Mr. Sandman

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?

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

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

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

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!

Dancing with the Mouse!

My week was jammed packed full of fun! The start of the week was normal just work FHE and sleep! Tuesday at work I got to go to the warehouse to get some stuff for festivals and because of that I got to wear jeans! I like it when I don't have to get all dressed up for work. The warehouse is huge and full of old a new stuff for Disney, kind of cool the things that are in there. Wednesday I got to work on my talk to speak in church today. I had a very different topic, speaking on the perpetual education fund and the other offerings on the tithes and offerings slip. It went well and I'm glad it's over. Then Thursday was an amazing day. I guy that works on my floor his wife works for La Nouba. Crowds have been down and to make it a better experience for everyone they were giving out tickets and so he secured some for us. La Nouba is an awesome show, I have now seen it three times and I love it. This time we were on the third row, and I didn't like too much being up that close. When the trapeze artists were performing it was hard to watch because they were right above me. I prefer seats further away so that I can catch everything.



When the show was over our manager had us wait around for a minute, we thought he was just going to tell us stuff about work, but no we were wrong. A friend of his works there and took us on a tour. I had gotten to go on a tour the first time I went with a guy from the ward, who had just left La Nouba a few weeks ago because he got a part in Dralion and is now training in Canada to join them on tour in Australia (rough life huh?). We got to see pretty much everything in the building, all 9 floors! It was neat to see how everything works in the show. I am usually not too afraid of heights, but the catwalk 7 stories up was a bit scary to look down. We even went up to the 9th floor and walked around on the grid, high above the seats! It was way cool. It was an amazing experience, that I wasn't prepared for, I was wearing heels, not good footwear for a 2 hour tour, but I survived and finally made it home at 1 am. Lazy Tiffany and her roommate slept in and Tiff didn't go to work the next day because she was too tired.

Incase you haven't figured out yet, I really love my job. It is pretty much one of the best jobs ever! My manager is amazing and knows all sorts of people. Friday after La Nouba all of us at work were like "Did we really just do that?" Who does our manager not know? I had even more fun at work on friday. I got to go shadow a Magic Music Days Guest Talent Coordinator at the Magic Kingdom. I was so excited because it was my first time ever to work at the MK. We met the marching band over by Splash Mountain and brought them backstage to the Magic Music Days facility where their bus was waiting for them. We gave the band some instructions and then had them get ready to march before the 3 o'clock parade. We got to lead them down the parade route through the Magic Kingdom. It was so fun, and we got to make sure that everyone was out of the way for them to march through. This is a job I could do more often. Then we took them back to the MMD facilities to change to go back into the parks. It was fun to talk to the kids and see how things were, how they were liking the trip and their favorite part. Some of them even wanted to know how I liked my job and how I got there. I like guest interaction like that, makes what I am doing more fun. Then after work Tiff, Tiauna and I went and saw Confessions of a Shopaholic. Go see it, HILARIOUS! It is funny and has some good lessons to learn.

Saturday morning I got to wake up way early to be at the Magic Kingdom by 7:30am. I was able to pick up a glorious 12 hour overtime shift for saturday helping with this crazy event called Twirlmania. We were meeting our first group of baton twirlers at 8am. They were marching at 10am. It took awhile to get them all gathered and marched backstage to MMD to get lined up for their march. This group was funny very interesting. It was about 200 girls from somewhere in florida. They were all ages, but that wasn't really supposed to happen. You see at Disney there are some things you see backstage that can be traumatizing to some, so they make it a rule that they need to be at least 8 to come backstage. We were talking to some of them and finding out how old they were. One girl told us that she was 5, but her mom told her to tell us that she was 8. So we marched them down the parade route and then released them back to their families and then took a lunch break and then got our next group of girls. The next two groups were intense, 500 of my closest baton twirling friends! We would get them gathered and start sending them down to keep things moving and relieve the congestion where they were gathering. Then we marched them again, and this time they were before the 3 pm parade, so there were lots of people already lining the parade route.

Getting ready for the last parade of the day was kind of the best and craziest. We had to take them to the staging area backwards because of timing of other shows and yada yada yada. We got them to the staging area and then waited for the new "Move it, Shake it, Celebrate" floats to come back in. When characters and other performs come backstage they quickly leave character, so they weren't too happy to come through the gate after dancing the past 30 mins to see 500 people waiting backstage. The Mad Hatter had the greatest face, he finished the song and then look over and made the face of, oh crap there are tons of people over there, dang it! I'm sure he might have been thinking other things but they aren't too Disney friendly! We then got to watch everyone take their costumes off. For some it is traumatizing, for me intriguing, I love the whole backstage process of stuff, and it doesn't ruin the magic for me. After that was all cleared it was time to step off for the 3rd time. I had so much time leading these twirlers, it must just be my love of performing and being onstage. I would love to pick up more of these shifts. Our first festival is this weekend. I am so excited to see how it goes. It is the Jazz Celebration, the first one that Disney has done, so it is fun to be part of the inaugural event, and there are some big name Jazz people coming. All I have to say is YAY for overtime! I'm excited for my paycheck the next to weeks.

Spring is in the Air

The past two weeks have been fun and crazy. I had a great time going home for my Grandpa Riding's funeral. I did a lot of laughing and crying that weekend. We had an older cousin sleep over at the Thacker's. Since it had been a long day, we did not last long. We started watching "Return to Me" and I can't tell you when I fell asleep, but I do remember some parts of it. I think Lindsay was the only one who finished the whole thing. Each of us had puffy eyes from crying all day! We can however blame the falling asleep during movies to grandpa, well my mom always blames it on him, so I'm pretty sure it's a true fact! I didn't take any pictures with my camera that weekend, but there are plenty taken by everyone in my family. It was a beautiful weekend. I love that my family is very close and we seem tough most of the time, but we also have our tender side. I think that everyone got a little teary eyed sometime during the funeral. That just shows you how much we love and will miss our dear grandpa! The greatest thing about the weekend was getting the chance to hold my baby Abby for the first time. It was so fun and I can't wait till i get home and she is older to play with her more. I also spent quality time with Cali, we sat and cuddled and watched tv for awhile, oh how I needed some time with my nieces! We went to Texas Roadhouse for my birthday and it was delicious! G&G Jones and Juleen also came along because it was Juleens birthday. I got her a great gift and I will post more of that later because there are some awesome pictures that go along with it!

Flying back to orlando was great fun. We had a 6am flight which was not fun, but the fact that it was super bowl sunday and the super bowl was in Tampa, so there were tons of Cards fans on our flight! We didn't watch all of the super bowl because we opted to go to break the fast and eat some good food. Sadly we missed the half time show. I had the opportunity to have helped with the half time show because my awesome manager has a side job working with casting for the half time show. I was sad I missed out on that chance and experience that now the rest of my team has, but going home was a lot more important. My manager did bring me back a hat so that is cool.

I have had the chance to have the new cast member training at Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Studios) and EPCOT. They weren't as exciting as I thought they would be. I think part of the reason behind that is that the trainers taking us on the tours treated us like we were 5. At the studios tour, the 2 ladies taking us around were weird and I have worked for Disney longer then they have! They didn't really like us, it was funny, maybe because we kind of know more than they do and it was a group of 10 of us that have worked together for 3 weeks and then a bunch of newbies. The guys at Epcot were a little better, they even let us ride a ride. There was an old guy who could barely hear and was confused at what our job was, he didn't understand what we were telling him. We did get to ride one of the friendship boats around the lagoon to tour all the countries instead of walking the whole world showcase. It would have been fun, but it would have gone on forever!

Work has been fun, we are starting to get into the heart of festival season, so we actually get to start doing our own stuff and not random "I need an intern to do this for me job!" I am starting to not like those jobs, especially ones that involve phone calls. Most of you know how I HATE making certain types of phone calls. One of my jobs was to call random schools and getting info about their step teams for Disney's Step Classic. I did not like it at all, it was kind of like pulling teeth. Needless to say I didn't make too many. I did not have a problem however making confirmation calls to the directors. That wasn't bad because they are coming to the festival and I was going over stuff with them. Some of the directors are cool, and some crazy. It is just the whole band teacher stereotype! Makes me laugh all the time!

On tuesday night I went with Tiffany, Tiauna (tiff's roommate) and our friend Erin to see "New in Town" it is a hilarious movie. We laughed pretty much the whole time. Go see it so that you can laugh. I will probably buy it when it comes out and laugh some more! When we were leaving the theater at Downtown Disney, we were treated to a great surprise, the Weinermobile! We just had to stop and take pictures! Then saturday night we headed over to the studios to watch the National High School Cheerleading finals. It was great fun. We had a blast watching all the different teams, laughing at the intense parents, especially the ones with the photo buttons (I always get a kick out of those ones!), and the parents were loving it because they could drink (and I don't mean soda!) while watching their daughters cheer, now how could it get better than that?! Tiff, Tiauna and I are working on our routine, stay tuned for more info on that one. Go P.C. foxes!