yay for conference!!

this weekend, once again, is general conference. i'm so excited to hear all the messages and hang out with my family and eat good food (conference weekend is pretty much synonymous with good eats in my mind). i think we will get to go to a session this time, which will be awesome. there is nothing like being in the room when the prophet walks in--i'm still amazed by how much power i can feel in a room full of thousands.

this conference season, we had a general women's meeting as a lead-in to conference weekend. as i started my notes, i titled the section (the historic) general women's meeting because i predicted that one, if not all, of the speakers would reference that this is the first time all women, ages 8 and up, have been gathered, and i think that qualifier is so mormon haha. "this has been an historic gathering"--we hear it fairly often :)

but this meeting really was historic. as soon as i walked in the door i was bawling, and it didn't stop through the opening prayer, given by a new beehive, or the musical numbers, where the choir was made up of 8 year olds and 80 year olds and everything in between, or the talks, which somehow focused on every single thing i've been wrestling with the past several months. it was incredible.

i'm a faithful member of the church and of the relief society specifically, but i've never felt the spirit of sisterhood as strongly as i did in that meeting. women have power, you guys. i felt it!

so, come to conference. it will be awesome!

girl's trip summer 2013: tuacahn

i've been saying for years that i want to go down to st. george and see the shows at tuacahn. we saw south pacific down there one year during girl's camp (girl's camp at a condo with a pool is pretty much the only way to go, by the way), and i loved it. i've wanted to go back ever since, to that amphitheater nestled in a red rock valley.

so, after a week at aspen grove, we decided we needed a vacation from our vacation, hopped in the car, and headed down to st. george, tickets to mary poppins and thoroughly modern millie in hand. i love both of these movies, and i'd been reading the mary poppins books in preparation, so i was pretty psyched.

overall, the trip was pretty laid back, we did what we wanted, hung out by the pool, did a little bit of shopping, and saw the shows. while i love mary poppins, it's not quite as entertaining as a comedy like thoroughly modern millie. both were great, but i think we all enjoyed the second night a little bit more. we lucked out, though, that it wasn't boiling hot--but we were right under the handy-dandy misters for portions of the performances.

then, on wednesday morning, after a filling breakfast at cracker barrel, we made the drive back home, where we slept for two nights before embarking on other adventures (more to come).

i'm so glad we finally made the trek to tuacahn for our girls' trip, especially during the summer when they were playing these two lovely shows. i love you mom and sisters! (and a special shout out to the littles, who so kindly let us stay at their home.) who's in next year for the wizard of oz and joseph?

it feels like a perfect night to hang out with taylor aka the coolest thing to ever happen to us

when we first heard that taylor was coming to salt lake again, we knew that, as with her two previous tours, we needed to go. we got online at the appointed time...and could not get tickets. it was pretty devastating. the concert sold out in like less than a minute, so it felt like we didn't even have a chance. and we said, well, it will be fine if we don't get to go.

after christmas, nana gave each of us a generous gift and told us to spend it on something meaningful, not just food or clothes or something temporary. cut to one of my greatest ideas: we could put that money toward tickets for the concert, which were on sale for outrageous prices online. so eventually we found three tickets together and we were going.

fast forward five months. for the past few weeks, we've been diligently looking up ways to meet taylor, watching videos, listening to the set list, planning our outfits, making posters, and reading all about her and this tour.

finally, the day came. june 1st. we got to the arena way early, in an attempt to catch the attention of someone who might see how awesome we are and let us go to club red, where you get to meet taylor after the concert.

us in front of one of the probably 30 semis/buses lining the block next to the arena.

nothing happened while we walked around for 2 and a half hours before the doors opened except that we saw other fans, though none who were quite as cute as we were. when we finally got in, we went straight to the t-shirt counter--the biggest mistake we made at the fearless tour concert was not getting a sweet tour shirt, and we will never make that error again. then we went up to our seats, which ended up being even deeper in the nosebleeds than we originally thought. but, we were happy to be there, so we settled in, singing and dancing and waving our posters anyway.

a little before 7, the first opener, joel crouse, started his set. he was pretty good, even though we didn't know any of his music. next was ed sheeran, which i was excited about. for whatever reason, we were the only ones in our section standing up and dancing and just basically looking like we were having fun. after ed played "lego house," we were waiting for the next song, and meredith said, look, there's taylor's mom! i looked, and, yeah, there she was a the bottom of our section inside the portal. (we knew all about mama swift from all of our research--she walks around the venue looking for people to bring down to the floor. so it was a big deal to see her.) i yelled, ANDREA! to get her attention, but at the same moment we realized that there was a woman at the end of our row telling us to grab our stuff and come with her.

it happened just the way we had heard it would--we ran down the stairs and there was taylor swift's mom, asking if we wanted to get a little closer. so we were in shock for the next ten minutes as she gathered a few more devoted fans with stinky seats to take down to the pit.

apparently i didn't get the memo that we were doing cute faces, not excited faces.

i still can't believe this happened. and don't we look like we could be part of the family?

 the whole thing was so surreal. we got our wristbands, took a picture with mama swift, and went backstage to get to the pit. ed sheeran was finishing his set, and we were so close to him--i might have shed my first tears at that point.

the rest of the concert passed by in a blur. we were within arm's reach of taylor herself for much of the concert, which was amazing in its own right. but it was made even better by the fact the we had been chosen out of the audience, out of the nosebleeds, by taylor swift's mom. not a ton of people can say that. and it was all because we were dancing and having fun. and maybe also because of a lot of prayer. and also because of nana.

in the pit

that bright white spot behind us is taylor, and once again i ruined the cuteness of the picture.

yeah, she was that close.

bah, looking at these brings it all back again. it was so amazing! sadly, we didn't get to touch her or meet her, but our experience was the next best thing. some things about the pit, though:

1. we were still pretty much the only ones dancing, and some people didn't even know all the words, which was really weird to me. 
2. being so close, you want to document it. but having the camera or the phone in front of your face kind of takes away from the actual lived experience. so we decided fairly early on that we weren't going to try to document everything. 
3. down in the pit we often had a really great view of her back. and often, if we were looking at taylor upstage, we were missing what was happening downstage with the band and dancers and stage. so we weren't always getting the full effect. but, small price to pay for some of the best seats in the house.
4. we were standing the whole time, and it was blazing hot down there. but that probably would have been pretty much the same whether we were sitting up in the rafters or not.

all in all, even with some drawbacks, the show was incredible and we had a once-in-a-lifetime experience. we were up close and personal with taylor, her band, and her dancers, and we met her mom. it was a perfect night!

dating and parameters and such

i'm thinking about dating lately--what a surprise, right? it seems like everyday brings up some new weird situation or obstacle or straight-up huh? moment.

a couple sundays ago our stake had a fireside for all the women with sheri dew, who is awesome. i've heard her speak many times, and when i've heard her refer to her singleness and getting married, she usually talks about it in uncertain terms. i've heard her say that she hopes captain moroni is still single in the next life :) this time, however, she was certain: she said she will get married at some point. "look out in the church news--it'll be a front page story." as someone who is always thinking about being single for longer than usual, i was intrigued. she didn't know when or how, but she was certain.

she also answered questions, some of which (predictably) were about dating and marriage. one of the questions asked about why men can be sealed to more than one woman, but women can't. sister dew answered in an interesting way. she said that, in her position, it is almost a 100% probability that she will marry someone who has been married before. this would be an interesting position to be in, and she said she wasn't completely sure how she felt about it, but that she did know that things would work out the way they should.

this is, as i've said before, one of my mottoes for life and dating. i don;t know why things do or don't happen, why some guys don't call, or why some girls don't call for that matter (i don't want to place all the blame on the guys, though i do have some choice words for a select group of them.). but, as with any challenge in life, worrying too much about it is a sign of too little faith. how many times will i need to learn that?

meredith and i were talking a few days ago about parameters we or others sometimes put on our prospective or future suitors. like, i've known people in the past who had a very specific "type" from which he or she would not depart, at least not willingly. and i know of other people who want a husband who can provide a certain type of lifestyle or who will conform to a certain rigid schedule. i like to think that i don't have those kids of parameters myself, but what about the guys i dismiss outright, without getting to know them at all? this is one of the most difficult parts of dating to navigate is that there is no possible way we can "get to know" everyone in the dating pool, especially in provo, but what if we are passing up good things like that?

i rather think that dating would be a mite easier if there weren't so many "options." maybe guys and girls alike would be less flaky and people would do more than just hang out. will the world ever know?

in other news, i just figured out how to make collages in picasa, so look forward to a lot more of these little babies!