WC - Tuesday and Wednesday

I have been thinking of posting about Women's Conference since we got home Saturday night but I have been putting it off. Partly due to the laundry, homework and school concerts that have needed me in the last two days and partly because the emotions are so close to the surface - I don't know if I can do the trip justice. After long deliberation, prayer and fasting - I have decided to break it up in to a couple of installments. If you don't want to read the long version here, you can get the abridged versions at Pam's blog or Nic's versions here and here and even Shannon has beat me to a review! I love all of the little details and you can bet that I am going to account for them here.

The AZ girls, me, Shannon, Pam and Vicki took off for the airport Tuesday afternoon around 4:30. This is a different plan than usual - typically we fly out on Wednesday evening - but because we could save about $20 (not because we wanted one extra day of fun) we left earlier. We had a good time in the airport with an elderly business man who wanted to give us some trouble and then had fun on the plane finding celebrity look alikes (Courtney Cox, Lindsay Lohan and George Stephanopolis) and one real celebrity. Jon Du Pre is a local news anchor who is much better looking in real life than in this picture. We talked to him at the baggage claim in SLC for a little while and once we remembered his name we promptly googled him. He is LDS and has a fascinating story. You can read it here. Jon Du Pre became the baseline on what we judged everything for the rest of the trip. i.e. "I'm not coming here again.... unless Jon Du Pre is there." He seemed like a nice guy off for a golf trip out of town, he wasn't wearing a wedding ring and we were all dying to know if he was meeting his girlfriend that he met on some Mormon dating web site.

After a short wait at the airport - Nicole had a small mishap on her way to the airport in her purple pleasure mini-van - we were off to the Hansen's house. Hotel Hansen has been our resting place for the last three years. The basement is the place for our loud laughter, late nights and exploding suitcases. We did not waste any time once we were settled - we got right on to the prizes.

Included in our prizes were new tags. Hansen explains the tags very well here. The six of us (our friend Susie in Texas is part of our group, but couldn't make it to WC this year) have decided not to exchange Christmas presents but exchange gifts during our annual trip. This year the girls went above and beyond. I can always be counted on for the matching pajamas. Here we are in all of our after hours glory. [It has been brought to my attention that I never post pictures of myself on my blog - I don't know why I never have - I guess I don't really have many pictures of myself] This picture is pretty blurry but from left to right is Hansen, me, Vic, Shannon and Pam.

Hansen made us the most adorable journals - they have dividers so that we can write about different aspects of our lives. Vic got us all matching purses to carry around BYU, Shannon bought us matching hoodies that made us a very famous crew on campus and Pam made the fabulous necklaces you will see around our necks in all of the coming photos. We stayed up until after 4 a.m. watching American Idol and laughing, talking and catching up with every one's shenanigans.

Wednesday morning we got up and got ready to go to the temple. Some in our group had never been through a session there, or a session of that kind before so that was great. The grounds were beautiful, the tulips in full bloom, but it was freezing. We had lunch at the Garden room at the top of the Joseph Smith Memorial building and watched the snow flakes start to fall.

Nicole had to take her kids to swim practice so we changed clothes while she did that and then we went SHOPPING! We went to Tai Pan Trading, one of my favorite Utah shopping stops. It is always a must - but it is much easier to buy the things I want when we are driving home rather than flying. We closed that place down, went to Wal-Mart for snacks and the movie 27 dresses then stopped at Arctic Circle for a mushroom swiss burger, french fries, onion rings and FRY SAUCE!

We watched the TIVO'd Idol and saw Brooke get voted off and then ate our junk food and watched the movie. It was another 4 a.m. bedtime for some of us - but it was all worth it! Good Times! I will work on the other 3 days later today.