tons of fun. Me and some of my cousins are mini subscription holders for the broadway season at gammage. Thei first show is next week and we are seeing Legally Blonde. We are also going to see Phanton, Annie and Marry Poppins. I'm so excited that I have a job so that I can do fun things like that. Also next week I am officially graduating from college. I get to attend Ottawa's graduation ceremony. I missed the one back in April and they are allowing me to walk. I paid my $100 graduation fee, I'm going to walk and get my cap and gown and all the hoopla associated with it, just so that it really feels official that I did all that work!

I love watching "Toddlers and Tiaras" on TLC. The pageant moms crack me up, most of these mothers are living vicariously through their daughters. They should just have a pageant for all the old crazy ladies to live out their dreams!

I think thats enough random thoughts for the day. Enjoy!

End of Summer :(

2009-09-07T21:19:00.000-07:00

Since Labor Day has now come and gone, and school has been in for a few weeks, summer is now over (it doesn't really feel that way outside very much). The past couple weeks have been tons of fun and very crazy! My cousin who got married and moved up to Canada and then had a baby came down to surprise her mom for her birthday. It was fun seeing her, her husband and their adorable baby. He is really cute but my niece is still the most adorable thing ever! We'll see what happens when my nephew gets here in about 5 weeks. We got together to celebrate my grandpas birthday and it was a blast to hang out with the whole Jones family.

I love 3 day weekends! It was so nice to not have to go to work today. I could have gone out of town to the cabin or Sedona, but I decided to just stay home and chill. It has been so nice to sit home and get stuff done. We cleaned off the back porch and reclaimed it from all of the spiders and who knows what else was living there. We also discovered that our neighbors peacock has made a nest in the very back of the yard. I don't that if it has eggs they would be fertilized so we will see what happens.

On saturday was the grand opening of the newly renovated Rhodes pool. The facility is gorgeous, a major improvement from what it was, it isn't going to be the lame boring pool it used to be, now that it has the flow rider. I talked my dad into riding the flow rider, I figured it would be good publicity for the Vice Mayor to ride it don't you think, especially after the little speech he gave! It was tons of fun to ride on it again because I got to go to paid training thursday night to learn how to use it so that the lifeguards can teach others how to use it. I think I'm addicted, it is so much fun. You can go boogie boarding with out getting sand everywhere!

That is pretty much all there is to my life right now. Work is still going well, it can be interesting at times but I'll survive. We'll see what adventures come my way this week!

Hopefully my dad doesn't kill me for posting these pictures, but I just had to, they are awesome!

Out of the Mouth of Babes

2009-08-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

My mother has been watching kids at our house for I don't know how long. Yesterday I walk into the house after work and one of the mothers is there picking up her I think 11 month old and this wonderful 6 year old who loves to ask questions asks the following question about the baby.
L- "Does she know how to talk yet"
Mother - "Not quite yet, She can say things like dada"
L - "Can she say Mozart?"
Mother "No not yet!"

I was dying laughing. When we told his mother (who is an orchestra teacher) when she came to get him, she started laughing. She was really excited that he remembers such things.

I did it!

2009-08-17T17:33:00.000-07:00

Yay I made it through my first week of school! It wasn't too bad. Most things went pretty smoothly, but 6th graders sometimes think they are too cool for things and then some of the Kindergartners have never left mom and don't know how to follow directions. I've been going through lots of books and doing research to make everything work. I did some simple line dances with the older kids on friday because my room at the other school is still full of textbooks and hopefully that changes by the time I get there on friday!

This weekend my good friend Lena got married and it was tons of fun. My mom did the flowers and they turned out amazing as always! My mom is so talented, she has a super special gift with flowers. It was kind of cool because I caught the bouquet, and so now I have some pretty flowers in my classroom for the week. I had someone ask me after I caught it if I had anyone in mind. Hahaha yeah not so much, I wish! Maybe there could be, who knows time will tell. For now I am enjoying myself and teaching my little kiddo's music!

For all my Mesa Jr. Eagles out there!

2009-08-09T21:45:00.001-07:00

Ok so my family had a very interesting walk down memory lane yesterday. As you all know my mom does flowers, and she had a wedding yesterday, not any wedding, but the wedding of our elementary/jr high orchestra teacher. Since my mom did the flowers we got invited to go, so we decided we should go even though it might be a little awkward. Well it wasn't too bad, we saw a lot of teachers that I haven't seen for like 10 years, because it's been that long since I went there I realized the other day. Most of them didn't recognize us or come talk to us, which we didn't mind, people like Ms. Morelli, Mrs. Kuhlman and some others. We did go and talk with Mrs. Bunning, Ms. Pitts who got married and was there with her husband and baby, Ms Caraveo who married Mr. Whickman and he was there too. Mrs. Gilbert, Mrs. Hammon and then how can you forget Alice the AV lady and good old Mary the security guard. It was a very interesting evening, but kind of fun. There might have been more that I'm not remembering, but it was funny! Mar, Tiff and I just sat back and watched all the teachers get drunk and try to dance. It is weird to see teachers in a social setting outside the classroom, and then you tell them what you have been up to! They sometimes freak when I tell them I am starting teaching and that I worked for Disney. Who ever thought that's what I would end up doing with my life! Well I'm off to bed, I've got a big day tomorrow! Watch out world here comes Miss Jones!

Umm, we're not in Mesa anymore Toto

2009-08-03T20:16:00.000-07:00

So today was my first day as a teacher! I got a job teaching k-8 music at 2 elementary schools in phoenix in the murphy school district. It isn't my 1st choice but it is a full time job with benefits! I sat through some super boring meetings this morning that really meant nothing to me, and I swear some people just love to hear themselves talk! So when I was done with those meetings I went to grab a bite to eat at the nearest fast food joint, and boy was that scary! I am working in good ol' downtown phoenix and there are some sketchy peeps around there. There was a sign outside jack in the box that said bathrooms for paying customers only. To get water you had to ask for it, there was no water in the soda fountain and the napkins were behind the counter.

I then went to one of my schools to get my keys and start going through my room seeing what was awaiting me! There are some interesting things in there and some stuff that will be fun to use. There are like 5 guitars, I guess I should learn huh? I then went over to the other school and boy was that an adventure. I had a nice chat with the principal. I think it will be a good year! I was not able to go to my room there because they are taking inventory of all the books and they are all stored inside it. I have so much to go through there. It is kind of weird, there isn't really a curriculum I kind of get to do what I want, but I would like to have the structure of knowing what really needs to be done. So here we go, lets see how it goes!

The Tales of Taylor Pool

2009-07-29T17:17:00.000-07:00

Summer always brings fun and interesting tales, especially funny ones that you never hear anywhere else! There have been many such occurrences this summer and so now I will share the top 2 for 2009.

Story number 2 occurred yesterday. I am also just going to be describing someone, so please take no offense, there is kind of no other way to describe what went on. I started the day guarding the main pool, and right when we opened there weren't too many people swimming in the main pool, so I would occasionally glance over to the diving boards and watch the people dive. There was one such person that was a great pleasure to watch, this fat black kid who is about 16. Watching him try to dive into the pool was hilarious, I can't quite describe it, but it was far from a dive. Just because you put your hands up, doesn't mean you are going to go in head first! I then went inside for my break and continued to laugh about this story and I ask the guard who was at Dive what he thought of the awesome diving abilities of this young man, and he got a kick out of it as well. Well later on while I was at Dive one of the other lifeguards came out to swim some laps and he stripped down into his drag suit. A drag suit is almost a speedo but not as high cut. As he did that someone yelled out, "Speedo!" When he was done he got out and scolded the kids that had yelled speedo. He told them to not disrespect the lifeguards and to make sure they clean up after themselves. He then made the statement (because the big fat black boy was in this group of kids) "Forgive me for trying to stay fit!" Some people are just jealous that they well never look good in a speedo. The kids then got out of the pool and headed over to the snack bar with their heads down to go pick up their mess. It was great.

The greatest story of the summer happened a few weeks ago. I pull up to the pool to go teach swim lessons and there is a cop car sitting in the parking lot, so I was like hmm, I wonder what he is doing. So I walk into the office and my manager Lisa informs me that someone broke into the office and so the cops were here investigating. They really didn't take anything, just left a mess, tore up the locks in the doors. The CSI guy then showed up to take pictures of the scene and look for fingerprints. It was kind of cool to see them work. One of the guards then walked in and was asking what was going on. I told her the CSI guy was here getting fingerprints and such. She was like cool, but no one died unfortunately. Meaning she wanted to see what happens when there is a body, like what we see on tv all the time. It was hilarious.

That is about all, oh wait one more thing, this is kind of just a venting. I have gotten really tan, such is the life of a lifeguard. people comment on my tan and I reply, Thanks, I get it from lifeguarding. Then people ask me if I wear sunscreen. Um yes hello I do. What do you think I am? Yes I know the dangers of the sun. Who are you to tell me about sun safety? I have been a lifeguard for 8 years. I know how to protect myself. ok now I'm stepping off my soap box. I just had to let that out!

Summer where did you go?

2009-07-26T22:35:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how fast summer has gone by, but I was also in Florida for half of it, so it kind of explains it, but not really! Thursday was the last day of swim lessons for the summer. The pool is only open till saturday so now I really need to find a teaching job. Hopefully I can!

The other day we got to babysit Abby while Kim and John went to the temple and dinner. It was great fun. Little Miss Abigail is so fun to play with and is developing quite the little personality. Her smile just melts you and then she starts talking, it is great! She fell asleep and Marilee also decided to take a nap on the couch. I just had to take a pic of the two babies sleeping. It was very cute!

Marilee and I are having fun partying while my parents are gone in Ireland for the next week. It been fun, we like haven't had to cook yet since they've been gone because people keep inviting us over for dinner, it's great! Let's see what life throws at us this week!

We are the Champions!

2009-07-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

This week has been a super busy week, I haven't been so busy for a very long time! On Wednesday and Thursday Marilee and I both worked the City of Mesa divisional qualifying meets for the summer swim league. It was great fun and very tiring and did I mention VERY HOT! Good ol' Arizona summers! Thursday I thought for a second I was going to die. I had fun though, I got to line up the little kids and walk them over to their race. We had to end early Wednesday night because a storm was starting to blow in, how I love Monsoon storms in the summer! It was nice but by the end of the night I felt that I was covered in dirt. The good thing about working these meets is I'm getting lots of hours, for the first time in a month I worked 40 hours.

Yesterday was a way fun day. I worked 11-6 and then the rest of the staff came around 5 and we ate a delicious Ned's party sub and then we left for Lifeguard Olympics. Each year we do a synchronized swimming routine, but they changed it this year and each pool made a movie and we did a little synchro in the movie. There was a pool really upset about not doing synchro and so they were out front protesting. It was funny especially since most of them had on intense synchro suits, and real ones that girls wear for competition are intense, you should google them if you haven't seen any. The first event of the evening is the rescue tube relay (a team of 4 swims across the pool, saves a baby)and we won. We were in 2nd place going into the last 2 events from previous events a few weeks ago. The only thing left from keeping us from our victory was our movie. It is a pretty funny movie and hopefully I will be able to post the movie later. We ended getting 3rd place for our movie, but the one that won was so good, I would agree it was better than ours! Each pool got an "Oscar-pop" award (kind of like otter pop, which lifeguards live on during the summer!) After they gave out the Oscar pops they announced the final standings and who won, and we were so excited to hear that we did. It was great fun and a nice accomplishment because we are a "small pool" meaning we have a small staff since we don't have any slides or anything too exciting.

It is now time for a new week. Oh I had an interview on monday, needless to say it didn't go the greatest and I am still looking for a job. There are still some districts I am waiting to hear back from. Hopefully I will find something soon! We'll see what this week brings!

Boy does time Fly!

2009-07-13T21:41:00.000-07:00

It has been a month since my amazing internship ended and I headed home to Arizona. Some days I really miss Florida and just want to go back, and then I have to remind myself that I need to move on and find a real job. There are so many things I miss about Florida, which I will list later. Luckily we have texting and facebook to keep us connected!

In the past week I've had 2 interviews at some schools in Phoenix. Interviewing is not too fun and neither is filling out applications. Can I just have a job already?

I can say that I love being a rover this summer for lifeguarding. Since I was missing more than 5 days of the season I had to be on the rover list where I am a sub people call me to fill in for them. So i basically work when I want to, it has been wonderful. It has been quite relaxing, and I still go to the pool and work and play with the kids on occasion. After 7 fulltime summers it's been nice to have a break.

On Friday my niece Cali came over and we went to Kim's friends house to go swimming with my other adorable niece Abigail. We had a ton of fun, especially since Cali doesn't really know how to swim we all took turns working with her a little. Then we took our turns with Abby.

Yesterday was my mom's birthday and it was a splendid day. I made another delicious cake. We had the grandparents and my siblings come over for a low key BBQ. Afterwards we were chilling in the front room and I started dancing with Cali. Abigail got such a kick out of it, she sat there laughing at us and looked so intrigued at what we were doing. I would have picked her up and have her start dancing with us but she just had just eaten and shaking a baby that has just eaten is not a good idea if you know what I mean! In a few months she'll dance with us more. It was so much fun, I love spending time with my family and that is one reason that is keeping me from going back to Florida! Those are my thoughts, hopefully someday soon I'll have good news of a job!

Hilarious

2009-07-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

So my little sister Marilee is probably going to kill me for posting this, but I just had to because it is way too funny not to. Marilee and I are both lifeguards here in Mesa, she coaches at a pool and I do management stuff at another. Well last night was the relay meet and at the end the coaches from each pool compete in a relay as well. Marilee quickly grabbed her suit as she ran out the door for the meet. It then came time for the coaches relay and she went to change into her suit and as she was putting it on she realized she had grabbed mine instead of hers. We both have black suits with the lifeguard logo on them but different brands, so it isn't too hard to tell which is which, but she was just in a hurry. We are definitely not the same size, she has the more gorgeous athletic body shape unlike me. She ended up having to wear clothes on top of the suit so as not to accidentally give someone a show as she was swimming. When she called to tell me what she did I was almost on the floor laughing. So there is your comic relief for the weekend!

Happy 4th of July!

2009-07-05T22:25:00.000-07:00

I love the 4th of July and the time that we have to look back on the history of our country and remembering the sacrifices that have been made for our freedom. I love being American and celebrating that. One thing that I love the most is the American Pavilion at EPCOT. Yes it is related to Disney, but Disney just has a way of making everything really good. At the American Pavilion they have 2 things that do the best of celebrating America, the Voices of Liberty and the American Adventure. Voices of Liberty is an amazing A Capella group that performs about 6 times a day before the showings of the American Adventure. They are so good, the harmonies they use are so good. Then you go watch the American Adventure. It can put you to sleep after a long day playing in the park, but thats ok, some parts in the middle are quite boring. The best part is at the end when they highlight some important people and events to one of the best songs ever, Golden Dream. It gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. So for your listening pleasure I have a link to Voices of Liberty singing this song.

I also realized something this week that makes me a little sad, and yet makes me sound really weird. I have now celebrated every holiday at Disney World except for 4th of July. I'm not too sad that I haven't been there because a, it is way to freaking hot to be in Florida right now, and b, there are too many freaking people visiting the parks right now. The only reason I would want to go for the 4th is to see the awesome fireworks, because come on, who does fireworks better than Disney? Good thing we have youtube and I can just watch them from there, but it just isn't the same. I will survive, I wouldn't want to miss the annual Riding family BBQ and swim anyways!

Can you say Delicious?

2009-07-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

I made like the most delicious cake the other day. It turned out so much better than I thought it would. I made it for work for our weekly challenge. Each year the City of Mesa Aquatics chooses a theme to make the summer more exciting and give us something fun to do. This year we are celebrating the holidays and my pool is Valentines. So I made this delicious cake, and we won so we got a box of otter pops. It was great fun! PS it did taste as good as it looked!

Yes I am a little proud, I just had to show how pretty it turned out.

Cruise! part 1

2009-06-29T18:47:00.001-07:00

Going snorkeling on Castaway Cay, Disney's private island

One night on the cruise is Pirate Night where most people dress up as pirates. We took it to a whole other level and dressing as characters from Peter Pan, I hope I don't have to say who everyone is, you hopefully can all tell! It was great fun and we got lots of looks.

At dinner we noticed a lady was trying to sneakily take a picture so, we told her we would just pose for her and she could have a real picture. It was pretty funny!

Another thing to make us more the talk of the ship is on the last night we went into the Disney Karoake at the Studio Sea and broke out our amazing dance to "We're All in This Together" from High School Musical that we did for our final awards ceremony for Festival Disney. It was awesome and all the dads were sitting there videotaping us. I'm glad we could make their family vacation memorable!

A semi group picture with Captain Mickey the last night on the boat

Sad day leaving the boat

It was not fun going straight to work. I will never do that again. I had to put my head down twice because I couldn't stay awake any longer!

I will post more later. That is all I had the patience to upload today!

Life in AZ

2009-06-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

Life has been really eventful since driving back into town on Tuesday. I did so much the first 24 hours it is crazy! Shortly after pulling into town I went and took my drug test so that I could start teaching swim lessons, and then I finished unloading my car. While unloading I noticed that the tread on one of my tires was really bad so I decided I needed to take my car in to get it serviced and get new tires. So wednesday morning I took my car in and also got a call from my manager to go teach lessons for someone that was sick. Luckily everything on my car was under warranty except for the tires, so we took it to a different place to get tires cheaper. Then and Went to Kim's house to bring her and Abby into town and hang out with them before they had pictures with the Merrill Family. As we were pulling out of Kim's complex she ran over something in my mom's van and it started making this sound that sounded like the tire was flat, luckily it was something just stuck in it, so we had to drive all the way back down southern instead of the freeway because we didn't know what would happen. So we go to the tire shop and to pick up my car and then get my mom's fixed. Abby had fallen asleep so she got to stay in the van and sleep while they patched the tire. I just sat and laughed and Kim was so annoyed. It was great.

I am trying to get back onto west coast time, but my sleeping habits are pretty good right now for when I hopefully find a teaching job because I've been going to bed around 10 and waking up at like 5. So now its time to organize all my crap and try to unpack, but it is kind of tricky because my two little sisters have left their stuff in my room and theirs. I told them they need to pick a room, they can't have 2!

The last week in florida was tons of fun playing with my cousins. Then there was a YSA activity the saturday before we left and that was great fun. I did a little body surfing and it was awesome. About the time we decided to go a huge storm started rolling in. Luckily we left before the rain hit!

Now it's time to keep unpacking, find a job and get ready to go to Utah for a family reunion!

Out on the Open Road!

2009-06-14T18:35:00.000-07:00

Emily and I has completed our first day of travel. We have driven through 4 states today, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and are staying the night in Louisiana. Tomorrow will be quite lame because it will be Texas all day. The happy news is that I will be home in two days! I'm excited to start my new adventure in life, who knows what it will bring. I also have 2 adorable nieces that are ready to play with me. SO good night and see you in Mesa!

Tugging of the Heartstrings

2009-06-07T12:22:00.000-07:00

In a week I will be making the trek back home to AZ. It is a very weird feeling to be moving on from this amazing experience I have had the past 6 months. There is a part of me that wants to stay and a part that is so ready to get home. I could stay until August or September making sales calls for Nite of Joy and Grad Nite, or I can go home, teach swim lessons, vacation with the family and hopefully find a teaching job. I have loved working for Disney and am not ready to give that up completely yet. I am still working on finding something seasonal, but we will see what happens with that.

The past week has been a blast. Monday night for FHE we went to Downtown Disney and we were going to play capture the flag but just ended up playing duck duck goose instead. It was kind of entertaining and I'm surprised security didn't come break it up. Some little kids came and played with us, it was fun. I then went for sushi with some friends from the ward. I tried it and it was ok, I'm not big on seafood but don't think I'll be having it again any time soon. The best part was the fried cheesecake that I got. It was so good, I don't even want to think how many calories it had. I would definitely have it again sometime.

Tuesday after work I played at the Magic Kingdom with my friend Brad from EAC who is now here working for Disney. I told him he came a semester late. Then on Wednesday i went and had some good mexican food with people from work. It made me really happy to eat such good food. I haven't had decent Mexican here for a while and really miss it. That is something I am looking forward to back home! Then I met up with my cousins. I am so glad they are here to play for a week and that Emily is driving back with me. She is so excited to drive accross the country with me. The trip back will probably be more fun than on the way here because Tiff was kind of a party pooper. We also have my dad's GPS that we gave him for his birthday, it's going to be fun.

On Thursday after work I went and joined Sara, Lindsay, Emily and Jill at the Magic Kingdom. It was great fun even though it was pouring rain. When I say pouring, it is nothing like you see back home, I mean POURING. I pretty much was swimming when I got off the monorail and walked through the gate. The security guard saw my cast ID and told me I should know better. I do know better, but I was meeting family. We got to ride some of the fun kiddie rides because the lines weren't too long for them. It was great. After that I left them and went to a friends house to watch the Orlando Magic game. I am cheering for the Magic in this one because I have never been a fan for the Lakers, eventhough on most things I am a west coast girl, I am cheering for the magic, and a guy for the ward works for them, so it is my cool little connection! We had a dance party during half time which was great fun especially since my pants had gotten so stretched out from being wet that they kept falling down. I also had to say goodbye to Alina, she is now back in Utah. This is the worst part about working for Disney, you meet cool people for a few months and then you go back home, and it sucks pretty much.

Me not wanting to make phone calls took off friday and monday to play in the parks with the fam. I need the money but will have more fun playing! I did get a fun job the other day to sort through a list of people that came to Nite of Joy last year. I got to sort them by denominations of Christianity. It was interesting to look on some of the websites and read their Faith statements and everything they believe. They have some of the truth, just not all of it! So friday and saturday was spent playing. I will write more of that later as well as cruise stuff, there is just too much to write and not enough time. AZ here I come!

Tons more to come

2009-05-31T18:02:00.000-07:00

I will report on my cruise later, I needed to get caught up first. Tiffany went home last Monday, so it has been different not having her here but I am a big girl and I have cousins coming on wednesday! Before tiff left we went to star wars weekends. They run every weekend the end of may through June, and it's a time for all of the star wars nerds to join forces. It is quite fun to go and see everything, especially all the fun characters they bring out. A friend of ours from the ward is a tusken raider and it was fun to see them and pick out which one he was because of the way he acts. We got some awesome pictures and most of them are on our photopass. I won't tell all who we got, you should be able to figure them out. I will report on the cruise shortly, and it will be in installments because there are lots of pictures of four days of bliss. I leave for home in 14 days! It has flown by so fast, I am so ready to come home but not ready to say goodbye. Real world and grown up job here I come!

Let the Rain Begin

2009-05-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

So rainy season has officially started and I am excited, bring on the rain everyday at 3! Apparently it has come 9 days early, but no one is complaining since it has been really dry lately. It is so wonderful after it rains because it is not so freaking humid afterwards, and the humidty is the worst part of rainy season. Good thing I will be home in a month! Yipee! Someone asked me the other day if we get big storms back home, and I was able to inform them about Monsoon season, which is one of my favorite times of the year. I love watching the storms build over the Superstition and then the dirt cloud comes and sweeps over the valley. How I miss my mountains, come back to me!

So anyways this week was fun and not as jam packed as last week which is good, I really needed a breather. I actually cooked dinner this week which did not happen last week since I ate out every day. I did a lot of shopping this week to get some fun summer outfits for the cruise. I probably spent more than I should have, but everything was on sale and I needed some summer clothes. Monday there was a shuttle launch and we all went outside during work to go see it. Sadly it wasn't too exciting because the direction it was headed and it was super cloudy. Luckily there is one more before i leave so i might be able to go to the coast and see it for reals!

Tuesday was the season finale of Biggest Loser. It was so awesome. My favorite part was the tongan cousins from Mesa doing the Haka. I love Tongans, and I loved when they showed clips of mesa. I can't believe that the oldest people won. It was awesome. It is amazing how some of them run with it and lose tons of weight and others not so much. I guess it just depends on how much you want something.

Wednesday Night some friends went to the Hoop Dee Doo revue. It was great fun and good food! It was kind of funny because we our server was at church today. The show is kind of cheesy and I wonder how those people could do it every night. They probably don't stay too long, but they might because I believe it is an equity role, so they get their equity card and then might move on to something better because they are cool and have their equity card. If you don't know about equity cards go look it up, I'm not going to explain it.

Thursday was kind of an interesting day. We went and sort of volunteered for this big strings concert and it was interesting. It wasn't run by Disney, so it wasn't the most organized thing but it was still fun. There were people volunteering from Universal as well and at first it was awkward but they got over it. At the end they were cool and they told us some cool things about where they work, and some of them told us how much they like Disney over Universal. One of the people I work with said, someone has to lose and be in second place. Also working this event reminded me how greatful I am to be from Mesa, because this organization teaches students in lower privileged schools the violin. I'm so glad it is offered at the schools by teachers from the district. It also reminded me of Cavalcade (a big piano event we did each year for like forever) because it as in this huge church and they were getting everyone to try and play together, 40 3rd graders trying to play violin together = very interesting sound! This church was huge and pretty cool. The proscenium made it kind of look like the top of the statue of liberty. We also got to hang out in the bridal suite because it was being used as the volunteer break room. It was filled with all sorts of yummy treats, which according to Rene is a huge upgrade from years past. Thurssday was also the finale of the office and I loved it as well.

Friday was a boring day of work because we were making cold calls all day long. They informed us all the other day we could all extend until august or september helping with sales for Grad Nite and Nite of Joy. It would be kind of fun to stay because they will probably go on some trips to get churches and stuff, but I need to get home and find a job, and I don't know how long I would last making sales calls. You know me, I don't sell things.

That is about it for the week. I don't know when I'll post again because a week from now I will be on my cruise!

We're all in this together!

2009-05-13T14:44:00.001-07:00

Another jam packed week of fun and excitement has come and gone. Tiauna left Saturday morning so the week was her farewell week where we did something every night. It was really bad in the fact that I didn’t cook a single meal I ate out every night.
Monday night Tiauna and I went to Sweet Tomatoes because it recently opened and Tiauna had never been. It was so good! After we ate too much we went and visited some hot tubs around property. Some friends came and joined us after FHE and it was fun. It was nice and relaxing and we also did a little swimming. I was out too late but it was so worth it. It is going to be hard going back into the “real world” but it will be nice, I might get more sleep not doing something every night.
Tuesday was a very interesting adventure. My manger not only schedules what we do at work he likes suggest social things for us to do, so this weeks social activity was going to Arabian Nights. It is a dinner show here in Orlando and we were able to get a good deal on the meal, it was only $10, which almost isn’t worth it. If I had to pay full price I wouldn’t go because it was very interesting. I sat next to my manager Rene and was quite confused the whole time. I would occasionally ask him what the story line was and he wasn’t sure. It would be in Ancient times with an Arabian Princess and then there were modern day cowboys. Yeah not sure what was going on. The food was ok and I was glad I got the steak because those that got the chicken said it was gross. The dessert was the oddest thing of the night. It was a slice of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup that tried to be drizzled on top, but it was kind of more on the plate, but not an artistic on the plate if you know what I mean. The place was tacky and cheap, and I won’t be going back anytime soon. Good thing I only spent $10 on it. Afterwards we went to Epcot for a little bit since it was Cinco de Mayo and people wanted to get margaritas to celebrate in style. Then I watched Illuminations, oh how I love Disney fireworks shows!
Wednesday was the college program graduation party. It was fun and we got our graduation ears. The best thing was we each got our name drawn to get a caricature drawn of us. Mine turned out ok, but Tiauna’s was the best. She had them draw her as Mrs. Incredible, it turned out so good. We then headed over to the Magic Kingdom to take some more pictures and hang out. As we were taking a jumping picture in front of the castle Tiauna’s shorts ripped in a random spot. It was quite hilarious. After that we joined some friends at PF Chang’s. It was so good. I had never been before; it was my first time and for sure not my last!
Now this brings us to Thursday. For lunch I went to Sweet Tomatoes again. Rene had coupons and really wanted to go so we went. We found out when not to go because it was really busy! We wanted to watch a movie on the beach, but we weren’t able to because some convention was having dinner on the beach where the movie is shown. Instead we walked around the Boardwalk and then went to Beaches ‘n’ Cream to divulge ourselves again with a Kitchen sink. There were 6 of us this time and we ate it really fast and I didn’t feel sick afterwards!

For Friday’s festivities I met up with the gang at the Magic Kingdom for a little bit and then we went to Cici’s for dinner. Tiauna wanted to go one more time because they don’t have them where she lives. I was so hungry and tired that I didn’t eat that much. I think I had more cinnamon rolls than anything because they are delicious! Then I dropped the girls off for their all nighter and I went home to sleep because I am an old woman when it come to sleep, I need it! Plus I was getting up at 4:30 to take Tiauna to the airport. That was an interesting excursion. We had a great moment as we were pulling up to the terminal and then we all had a cry fest. After we dropped her off I went home and slept some more and then really got up for the day. Saturday was like a sad day all day because it was the last day of festival too. We did have a rather fun time at work. We started off with lunch, which ended up being alter than planned because the last group to go started late because their accompanist got stuck in traffic.
The final awards ceremony was a blast because we got together and learned the dance from High School Musical and performed it before it started. Some people didn’t think that we would do it or be able to pull it off, but we did. The kids loved it and we had fun being on stage. It was great because the techs got into also and had fun with the lights and were using the spotlights. It fulfilled my need of being on stage. Because every once in a while you need that, well at least I do! Awards only lasted 30 minutes because it was a really small weekend, thanks freaking swine flu for making people cancel trips! I think my favorite part of the evening is when we were all outside waving goodbye we were on San Francisco street in Hollywood Studios standing on the steps of the houses with our Mickey hands. It looked so cool. We got some awesome pictures. It was neat to watch the guests faces as they came around the corner and saw us standing there saying farewell! We then went inside to watch a video of our amazing dance debut. It was pretty good, I am ready for my equity role now Disney, I’m waiting for the phone to ring! Jk. Now we are stuck in the office making sales calls. I can’t wait for my cruise. It is going to be awesome. Stay tuned for next weeks adventures!

That's Incredible!

2009-05-03T19:39:00.000-07:00

Another busy week has come and gone here in Orlando! My time is winding down so it is kind of a crunch time to get everything done that we want to before Tiffany and Tiauna leave, since we have pretty much been inseparable these past couple months. Tiauna is now an honorary member of the jones family as far as Tiff and I are concerned!
Wednesday was a day jam packed with fun. We started off at 8am eating delicious butterscotch pancakes which are kind of our new obsession after sampling them at IHOP but we make our own for much cheaper! We then headed off to the Magic Kingdom for a day of character hunting. We started off in the Fairy room right when it opened so that we could skip the hour wait. Tink is so fun to see, the 2 that I have met are quite sassy and very believable. We then went and met Lady Tremaine, Anastasia and Drizella. They were tons of fun and we sang with them. Their mother thought that they are better, but she would, we know the truth though! We then continued our hunt and met a lot of characters, and some were really friendly since Tiauna is friends with a lot of them, and Tiff takes pictures of a lot of them. If I had time I would share the stories of meeting everyone but we met 36 characters, so that would be like writing a novel and I don’t have time for that! We then headed over to Epcot. Epcot was tons of fun because a friend of ours from church was friends with the beast that day so we went and took some awesome pictures with him. They turned out so cool and we actually got one printed off our photopass card because I have a Disney Visa and they have a visa room where you meet some characters and then you get a voucher for a free picture from the ones taken in that room. Well when we went to look at the pictures the lighting was bad so we were able to pick anything that we had taken. We had been using our photopass card a lot that day because we got a cool photopass card that you can get 20% off your online order, so we decided we are going to buy the CD with all our pictures on it because we can edit them and then do what ever we want with them when we get the cd so split it between the 3 it won’t be too bad to pay. So we picked our awesome beast picture. Belle stepped out of some of the pictures because Beast told her that he knew us (don’t worry the characters have made up a sign to let people know that they know people).
We then ran over to the studios because they sometimes have random sets the days they do fantasmic to give the cast members more hours. We got to see some random characters like Foulfellow, Jafar, Friar Tuck and Prince John. Tiuana’s friend was friends with Foulfellow that is who we went to see. Then as we left some girls gave us fast passes to Toy Story Mania, and you can’t pass those up! We went and I got another personal high score! I love that ride! We then finished our day of hunting. We were exhausted because we ran all day. We took a breather and got ready for the spring formal that housing puts on. It was an ok event, it was just fun to dress up. It was at Coronado Springs and it is a cool resort. On our way out we noticed some awesome fountains so we stopped to take pictures, great fun!
Thursday Tiauna and I went and watched her friend in Fantasmic since we didn’t have time to see it Wednesday. It was fun, the wind was blowing really hard so we were getting wet. As we were walking out we saw some friends from the ward at started chatting and ended up going and riding tower of terror with them. I love doing random things like that!

Friday was Festival Disney weekend #7, only one more to go. It is crazy how fast it has gone. I hosted my last group. They were a pretty a good jazz band. We heard some good ones Friday and it was interesting that the middle school groups were kind of better than the high schoolers! When I was done I went home and did nothing. I love when I have the opportunity to do that after being so busy. Saturday morning was tons of fun. Tiauna was scheduled for Mrs. Incredible and has wanted to our friend Brian to do Mr. Incredible with her before she left, so she was able to have someone switch sets with Brian so that they could. The plan worked until Frozone called in, so they were going back to back, not together. We are all sad because I was going to get my picture with them before I went to work since I was working at the same park. Luckily since we had it planned Brian came out a few minutes early so that we could take pictures. It was fun, but the character attendant needs to work on her picture taking skills!
Work was fun and we got things plated quickly, so I went and had lunch with Tiauna and Brian during their lunch and it was fun, but then the others I was working with left to go eat somewhere so I was alone for another hour after I got back from my hour break with friends. Then we had a fun awards ceremony, I love them. It is fun to be there because the kids are so excited to be there and we get them all pumped up.
Then today was a great Sabbath day. Going to church at hotel is great fun. The air was broken and we were dying. It is becoming summer in florida and you definitely need air all the time now! We had a splendid CES broadcast and now it is time for bed! We have like something planned each night this week so I will continue to get no sleep! But it is so worth it. So so long till my recap or novel next week!

It’s a Small World. . .

2009-04-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

There are many things that I could have made the title for this week, but the events that transpired Sunday afternoon inspired this title. Lots happened this week, so I hope it doesn’t get too long!
Tuesday morning Tiff and I went to Typhoon Lagoon since we get in free till the end of the month. It was fun and it got most of it down in less than 2 hours. The wave pool there is so awesome, the waves are so high. We rode about 5 of them. Then Tuesday night was so much fun! I made reservations for a room at the Grand Floridian, which is a place I have wanted to stay at for a very long time, but it is very expensive it is the nicest resort that Disney has. To help make it reasonable we got a big group of girls and split it so that it was something that we could afford! We had a grand time; sat in the hot tub, watched wishes from the beach, played games and other things that you do at Girls Night! We went to bed at about 2 and got up at 8 to get us all ready to go stuff our faces at the delicious breakfast buffet and then go play. It was so good, we all ate to much but is was so worth it!
After checking out we headed over to play at Universal Studios. We had 5 hours to do both parks so we had to pick and choose what exactly to do. Luckily they weren’t too busy and our longest wait was like 15 minutes. I love the roller coasters at universal they are so much fun! I also love how Universal makes fun of Disney. It doesn’t bother me at all, it makes me laugh hysterically! There is a huge difference between the two, and it is fun to do something not Disney everyone in a while.
Thursday night we went and saw 17 Again. It is a cute movie, and has a really good story to it. We were laughing nonstop for most of the movie. I then went home and went to bed because I got to be at work at 5:30 am for the marching band and auxiliary performances. It was a lot of fun. My groups were fun to work with, they are a Christian School from Alabama and were pretty good. Then when that was done I headed over to the specialty choir venue to host a choir. There were some really good choirs and a really tragic one. My group was pretty good and one of the kids ended up winning a solo award from the judges. When I finished with my groups I went home and slept I was so tired and didn’t want to do anything. I ended the night watching another movie on the beach. We watched Beverly Hills Chihuahua. I hadn’t seen it, it was pretty cute but Tiff didn’t really like it. Oh well that’s her problem not mine!
I got to sleep in a little Saturday morning which was a good thing because it was going to be a super long day! The awards ceremony was awesome. Since we couldn’t use Hollywood Studios because of the last weekend of Grad Nite we got to use the Finding Nemo stage. I was in heaven. I love the show and we got to see a lot of the puppets, dressing room, sets and such. I wanted to take pictures but I didn’t I was a good girl. There was a Nazi tech backstage and she probably would’ve flipped if I took any pictures. We did however get floaties and rings to wear when Rene introduced us to have a little fun since we were on the Nemo stage. It was great fun. After we finished with awards we went over to studios to tour Grad Nite and see what all was going on since we helped make calls for this blessed event. It was great fun. We got to hang out and see Hayden Panatierre and Katy Perry at a question/answer event with Junior class officers to make them excited to get their class to come next year. It was cool to be in the same room as the celebrities. Someone asked Hayden what her favorite movie is that she has made and she said remember the Titans. I loved her in that movie, but now she is a little too much for me at times. We then watched the awesome fireworks for the class of 2009 and then watched Katy Perry’s concert. She is one odd girl. She was all over the stage and doesn’t have the greatest live voice. I left before here odd song about kissing a girl and liking it, and at the end she kisses a girl. I went and watched White Tie Affair, they were much better than Katy. We then went and saw the dance parties. They were crazy but the kids were having fun. I am just an old women and don’t like that music.

Now that brings us to Sunday and the 5 hours of sleep I got last night! Today was stake conference and we needed to go early because Elder Holland was here and you know how people get when General Authorities are present. Conference was amazing and we were spiritually fed. Before conference started Tiffany was wandering around and found her good friend Elder Lussier from home who is serving in the Orlando mission. It was fun and a little weird to see him, and then he asked us to stay for a baptism afterwards and we said sure, it would be fun. Tiff has a friend visiting who was a CP last semester and she has a friend serving here also, she saw him before it started and then he invited her to stay for the same baptism. Turns out they are companions. Crazy huh, the world is so small, especially where Disney and the Church are involved! As we were walking into the baptism, which was originally supposed to be for 4 people, turned into 6 people an Elder asked me a question about Tiauna seeing where she was from and what her name was. Turns out they went to high school together. So we are now 3 for 3 of people knowing missionaries serving in Orlando. But just you wait, we end up going 4 for 4 because one of the sisters serving here is a girl that was at EAC the semester I got back from florida the first time. It was crazy. The word is so small!
So anyways we finally made it home and ate we were dying of hunger, because the baptism was quite long. Quick side note on the baptism, during conference the mission president announced the baptism and challenged anyone else that has been investigating that they could come join. One did and so she was kind of spontaneously baptized today. One thing that made me laugh really hard at the baptism is that since there was the spontaneous baptism some people didn’t have towels. One guy came and asked a lady in the stake relief society presidency who was sitting in front of us if they had any in the building, all they had were dish towels. Oh how I love the church. The church is true!
We didn’t have much time to rest and eat because we had to get back to the stake center to practice with our ward choir for the fireside. The fireside was amazing and the musical number turned out pretty good. It was pretty neat; they opened up the floor for questions. Some people asked some really good questions, others asked some odd ones. But I did learn some good stuff. That is the lowdown on my week and all the stuff I did. I am tired and will post pictures later from my many adventures!

Intense

2009-04-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

Hi I am still alive. This past weekend was killer! If you read my previous post you can get a glimpse as to how crazy festival weekends can be. Friday was even crazier than Thursday and I will spare you all the details, but I will say one thing. If you are ever planning a trip, only have one person in charge! We had a group that had a travel planner from the travel company, a travel coordinator from the school and they brought their band, choir and orchestras. I believe they had like 6 groups traveling on 4 busses. I had to tell all the instructions to both ladies. It was so annoying. There were some really good groups, and I had so much fun listening to choirs all day!

Saturday was crazy getting all the scores in and awards ready for the awards ceremony. We couldn’t have the awards ceremony at Hollywood studios like we always do, we were at Epcot so we had to load the truck and head over to Epcot and hope that we have everything. Turns out we didn’t and one girl went back like 3 times. The place where we had the awards ceremony was decorated so cool, it was world showplace where we did stuff for the Jazz Celebration. I left my camera in the car that was left at the place where I picked up the mini van to drive around for the day. We had to have 2 awards ceremonies and it was crazy. I was so tired after the 1st one, I wasn’t sure how we were going to make it through the 2nd. Amazingly we did and then some went to a game night, I went home and crashed! I’m kind of not looking forward to next weekend, total sleep deprivation but it will be worth it. After we finish with awards next Saturday we are going to explore grad nite for a while, and then it is stake conference and we have to go early because it is about a 30 min drive to the stake center and Elder Holland will be there so you know it will be packed! I will also have tons of pictures because we are having a girls night at the Grand Floridian! Well it is my bed my bed time good night.

A typical festival day

2009-04-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

So this week is a crazy festival weekend, we have 87 groups coming, which is our biggest ever. We can't have our awards ceremony at Hollywood Studios like we usually do because of a lovely event called Grad Nite, that got moved from the Magic Kingdom because people are lame and thats a whole other story.

I have worked with some really cool directors and then some crazy ones where I have no clue what planet they are on and I don't even want to know what they are thinking!

Here are some examples of things that happened today!

I had the first 2 choirs of the day, and they were cool. Guests started mocking me and my "5 more minutes" that I get to do. While I am hosting that group I am informed over the radio that my afternoon group had arrived about the same time that the next group of about 100 boys had arrived. The director of this group was crazy she told me she was planning on arriving at 1:30 not 10, and they were arriving on Disney transport not chartering a bus like they should.

Everyone goes in and sits I take my awesome group out to the bus using the back door since there are now about 200 people trying to get into the theater and the people at the hotel where the performance hall is gets kind of cranky. They get on the bus and say goodbye. They have a bus driver who is a little special and took a while maneuvering out of the parking lot and I had to move so that I didn't end up under the bus! When I walk back in they were cleaning up the stage after a protein spill (Disney lingo for throw up). The kid said he was fine and finished the performance, which he did just fine. I am then told that half of my group is still outside and that they are rehearsing. I get my manager and we kindly go tell her that they really can't be rehearsing right now and moved them to a place out of the way so that they don't get in the way of the "real" hotel guests.

After the huge group it was lunch time, and then my crazy director comes up and asks me if her accompanist can go practice on the piano because they are singing some tough songs and she starts naming all these composers. I tell her no that they have to wait until their warm up time. She didn't like that but oh well, thats the rules! She then has her group go to Downtown Disney for lunch because we can't have the festival guests eat at the resort because they get cranky. About half of them go and they other half just stay there and find benches to go sleep on outside. Then people from the resort come and get mad at us, oh well again not my problem! The rest of the group barely made it back for the performance.

After their performance I go to pick up the signs since the last group had arrived for the evening. We then hear on the radio that at the other choral venue that the boy who threw up earlier, threw up again. We were laughing hysterically! When I walk back inside I see that during the other groups warm up time my group had gone and changed which they were told not to do, there are no changing facilities at the venue.

They were ok, I've heard better, but they thought they were really good. The best thing is they stayed to watch the group after them, who were really good. During the last group's clinic one of the adjudicators stated that they were they best group she had heard all day. My group kind of gasped in shock that the group was told that and not them. So it is now time for everyone to leave and I walk with my group outside to hear what they are going to do because they don't have buses to come pick them up like everyone else. I was so shocked as to what this lady was telling her students. "Take a bus to any of the parks and let your chaperon know which park you are in. Meet at the TTC at 11:30 (the TTC is the parking and bus depot for the Magic Kingdom)." I was shocked how could they do that, let 40 high school students loose on 47 sq miles of freedom and unkowns. They all leave and she is left with some chaperons and everyones clothes in which she then goes looking for a taxi. At this point I don't care I am just sitting there laughing to myself! I am so done and don't care anymore I just wanted to be done with them. If you hear of students gone missing on their school trip to Disneyworld, they are probably one of mine from this crazy group!

Today was just the first day, we shall see what the next 2 have to bring! haha. Not to mention someone fainted and a girl had to sit down because her feet were hurting from her heels. Silly girls that think they have to wear really high heels for performances. This turned out really long, I didn't mean to write this much but I just had to share these funny stories!

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have been crazy fun! I had a great time playing with Andy and his family. It was so much fun to see Cali and Chelsey enjoying their first trip to florida. Andy has a nice camera so there are some cool pictures. We were on the Disney dining plan for a few days because there was an amazing cast member special, and we pretty much were eating free food. For $21 a day we got a table service meal, quick service meal and a snack. It was so good and we ate so much food! At the sit down restaurants the meals are about $25 or so a person, and then we got more food for the day.

We managed to hit all the parks, but sadly I wasn’t with them the whole time because I had to work, but such is life. The first day it rained quite a bit so we got the watered down version of the parade. It was fun seeing the parks from a child’s perspective, we met a lot of characters. I waited for them to come to wait in line for Tinker Bell and her fairy friends. They have a fun dance party called “Move it, Shake it, Celebrate!” we had a blast dancing in the streets, definitely a work out!

It was sad to see them go, but it was kind of time. Little kids can only take so much stimulus. The poor girls would be so tired at the end of the night, and be asleep so fast as soon as we stopped. I have spent the last week recovering because we didn't have a festival this week since not too many groups travel easter weekend. It was nice for work because all of us were in the office and we were able to discuss what has gone on and how to tweak things to make things smoother. We also took time to discuss our cruise. I am so excited to go on a cruise and it was a stinking deal. I hope to have fun, but it may get kind of weird because I will be the only one not drinking in the group. It will be fun no matter what!

Easter today was great. I was sad I didn't get to see the Easter Pageant at all this year. I missed not helping being a Pageant Warrior, but I love what I am doing and wouldn't trade it for anything. The parks have been super busy this week. So busy that 3 days this week they have had to close the Magic Kingdom because it reached capacity. DON'T EVER COME TO DISNEY FOR SPRING BREAK AND MAJOR HOLIDAYS, NOT WORTH IT! After church Tiauna and I were sinners and we went to the Magic Kingdom to see the special Easter stuff they had before the parade. We were so surprised to see how empty the park was. It was busy, but not crazy like it has been, there was room to walk and not be trampled! We just watched the pre stuff and then left. Yeah we are weird, we know it.

When we returned we went and joined some friends at a picnic. It was nice to be outside and hang out with them because a lot of them are leaving this week. Dumb BYU and their short semester. Church next week is going to be interesting with them not there! While at Mickey's Retreat for the picnic we went and walked around the lake. I went to sit in a hammock, and this is what happened! Not sure what happened, but it was funny. I just sat there and Tiauna made me stay until she got a picture. Needless to say I had sand all down my back.

(Modeling our Easter dresses for mom)

That is all of my adventures for now, until I get pictures off Tiffany's camera of us eating a Kitchen Sink. I won't give any details, just stay tuned for what's in store, but it is intense!

Boom!

2009-03-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

There always seems to be some sort of fun new adventure to experience out here. On Tuesday we went and visited hot tubs at some different resorts. It was fun to see some of the different resorts. The theme of each is so different and so amazing. Coronado Springs is like Mexico and the pool is an ancient temple dig site. It was great fun and then we went to Wilderness Lodge which is themed after the lodges at the national parks like Yellowstone and such. The pool is like a river and they tried to make the hot tubs look like natural hot tubs. It was great fun and we had a blast.

On Thursday I ran some errands getting ready for Andy, Chelsey and Cali to come this week. I am so excited to have them come play! I got Cali and Kaylee some Mickey ears at the discount store and then took them to the Magic Kingdom to put their names on them. It was kind of lame because it cost just as much to put their names on them as it was to buy them. We then went and looked for Tiffany to see if we could stalk her at all. It didn’t see her on Main Street or near the castle so we decided to just leave and stop by Guest Relations to make a dining reservation. As I was making the reservation Tiauna went outside to watch the Pinocchio meet and great area. She soon came back in and said that tiff was the photographer with Pinocchio. So we went and stood in line to have her take our picture with him. Then she had to leave so we got out of line. Then we went to my house and made cookies and watched Twilight. It was a first time for me and it was good. Tiauna was also working on a ransom note for a guy in the ward. It was hilarious and I was rolling on the floor laughing when she told me how the two of them delivered it to his apartment.
This weekend was another fun festival weekend. I had some really good groups this weekend. I had a blast talking with the adjudicators that were here. They are hilarious. The instrumental adjudicators wanted to see Voices of Liberty at EPCOT so we had a break during their last set of the day. We rushed over to there to see them and we walked into the building during their last note. It was kind of sad but a fun adventure. The thing that made me laugh the most is some of them were sitting on their iphones checking their facebook between groups. They were hilarious. Another good thing about them is we bring in catered meals for them. Friday night I got to take home some left over breakfast food. Saturday was the best though. I was sitting in the trailer entering scores into the computer and the server asked us if we wanted some of the leftovers from lunch. I jumped right up, you don’t say no to free food at Disney, especially catered because it is way good. I enjoyed some Caesar salad, angel hair pasta and a DIVINE flourless chocolate cake covered with ganache. It was so good. I should have taken a picture because it definitely looked as good as it tasted. The meals are so exquisitely prepared that the adjudicators were even taking pictures of their food on their phones. Also while sitting on the computer working I heard this crashing sound and thought to myself, “Did something just crash into the truck or something?” I just kept on working because I didn’t hear anything else. A little while later I was talking to my manager and he was talking about the space shuttle landing, and how it has sonic booms when it does. So that is what I heard, the space shuttle landing. I didn’t know that they did that, but if you think about it they are going really fast when they are entering back into the atmosphere. So there is some space shuttle trivia for the day! The awards ceremony was fun again. We get to go out a little before it starts and get everyone pumped up, one of the best parts of the job.

Today was a great day too, because we finally got a new bishop. Our bishop got a new job in California about 2 months ago and left so we have been just going. It will be a good change, I am excited to meet the new bishopric and their wives, and they seem like really cool people. We had break the fast tonight that was our easter dinner. It was so good and there were some way good desserts that Tiauna and I ate too much of. Now it is time to go to bed. I need to get up early in the morning to start working out because I am going on a cruise at the end of May with people from work. So I need to get ready for that and on my days off this week I am going to be playing nonstop. I am so excited, so next week there will probably be tons of pictures!

Mr. Sandman

2009-03-22T16:18:00.000-07:00

There always seems to be some sort of new adventure awaiting here in florida! To celebrate St. Patrick’s day we went the Boardwalk to go experience the fun atmosphere that is there. We ended up on the other side of the lake at the Yacht and Beach club eating delicious cheeseburgers and watching a movie on the beach. Each night at most of the resorts they have inflatable screens and watch movies, and we have made that one of our new hobbies. It is really fun, and could be quite romantic, but it is a fun cheap activity. Oh the free things that you can do at Disney! On Tuesday Tiauna thought it would be fun to order the kids meal just so that she could get the bucket and shovel to play with while we watch the movie. She had a little bit too much fun, you can see what I mean! It was really dark so I didn’t really know what she was doing until I took a picture of her sandman!

We have been wanting to watch High School Musical 3 for a while and could never find the time, but we finally did on Thursday. We found out it was showing at the Contemporary that night so we made plans to go. Along with the movie they also have a campfire where you can roast marshmallows, so we brought stuff for s’mores. It was so much fun and so delicious. My manager told us about making s’mores with peanut butter cups instead of just chocolate bars. Let me tell you it is so good, one of the best treats I have had in a long time. I will never eat plain ones again. The movie was ok, I’m glad I didn’t waste money in the theater to see it. You can tell it had a much bigger budget than the first two. On our way back to the car we saw a friend of ours working at the monorail and stopped to take a picture. It was tons of fun, and then we went to TGI Fridays. I probably shouldn’t have gone because we were up way too late, but it was fun!
Friday night we were up late again, but such is the life of single adults. There was a dance we went to, and it was interesting. I tried to have fun, but it didn’t work, there wasn’t really a DJ so music selection was very interesting, and some of the people were very odd. I survived but had a much better time afterwards because we went to IHOP at 1 am! I got some delicious butterscotch pancakes. They were so good, I can’t wait to try and make them myself! I got hungry during church and started craving them!

The space shuttle launch. Didn't get as good as I had hoped!

Saturday was another fun and exciting festival day! We had 1/3 of the groups this weekend than we did last weekend, so it was a lot more relaxed. When we were done plating all of the awards we took our dinner break and rode bikes to the break room. It was probably at least about a ½ mile trek, if not more to the break room. My thighs were a little sore when we got there. I love working at the studios because they have bikes for you to ride backstage, it is so much fun! The awards ceremony was fun. We get to get the crowd pumped which is a blast. The kids are so excited to be there it is awesome! When we were done handing out awards and got all cleaned up we all went to TGI Fridays because I found an awesome coupon for 1cent appetizers. I paid $3 for potato skins and lemonade; it was the greatest thing ever. We had fun just hanging out because we haven’t all been together lately because of our lame no overtime schedules. It felt like I hadn’t seen some of them forever.
Today we had another fun and exciting day of church at the Sheraton Safari Hotel, home of the world’s largest python waterslide! We went early because tiff was playing the piano for a musical number. We get there and the piano wasn’t working. They couldn’t get it to work at all so we had to sing everything a capella today. It was kind of interesting; some of the pitches were very high! The weather has been perfect lately, not much humidity at all. I want it to stay like this a lot longer! The humidity is horrible, stay away! Now it is time for another fun and exciting festival week. I have 5 choirs I am hosting so I am so excited to be at the choral venue all day. I am learning some cool stuff to use when I hopefully get a job!

here is the video clip from the space shuttle launch last week. I didn't get as much as I hoped because my the batteries were dying. Oh well!

Spring is Broken?

2009-03-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

We had a fantastic and crazy busy week! Marilee came on Sunday and we played the whole time till she left on Thursday morning. I sadly had to work on Monday so it was just her and tiff until I got off. Luckily I was working backstage at the Studios getting awards ready for the weekend, so when I was done I just walked “onstage” and joined them in the park. We went and watched the American Idol experience which is so fun to watch, I could go see it a couple times a day because it is always different. To end the night we watched Fantasmic. It is one of my favorite shows and it is a must see. They are only showing it 2 nights a week right now so we had to schedule what night we were going to watch it and be able to see the other nightly fireworks.

We got an early start on Tuesday because Tiffany wanted to see the park opening at Magic Kingdom. She gets to see the backside of it when she works in the morning, but never gets to see what it actually is. The show was fun and the best thing was that it wasn’t too busy when we first got there. We did 2 rides in about a half hour. We then left the Magic Kingdom and headed over to the Grand Floridian for a delicious breakfast buffet at 1900 Park Fare. It is a character dining experience and was so much fun! As we were sitting in the waiting area the Mad Hatter came running out of the dining room and sat between these two ladies and started demanding that they get seated right away. It was hilarious. I love doing character dining because the characters come right to your table. We got to see Mary Poppins, which I think was all of our favorite! Then the Mad Hatter, he was crazy funny, and so loud! He was at a table chatting with a guy and he had already set out the tip, Mad Hatter then picked up the cash and started waving it in the air yelling, “Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins, tuppence, tuppence a bag!” He then got in a fight with Tigger when they were by our table. And then we got our picture with Tigger, Pooh and Alice. Alice was also really funny. We were wearing “I’m celebrating” buttons and so she asked what we were celebrating. We told her Spring Break, even though just one of us was having a spring break. Alice then playing her part said “I didn’t know it was spring yet?” and then she said the funniest thing, “I didn’t know spring was broken?!” Brunch was so good! We ate so much, including a breakfast pizza which was so good and something I had never heard of before. We finished off the meal with some soft serve ice cream. We were full the rest of the day! We had a magical day at the Magic Kingdom and finished off the day with a delicious fresh handmade chocolate chip ice cream sandwich while watching Wishes!

Wednesday we started off at Animal Kingdom rode Everest, saw Finding Nemo the Musical and then rode the safari. There is some more to do there, but we didn’t have time, we still needed to hit Epcot and the amazing rides there. We had lunch at the restaurant in Italy. It was so good, it was kind of pricey, but it was somewhat affordable since we used Tiff’s 50% off coupon that we had, and we used mine for breakfast. The meal was worth it, and not just the food. The servers were very attractive and fun to look at! Epcot was a lot of fun, because in addition to the rides they have a new attraction to make the World Showplace more kid friendly, it is the Kim Possible experience where you get a kimmunicator to help her save the world. It is a cool interactive thing that you get clues to solve in a country and help save it. It was so much fun, we saved 4 countries that day! We then ended the night with one more firework spectacular “Illuminations” it is a fun show that I love to watch, the soundtrack is so cool too and makes me happy each time I hear it!

I loved this mission in Germany. The notes spelled out the word. Yay for being a music nerd!

Sadly all the fun had to come to a close and I took Marilee to the airport at 4:30am on Thursday. I got to go back to bed for an hour before getting up for another busy day of work. Work was crazy because the first Festival Disney weekend was upon us and things have been very intense in the office, lots of changes have been happening, thank you budget cuts! My poor manager has been running around like crazy doing more than he is getting paid to do. The festival was so much fun and look forward to the next 7 weekends of them! I got to hear some good and interesting jazz bands on Friday. Saturday I wasn’t hosting any groups, I just got to sit in an office and get scores inputted into the computer and get all of the awards ready for the awards ceremony. We had a huge weekend and kind of crazy for the first weekend of the season. It was kind of a baptism by fire to make sure everything got done! We were a few minutes late getting started but it was fine. We had the ceremony at Lights, Motor, Action at the Studios and it was so much fun, there was a DJ getting the kids all pumped for the night, and we got to dance around a little too. We then gave each ensemble their awards, handed out the special awards, gave the directors their bag of medals and scores and then Mickey comes and says hi. I really enjoyed getting to be down on the stage at LMA, and it was kind of intense too because they were also showing stuff on the jumbotron. We waved goodbye to everyone with our Mickey gloves and it ended sooner than we thought and we all soon crashed! Today has been a nice day of relaxation and it has been wonderful, just enough to get me ready for the next weekend of fun! Luckily this weekend is about half the size of groups as last week.

I also got to watch a shuttle launch tonight. I tried to video and take pictures of it but my battery decided to die, so I didn't get everything I thought I did, oh well. I will try and post them later.

What an Honor

2009-03-08T17:21:00.000-07:00

The week has been another fabulous one down here in Orlando. Work has been starting to get busy, which makes me really happy!

I had Monday off so I went and did some playing in the parks. I went with Tiauna and some girls from the ward. We went to Animal Kingdom and it was great fun. It was one of the girls first trips to that park so it was fun going on the rides with her like the Safari, Everest and Dinosaur! After the park closed we went to Cici’s pizza for dinner and ate too much! It was so good. To make the not so healthy dinner worse we went to a friends house to watch the finale of the bachelor and eat fattening foods. I brought crème puffs and you can tell it was a bunch of girls eating them because we ate the whole container or 90!

Waiting inline for Everest, you can kind of see the mountain in the background

The big prestigious Disney Honors was this weekend, where they brought in big name Instrumental and Choral adjudicators for the National Concert Band, Orchestra and Choral Invitational. It was a really cool event. It started Thursday night with a welcome celebration at the Animal Kingdom that was a little private party just for them at Dinoland USA complete with burgers and a DJ, I sadly didn’t get to work that event but oh well, there wasn’t much for me to do anyways there! Then Friday they had some seminars for the kids from Disney Entertainment and Dr. Tim, who is an amazing speaker for music students. He talks about leadership and stuff, and I saw him in high school and he does kind of the same stuff I saw back then, but it is still a good message to hear! I was actually in the office again on Friday so I took an extended lunch to go watch his spiel with the choral kiddos. I almost got stuck in parade traffic backstage which would have made my lunch break even longer, it was kind of intense for a second!

Saturday was the big day of performances. I got to be at work at 6:30 am, boy it was not fun getting up at 4:30 on a Saturday! I’m not a fan of being to work before the sun is up. We got all the little last minute things set up and then the groups started arriving. The performances were held at a gorgeous theater at the Orange County Convention Center. That place is huge! When you are walking through it kind of feels like an airport and they even have announcements going as you walk through the huge corridors that sound like you are in an airport. The theater was amazing; it had a very live sound that I loved. The piano was a beautiful natural wood color to match the sound shells that where on the stage. The group that I hosted was so good, and one of the girls that I work with told me that a girl from my choir had won American Idol the night before at Hollywood Studios. (Each day there are like 7 shows, 3 people sing at each show, one wins and goes to the finale show at the end of the night. The 7 sing and one wins a golden ticket which is like a fast pass for actual American Idol auditions. It is a cool new attraction they have) I was super excited because the way the rotation worked out with the adjudicators, Craig Jessop was the one that worked with my group. It was so fun to sit in on their clinic and listen to things that he had to say. I am so excited about this aspect of my job, sitting in on the clinics. I bought a notebook to take notes to learn from all of these amazing musicians I get to work with the next 10 weeks! After I took my choir back to the bus I went and sat in on the last choral clinic of the day. This choir was also very impressive, it had about 90 students in it. I learned some very neat conducting tips from this guy. I didn’t get to see the whole thing because I was called on to use my mad string skills. The Con Selmer family of brands supplies the bigger instruments for us to use during festival season like basses, cellos and all the fun percussion stuff, and then they sell them when we are done. It is pretty neat and they come with the cool Disney performing arts logo on them. So since it was the first event of the season the instruments were brand new and needed to have packaging stuff taken off and then when we opened the cellos we noticed that the cellos didn’t have the bridges in them, so I then started to finish assembling the cellos, since no one else had any string experience and had no clue what to do or what strings they were, because I then tuned them a little to get them in the ball park of where they should be, not octaves off! I did break a bridge and a string, but oh well I had to tune like 10 of them so such is life. Then I was done, I didn’t get to hear any of the instrumental groups, but I’ll survive, there will be plenty to hear throughout the rest of the season. I then went home and pretty much crashed, I can’t tell you when I fell asleep, I don’t remember!

Today is daylight savings, so we lost an hour. I think it is kind of dumb because now you have to reset all you clocks and then in six months you have to change it all back. People think I’m weird because Arizona doesn’t do such foolish things. We are just fine with not ever changing our time! This week will be fun because Marilee is here to play for a few days, it is going to be tons of fun!

ESPN Weekend

2009-03-05T16:28:00.001-08:00

Life down in florida continues to be fun. Work has it's times of being busy and boring. Next week the 8 weeks of festivals begins, so it is starting to get crazy. This week is the Disney Honors and I am very excited for it, the parts I get to attend. Marilee is coming into town on Sunday and Tiff and I are very excited to have her come play!

On saturday I went with my roommate to the ESPN weekend at Hollywood studios. It drew in a large crowd. We really didn't do any of the activities, we were just there to see what it was. We stood in line for about an hour to get a free caricature drawn. It was worth it and it was my first time getting one drawn. The main reason I wanted to go was to see the only 2 athletes I knew that were coming, Shawn Johnson and Misty May-Traenor. It was fun to listen to them talk about their experiences. It is crazy to think that she is only 17, and at times she acts they way, she is so young, but cute, winning 4 olympic medals your senior year of high school, how amazing! There were tons of sport stars, and it would be funny because you would see security and the Disney Guest Relations people and then all of the sudden there would be a huge flock of people around the star. Silly Wendi left her camera at home, luckily I could take pictures on my phone! That is pretty much all for this week, hopefully I will remember to take my camera along with me for the awesome events that are happening!

Jazz Baby Jazz

2009-02-25T15:29:00.000-08:00

We had our first event this week and it was so much fun! Because I would be working Saturday for the festival I got to take Tuesday off, and that was nice. Tiff and I had the day off together so we went to blizzard beach for the afternoon because we get in free till the end of February. There are some really fun slides to go on, and some scary ones. Tiff did the really tall scary one that I wouldn’t. They have a radar gun showing how fast the people are going down the slide. The person that went before tiff was clocked going 67 mph. The gun for some reason didn’t get her so I don’t know how fast she went down. People ranged from 50-70 mph. The only bad part about the slides is that you had to climb up the mountain to go down any, and boy some of those steps were really steep.

Thursday was the first day of the Jazz Celebration. I was scheduled to work in the office so I got to run around making sure all sorts of last minute things were good to go. They had an opening night kick off with a performance by Arturo Sandoval and his band. He is really talented and he is hilarious, there were times he would just sit there and ramble on about things that just made us all laugh. Friday I hosted two groups. One was a middle school from Orlando and then a high school from New Jersey. It was fun and I got to be the time Nazi and make sure that they were on schedule so that everything went on time. The clinicians didn’t like it when I told them time was up because they were having fun working with the students.

Saturday was like the best because I was at Epcot in the huge World Showplace temporary permanent tent (Disney does funny stuff like that; this tent has been there since 98) helping with the master classes. I got paid to sit in on a vocal jazz master class with big names in jazz. I wish it could have been longer, it was not long enough, but I learned some good stuff. The guy that they brought in for percussion was so good, and fun to listen to, he seems really nice and was talking about how his son was doing solo and ensemble this weekend. I love it when people are down to earth and love to talk about their family. When I was done helping with the master classes I got to go to the studios and get a minivan to go pick up some of the guest artists for the Awards ceremony.

Then my day of work was over and so I went and got something to eat with others from work and we decided we wanted to watch the American Idol Experience before the awards ceremony started. The girl that won was 14 and has some mad chops. She might be on the actual show in a few years. We then ran over to see the awards ceremony, which was fun because they had the 3 top groups perform. The vocal group was so good, as were the instrumental, but I am more into the vocal. Then they had the “all star” big name people perform. It was pretty sweet and then the evening ended with Mickey. How could there be an awards ceremony at Disney without the big guy himself? Now we have a week to recoup and get ready for the Disney Honors, which I am so excited for because Craig Jessop is coming and working with the choral groups. I hope I get to work with him and sit in on some of the stuff that he’ll do. So we’ll see what adventures will come up this week! One exciting thing that happened this week is my niece Cali talked my brother and sister-in-law to come visit aunt Wendi and aunt Tiffany. I can’t wait to play with her in the parks!