Roommate Weekend--Day 1...The Whole Story

While waiting for Kristi to arrive, Landon was also waiting to get picked up for his soccer game, so he yelled "Bye mom, they're here" and ran out to the car and then was totally surprised to find Kristi instead (her rental car was similar to his friend's car), she took this picture of me laughing as I realized what was happening; you can see Landon's hand doing a "what the?" in the side mirror.


Moments after Kristi's arrival Wednesday evening she started unloading her suitcase with all these goodies for me. Apparently these are items she's been meaning to mail me at various times over the past year or so (there are multiple Christmas decorations) but never did it. It was delightful for me of course, but embarrassing for her.


The greatest thing was when I realized that the vintage Brownie camera she brought me would go perfectly in my long-empty cloche! It's like a Christmas miracle, but different.


Kristi was delighted when I brought out the big bowl of caramel popcorn my mom had made for us (she also made a huge tub of chocolate chip cookies for us). I think this was the best batch my mom has ever made, and we had no trouble finishing it off over the next few days.


I'd stocked our fridge with Diet Coke for Michelle and Kristi and had a fresh bag of pebble ice available for their drinking pleasure. The ice is a snack for me, but apparently some people just like it for its cooling properties.

After Randy and the kids left to stay at Lori's house (finally!), Kristi and I ate some egg rolls and watched "Glee" before she finally had to head to bed. Michelle didn't arrive until 11:30 that night, so she and I stayed up and talked for an hour so before heading to bed ourselves.


We were up and going by 6:30am on Thursday in order to get to BYU in time to park, hike up the hill and get to Sister Beck's opening talk, but Michelle managed to look all kinds of cute AND was able to touch up her nail polish so that she didn't have to be embarrassed of her feet. She still hasn't been able to get a pedicure in the month since her birthday.


Our first (of many) self-portraits of our weekend. Kristi slyly took some video during this process and it is quite funny.

Kristi's car self-portrait.

It was rather nice being the passenger instead of the driver this time around, even though it meant several close-calls along the way, hee.



About a mile away from the house I realized I'd forgotten my Sunday notebook (%#@!), but didn't want to make us late, so I ran into the grocery store to get a new one and to buy one for Kristi as well.

The approach to campus is an enjoyable sight!

Because Kristi was driving, she didn't sit in the back of the traffic the way I would have. She charged up the left lane, then spied a home owner selling parking spaces in his yard for $10, so she pulled right in. It was so awesome because it meant we didn't have to hike up the hill to the Marriott center, we were right across the street from it, woohoo!

Best $10 she ever spent!

Also, because of our great parking space we were able to meet darling blog friend (who knew us but we didn't know her) Bree ran over and hugged Kristi within 30 seconds of us parking the car. I looked at Michelle and said, "Already?" because people are always running up to hug Kristi. We were surprised that Bree knew us too and was familiar with all our blogs.


She was just so cute and so complimentary, that meeting her was a great way for us to start our Women's Conference experience.


It's always a powerful experience to be one of the many women gathered in this huge building for one of the classes, but especially for this great one by Sister Beck. We felt super charged and teary after that class and so, so glad we'd gotten up early and gotten there in time.


After our first class, we made our way over to the Hinckley building for a class about mothers and daughters, and we ran in to blogging friend Ciria. We first met her last year at Women's Conference, then I ended up teaching that good mail class for her ward in January of this year.


Sadly, we were turned away from the mother/daughter class (along with many other women) because it was already full of 600 women, sheesh.


We walked down to the Smith Field House to catch a different class, but ended up being hugely disappointed by it. That venue holds over 3,000 people, so we were expecting something good and ended up just sitting there eating our trail mix, browsing the class schedule and Michelle even got out her knitting. What the?!


The real kicker of the disappointing class was that we had to hike up these stairs afterward. Holy crap I'm out of shape!! I haven't even been going walking lately, so I was so incredibly winded and embarrassed. Kristi played the "Rocky" theme on her iphone as we climbed it, but that just mocked me further.


We caught our breath as we shuffled back to the Marriott Center (without any crowds because we were slow going) and got there in time to get some lunch and listen to the General YW Presidency speak. They did a great job and were quite inspiring (I've got notes to add, but those will go in a Sunday Thoughts post), but we were surprised by the small number of women there for that class. Maybe because it was lunch time or something, but it didn't look like nearly as many people there as you would expect for such great speakers.


Since we didn't have any classes picked out for the end of the day, and because we were ready to go, we opted to leave campus and do some other things instead.


I love this picture of Kristi, but am bummed that I can't remember why she was laughing so hard.


One of the things on Kristi's to-do list was to go to Jamba Juice. We stopped there and all got a tasty smoothie, then headed up the street to catch a movie, weeha!


"Date Night" was starting at the perfect time for us so we hid our smoothies in our purses and got some comfy seats on the top row. I ended up laughing right away at the beginning of the movie and totally got the giggles. The movie ended up being way funnier than I'd mentally prepared for so it was definitely a thumbs up for me...though Michelle rested her eyes at one point.


After the movie, we went to a cute home decor store, the distribution center and Deseret Book.


We called to order Cafe Rio take-out on the way home and then stopped at Wal-Mart to see about buying some tush-cushes for all the bleacher sitting we do at Women's Conference. Kristi was kind enough to try it out in the middle of the aisle. We didn't end up buying them though because the top of them has a metal bar that curves out and we decided that made it too bulky to carry around.


We found this lovely surprise when we got back to the house. Whitney had disrobed after school and left everything on the floor of Kristi's guest suite...aye carumba!

Our dinner was so good!

We stayed up late watching "Prime" and eating caramel popcorn, and I do believe everyone stayed awake for the whole thing. Good times.

**Did you make it through this post?
Would you have zoomed ahead in traffic or waited in line?
What's your favorite kind of smoothie?
Have you seen "Date Night"?**

Comment Window Tidbit: It is no easy task to post about such a big weekend, especially when there were soooo many pictures taken between the 3 of us. It's a good problem to have, but it's still a problem.