LAST CHANCE FAT CHANCE!

Here is the much anticipated Last Chance story (at least much anticipated by my pretty cousins)...

In the middle of wedding week mayhem, we had a small break while we waited for more pink flowers to arrive and we knew, that was our chance to go, it was then or never.

Jennifer had never been to Last Chance and wanted to go score some good deals on some TOMS and on some Uggs before she went back to Chicago. So on the way over there I prepped her for the adventure she was about to embark upon...

- We must be there before they open or there is no point to going...
- Stay away from the ladies with strollers, they will slow you down and get in your way...
- DO NOT stop to grab a bag or a cart, if you can grab it while you walk, that's ok, if not, keep moving....
- Grab every shoe you see that is TOMS, you can sort through it later, if you stop while grabbing to check, you will miss the rest of the good ones before they are gone....

She got the idea. We had a plan. She was going to go down one size aisle and I was going to take the other size and we would keep scouring the shoe racks until we were all done and then meet up to go over our loot! (I must say, I prefer buying my TOMS from TOMS online or from Nordstroms, it a lot less hassle and I get exactly what I want, on the other hand, there is a sick rush that goes through me when I get a pair from Last Chance and I realize I got the size I want, the price I want and I beat out those other suckers, or at least the people trying to buy them to sell them on ebay or whatever).

The doors opened, we filed in, we were able to grab some bags and we were off. I found a couple of pairs that would work for her, but nothing for me. She scored several pairs of Uggs and several pairs of TOMS. As we sat there and went through them, double checked sizes, made sure they were in good condition, etc I saw a worker lady come through with a big bin of shoes and I saw several pairs of TOMS in there and noticed that one of them was the size I wanted. I asked her with a lovely smile on my face, "Can I have this?" With an evil eye shot right back at me she said, "NO!" Then the security guard came up and roped off the aisle and in a stern tone told everyone to quit staring, keep shopping, if you stand there you will have to leave, etc.

I turned around and started talking to Jen again and helped her figure out which shoes would work for her needs and then I saw two little 20 somethings come out from the aisle next to the roped off aisle with a couple of pairs of TOMS each. They went right over to who I assume is their mom and she asked, "how did you get those!" The smile stretched out across their face and said, "We almost got kicked out!" and then they kept talking and walking and I missed the rest of the conversation.

Being the genius that I am, I figured out what they did. They went to the aisles next to the roped off ones and reached their arms through and took the new TOMS they wanted! Wow, they were genius, not me. I saw the pair of red wedges that I have been wanting, actually I just wanted a pair of red canvas classic ones but the wedges were even better. They were my size. I had to have them.

I looked at Jennifer and said, "hold this, I am going in for the kill!" I gave her the shoes I was holding for her and my purse and I disappeared to the next aisle.

I looked up and down, high and low trying to make it like I was just casually shopping for shoes on that aisle. Then I came to the red wedges. They were beautiful. Brand new. My size. Seriously, could it get any better?! I reached my arm through, grabbed the shoes, pulled them back to me, stood up and like a freaking idiot, I looked around for the security guard, made eye contact with him and then quickly turned my head....Hi, why didn't I just look at him and shout, "Hey, I took these shoes which I know I wasn't supposed to!"

Immediately the security guard starting saying, "Hey, Hey!" I kept slowly and calming walking hoping he would quit, but he didn't. We met up at the end of our aisles and he asked, "did you just reach through and take those shoes?"
"Yes I did."
"Come with me please," and he grabbed the shoes from me and we started walking towards the cash registers. I saw Jennifer and mouthed, "I think I am getting kicked out." He walked me right up to a cashier and I thought to myself, "wow, this guy is awesome, he is going to kick me out, but he is going to let me buy these first!" Nope. He handed them to the lady and then told her to put them back in the back and then asked me to continue to follow him outside.

"Ma'am, why did you reach through there and take the shoes? We have strict rules on that you know!"

"I didn't know that, I have never seen you rope off an aisle before and I am sorry. I just wanted them for myself. I was not going to sell them on ebay. I saw the other girls do it, and I just followed right behind them."

"I am sorry ma'am, I know you aren't going to sell them on ebay, but rules are rules. I have to ask you to leave the store" Then he radios in for another lady to come outside and talk to me.

She basically says the same thing to me, but adds in, "You will have to leave our store for the rest of the day, but you can come back tomorrow." They both ended up being really nice, especially after I was nice to them and I do believe they believed me. I looked at the lady and said, "my cousin and husband are inside. I don't have my phone or anything on me. Can you please walk me inside so I can tell my husband I am out here or else he will never be able to find me."

We walk back inside and I can't find Jared anywhere, I walk up to the men's dressing room and very lame like say, "Jared, are you in here?"
"ya"
"um, I have to leave the store now, I can't come back in. I will meet you outside when you are done. Oh ya, send Eli out here and I will take him outside with me"

Eli crawls on the dirty dressing room floor to come outside with me. The lady walks us outside Last Chance after saying, "you need to hurry, I need to get you out of here," and I look at Eli and say, "hey, wanna sit on these steps with me and we will wait for daddy to finish?"

The lady was quick to inform me that those steps were still part of Last Chance, I would need to sit on the other  steps!

That's my story, I got kicked out of Last Chance for breaking the 10th commandment and coveting something that wasn't mine :(

As an update to my little story, the next week I went back with my other cousins for a girls day out and I did score my red plain canvas shoes then, so there Last Chance, take that! (Although, they really stuck it to me, cause I had to drive out there twice and spend more gas money, but whatever, I got 'em!)

THE CRAZIEST 10 DAYS EVER!

How much can one person pack into 10 days....well....here is what I packed into my 10 days...

Friday:
Fly to Utah with Jared and Emma for Ashley's wedding. Enjoy a lovely Dinner with the Entrekin side and the Rodgers side. Discover that I let my husband pack for the first time by himself (I mean it was for only 24 hours), but we are quick to discover he is missing pajamas, a purple tie and oh yes, his suit! He was not part of the wedding party, but we are not white trash, you go to a wedding, you wear a suit. We ran to the nearest suit store and after realizing it would cost about $400 to get a suit and have it tailored, we brainstormed a bunch of ideas and long story short, thanks to the groom, Jared had a suit and a purple tie to wear to the wedding (Thanks Blake, uh, welcome to the family!)

After dinner we wanted to show Emma a few things in Utah and so we headed over to BYU! She loved walking around the campus and her favorite part was sneaking into the dance rooms and doing a little dance stretch in what she thought would be her future dance room 8 years from now! After that we headed over to visit Mike and Katie Smith (even though it was like 10:30pm). We chatted with them for an hour and headed back to the hotel to iron our clothes and get ready for the big day ahead of us!

Saturday:
We got up bright and early and ran over to the reception place and helped my parents, Caryn and Uncle Eric and Aunt Jeanne set up for Ashley's reception. After that we headed over to the Temple for their sealing. Emma babysat Conner in the car while he slept the whole time, we did feel bad for her that we didn't leave her anything to do, but play with Cade's rental car key, poor thing. While we waited forever for Mr and Mrs Entrekin to come outside, we snapped our own pictures. It was fun to finallly meet Brother Morris in person.

 

 

 

After we were done taking pictures at the Mount Timpanogos Temple we headed back to the reception place to eat some lunch prepared by Blake's mom. Shortly after that, the reception started! I would like to say that Sarah and I proudly ate 5 crepes, it was awesome! Emma and I snuck away from the reception for a few minutes to help her roommates, amongst a few others decorate her car (never take the car your dad just had detailed for you to your reception you dummy!)

(the car was decorated way better than this, this just happened to be when I took the picture) The newlyweds left and we helped clean up for about an hour and then we headed off back to the airport so we could be home with our boys on Easter. The flight was uneventful except for the fact that Emma was about to puke her guts up when she sat back in her chair and opened her book and saw the lady's foot behind her resting on her arm rest and wiggling her toes at Emma as if to say hello...only they weren't saying hello, they were really saying, "hey, I am fat and nasty and I want to gross you out", mission accomplished! (Emma almost puked and I cried from laughing so hard...that's the bets picture of her foot I could get, it took me to long to compose myself from all the laughter!)

I have to give a big shout out to Stephanie and Patrice for watching the boys for us while we were gone, from the pictures I got, it looked like they totally enjoyed themselves :) You girls were lifesavers!

 

Also, while we were in Utah we missed the annual Rodgers Easter Egg hunt. Luckily for me, I have some freaking amazing relatives who will do anything for anyone and Randi and Richelle picked up my boys and took them over for the Easter Egg hunt and took care of them for us. The boys loved it and talked about it for the next couple of days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Sunday:
With 8:30am church we all got up and got ready for Easter Sunday, went to church, came home and found that the Easter Bunny had left eggs in our backyard, hunted around for those, enjoyed the movie he brought us and the kiddos all played with their new toys.

Monday:
I go grocery shopping, do laundry, clean house and get ready for another week of wedding stuff and for Jennifer and Abby to come and visit! That night we stayed up till almost 1am working on Sydney's "H"'s, frames, and we made the ribbons for the corsages and boutonnieres.

Tuesday:
Everyone (including me) goes to school, Jennifer hangs with Becky and then we meet up once the 700 roses arrive (from Colombia) so we can start prepping them for Sydney's wedding. The roses look red to us, but the package says Hot Pink Princess and since we didn't really know what exactly they were suppose to look like, we work on them for 3 hours. After finally removing the last dozen from the box we discover that indeed, the flowers are actually red not pink like the only package in the whole thing is, and we make a very nervous phone call to the mother of the bride. We meet them at the Temple as they are heading in to do endowments and show them that in deed the roses are red and oh yes, they look like they are going to die any second.

 

Now the fun begins. Everyone makes a mad dash to find pink roses in all the costcos - no, not just on the east side, but on the west side too. They drop off some more pink colored roses at my parents house and Jennifer and I begin working on them again.

(the whole week is such a blur and went by so fast I can't remember everything)

Wednesday:
Emma and Abby stayed the night at my parents house so my mom can take them to a museum in the morning and entertain them for a bit while we waited for more roses to arrive. (During our waiting period, we ran over to Last Chance and have an amazing story for later - no, not about scoring good deals, more about getting kicked out of the store)

 When the roses arrived, we began working on more center pieces, more bouquets, more everything. While we were working on this, Emma and Abby had fun snapping pictures of themselves around Villa Sienna. We worked as hard and fast as we could until we got kicked out of there at 5pm.

 

 

That night the 4 of us girls head over to Goodyear to work on some more frames for Sydney's wedding and to enjoy a nice dinner at Robyn's house and let Em and Abby swim while we hung out with Randi and Richelle.

Thursday:
We were up and out the door by 7:30am to head back over to my mom's house to finish up all the last minute flower arranging that had to be done. We worked over there until 10am when we were allowed back into Villa Sienna. We finished up around there about 1:15pm and headed home to get ready for the wedding reception.

  

The dinner started at 4pm and we enjoyed a lovely Italian dinner and then as they started serving the soft serve ice cream, Jennifer and I starting pinning the flowers on everyone who needed one, we were quick to discover we were short 3 of them. Did I mention we no longer had supplies with us...oh yes, this is where Jennifer and I pull out our "pioneering" as we like to call it and make due with what we have. We put our brains together, escaped into the ladies bathroom to steal flowers from that arrangement and came up with a fabulous boutonniere, corsage and one for the ring bearer, it was awesome if I do say so myself :)

 

At 6pm it was time for the ring ceremony. The girls really enjoyed watching Sydney and Neal walk down the aisle. After that it was time for appetizers and then at 7pm it was time for the reception! The girls had been waiting for this all day, they were pumped about the dancing, the desserts, the drinks and of course the photo booth! (Jennifer and I have to admit we were excited about the photo booth too, we loved it so much at Randi's we couldn't wait to do it again!)

Jennifer and I have been waiting for 3 1/2 years to re-do a picture of the 3 of us...we took one at Randi's wedding and she looked smokin' hot and we did not. RETAKE!

Hi Richelle, we see you!

I sure am grateful for such amazing cousins in my life!!

Sydney and Neal walking down the aisle

the girls cuttin' a rug on the dance floor (but not quite like Hayden did!)

and the shoes reunite...

I love that Emma likes to try and catch the bouquet like I used too!

Photobooth (can I just say THANK YOU Robyn for the photobooth, I think I laughed so hard in this thing I could have peed my pants, loved it!)

 Me and my girl, Emma!

 Richelle, Jennifer and me...the first picture I am pretty sure Richelle just got done sticking her tongue in Jen's ear and the last pic, well, again Richelle is awesome! We LOVE her :)

Abby, Jennifer, me, Emma, woot woot!

 Me, Jennifer and Randi, it doesn't get much better than this! I am a little sad we couldn't have all hung out more together this week.

 Abby and Emma striking a few poses of their own. I love how much they love each other and have fun together, makes me happy!

After the wedding we headed home and the girls hung out until 1am - trying to make the most of their last few hours together and Jennifer and I rented Breaking Dawn and laughed the whole way through and made our own jokes, it was a dang good night!

Friday:
We slept in a little bit and watched some tv shows on the couch and just relaxed while all the kiddos played and then us 4 girls went to eat at Firehouse before we took Jennifer and Abby back to the airport.

Its always so hard to say goodbye to the ones we love so much. Emma shed a few tears, but at least she wasn't in utter agony like she was last time at the airport. We can't wait to see them next time!

We left them at the airport about 12:15pm and headed home and left for downtown Phoenix at 1pm to start our weekend of dance conventions and competitions. We were lucky and only had trios on Friday so we made it home by 6:30pm. It's a good thing to because I might have come a bit unglued and I might have gone a tad bit "dance mom" on a few people, oops. I have since apologized and then went home and ate a good meal, got some good rest and pulled myself together!

Saturday:
My alarm woke me up at 5:30am so I could get up and get ready and then get Emma up and we left the house at 6:30am and headed back to downtown Phoenix. Emma had conventions alllll morning long. She got bumped up into the older group because of her age. It was hard. She was sweaty and panting. She loved it! She even liked how Stacia came up and gave her a big hug and told her how good she was doing and she didn't do it to her daughters so that made her even more excited :)

This is the best picture I could get of her conventions - you have to pay to sit in and watch them, now that she is older, I just wait outside instead of pay $30 - $50 to watch. I snuck in at the beginning when they were first stretching and about 10 minutes into they came and kicked everyone out who didn't have a wrist band and then we can't get back in because they have security guards at each door, no joke! 

 This time around she got to take a class by Ade from SYTYCD

She also got to take a class taught by Marco from SYTYCD. The conventions are always taught by really amazing choreographers that really inspire the kids, but the fun ones are the ones the girls recognize from tv.

2pm rolled around and the conventions ended and then we had 45 minutes to get hair and make-up done and warm-up before the first number went on stage. They were the 4th group the start the night off, I have never been in a room with so much energy...it was their production number to the new Alice in Wonderland, it has contemporary, musical theater and hip hop in it, people go nuts for it and I am not just saying that because it's Emma's dance, even the judges were bouncing in their seats and doing fist pumps - um, I have never seen a fist pump from a judge in my 3 years of competing - it was AWESOME!  She went on to compete in another 4 more dances and all were dang good. The mini group she is in really cleaned up this weekend! She walked away with 3 platinums, 3 high golds, 1st, 2nd, 3rd overall in their age category. (Ella and Emma)

 

It was another early night, we were home by 8:30pm I think? Whatever it was, we were only there for 13 hours, phew! Ha ha! (Avery, Em, Bella)

Sunday:
We went to church, came home, had lunch and just when you think it's nap time, oh no, the dance studio needed to be cleaned so the family went down there and we busted through it in 2 1/2 hours and came home and took naps!

And that my friends is the end of the 10 days.