Olympus High School Class of 2000 Alumni Website

I know that I have been a really terrible blogger lately so here is the update!

Jared: Is still working as the GM of Red Robin. He really enjoys the restaurant but wishes he had more free time. He was able to go to the annual Red Robin Convention in Orlando a couple of weeks ago and had the best time. They were able to go to Universal Studios twice where they closed off part of the park for them. He ate like a king and stayed at the JW Marriott.(yes I was very jealous) He also learned a lot of great new things and it was really nice to have him come home so excited to be apart of Red Robin. Jared has also started working out and has lost 15 pounds. I am so proud of him!

Brooklyn: Is still loving pre-school and dance. She loves to play with her friends and is always trying to plan our next activity. Brooklyn getting excited for our new baby and loves to throw out names for him some of our favorites are Rudolf, snowman, and every boy name in her pre-school class. She is very opinionated about everything and loves to tell us no.

Brady: He is our crazy boy. He is potty trained which went better the expected I only wanted to give up on week 2.5. He is doing really well other then flushing his “undies wares” down the toilet at my parents house. Brady loves to drive his sister crazy. He has also learned some “great” new tricks like leaving McDonald’s when Daddy is distracted, falling off the kitchen counter on his head and blacking out, and biting. We are hoping that these things all lose their appeal really fast.

As for me I am 35 weeks pregnant and ready to be done. This pregnancy has been the hardest of the three so more then likely it is the last. We are excited for baby boy the 2nd to come to our family. I have been really busy just trying to keep up with life and all of the fun that comes with it. I have been working at Carino’s as a hostess on Monday nights and have enjoyed it. We are now in preparation mode and it is really strange to think that the next post could be to announce our new arrival.

p.s. I am having a hard time getting the back ground to change on my blog. If you have any suggestions let me know.

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Family Update

Last night, my family went to see the Riverton High School production of Les Miserables. Les Mis is a pretty ambitious choice for a high school musical, but the lead seemed made for the part and the show was actually quite good. There were the usual complaints (faulty mikes, a poorly cast player, a chorus girl who couldn’t stop grinning at the audience) but all in all it was a really well done show. The sets, in particular, were incredibly detailed and impressive. Of course, I could just be easily impressed thanks to my own years on the stage.

Confession: I was a drama geek in high school.

You know how cool those kids are in High School Musical and how everyone wants to be them and how children all over the world bought their dolls and action figures? Yeah, in reality performing in high school is nothing like that. If they had made a Disney channel movie about our high school musicals, it would have featured a cast of incredibly lame, melodramatic adolescents who were obsessed with Rent and the love triangles of the drama club.

It’s funny, but I went all through school and then some believing that nothing was greater than drama and people were just missing out. It took some time (years, even) to realize that our drama kids were total weirdos who enjoyed being the center of attention or total space cadets who wanted nothing more than to escape into an alternate reality for a couple of hours a day. That realization made all of the drama that came with being in drama seem really…well, lame.

Still, even in all its lameness, my drama geek years continue to haunt me. Case in point: one of the most rotten things that happened to me in high school was that I was cast as one of the leads in our senior year high school play. Auditions were open, but there’s a 90% chance that I walked onto the part because I spent three years kissing butt and doing grunt work for the theater department. Although I had performed in ensemble pieces and done the occasional monologue, I had no real experience being on stage and it’s safe to say that I kind of sucked.

The great things about being in the play included wearing lovely costumes that I designed and made, as well as starring with some of my best friends. Unfortunately, the worst things about the play included being so nervous about being on stage that I was prone to random bouts of hysterical laughter and being so overwrought by a month of rehearsals that I couldn’t keep anything in my stomach by the time the play actually came about. At the time, it just seemed so completely life or death that I was going to ruin the play with my horrible acting and everyone in the school would witness this car accident as it happened.

Reality: I think about 40 people came to those plays if you don’t include the people who were related to the actors. In all fairness, the bar for acting was pretty high, since our high school was serious about theater, but thanks to some really terrible scenery and the fact that I shared the stage with lots of brilliant people, I doubt that my performance permanently damaged the school’s reputation in creative arts. I even got verbal approval from the boy I had a secret crush on for six years, who said, “You were good in that play.” (Yes, that is a verbatim quote, which I will never forget. I know this because that boy said a total of 14 words to me in high school, 6 of which are the ones I just mentioned. Yes, I was counting…but that is a whole blog post in itself.)

Honestly, though, even knowing that it all didn’t matter doesn’t keep me from having nightmares about being in that play. I have dreams that I’m on stage and we’re performing, only I don’t know my lines or what character I am or what play I’m doing. Sometimes I’m on stage and spotlights just start to fall from the rafters until I’m buried under them. The worst, though, involves the entire school witnessing me walk onto stage completely naked. In that dream, the stage inevitably turns into an island with deep canyons on all sides and I have no choice but to just stand there.

So last night, when I was watching Les Mis, I kept thinking about all the kids on stage, knowing that most of them are completely wrapped up in the performance and really believe that the musical is the most important thing on the planet these days. Do I envy them? Maybe, but only because I miss the comraderie of learning lines and the gossip circles that formed during rehearsals. The spotlight, however? Not missed. I’ll leave that to the Jean Valjeans of the world.

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Last night, my family went to see the Riverton High School

I’m not a huge fan of Vegas.

Vegas takes a lot of energy and a lot of money. It also has the uncanny ability to make you feel like everyone else in the city has more energy, more money, more youth, and less body fat than you ever will. Vegas is what I imagine Disneyland would be like if I had a really bad hangover.

That being said, I was looking forward to this trip to Vegas. Chris and Kristen were getting married at Caesar’s Palace and they are two of my absolute favorite people. Plus, Kyle had never been to Vegas, so I figured we could take in the sights together and that would quell some of my anti-Vegas vibes.

Unfortunately, Kyle had to go to Ohio, as you all know, and this threw a bit of a monkey wrench into our plans. We had been planning to drive down, but I didn’t want to make the five hour drive through the desert by myself, so at the last minute I booked a plane ticket. I figured I’d pop in on Saturday morning, go to the wedding, and then pop back out on Sunday afternoon. I even convinced Jed to make the three hour drive from his new home in Irvine, CA, so we could pop in and out together.

On Saturday morning I caught an hour long flight and got into Vegas early in the morning. I had booked a room at the Marriott by the convention center to avoid all the traffic on the strip, so I was able to settle down in my quiet hotel room as soon as I got in. Jed was still on his way and it was too hot to do anything so I snuggled up in the king size bed and watched hotel room television.

Jed got to town in the afternoon and we dressed up in our finest and headed to the strip. We had some time to kill, so we went to the forum shops at Caesar’s Palace and shopped for a bit before grabbing some pre-wedding snacks. Finally, at six, we headed out to the gardens for the big event.

But…

When we got outside, there was a wedding going on and it was NOT Kristen and Chris’s wedding. Nobody around looked familiar and there was a general sense of things not being as they should. Jed jokingly asked if I had the right day and all of a sudden it all sunk in…Kristen and Chris had made a big thing about getting married on 9-6-09. They even filled their invitation with confetti nines and sixes. And we were there on the 5th.

I have no excuse, other than that the events of this summer had scrambled my brain. I, the wedding queen, totally showed up a day early for the wedding. For no damn reason at all.

There was a lot of panic and shock and cursing and general chaos on the way back to the hotel, but after a hot shower I was able to get things under control. I had to change my flight and book another night in the hotel, but it all worked out and Jed was such a trooper that he actually stayed an extra day with me so he could be my date for the wedding. We ended up hitting the town that night, taking in the strip, and grabbing a really terrible steak and egg dinner at 2AM, just because we could. Hey, when in Vegas…

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What Happened in Vegas (Part One)