Disneyland for Thanksgiving

John and I had such a great week together! We spent Thanksgiving with John's family this year in California. John's Brother Kris is a super smart guy and is in Dental School at USC and so we traveled out to South Pasadena to stay with him and his cute family. On Tuesday afternoon we started our journey to California with Joe and Dawn. During the drive we got on the topic of how good In and Out burger and since John's parents had never eaten there when we reached Vegas we decided to go. It had been so long....I LOVE those fries! We stayed in Prim and then Wednesday finished our trip to California. The funny thing is when lunchtime came that day we ate at In and Out again I guess that you really can't have enough of those great burgers and fries!
That night Ashley made an excellent dinner for us all! Her recipes came from "The Barefoot Contessa" I was very impressed with the baked asparagus, tender parmesan chicken and spring greens with delicious lemon juice squeezed from the fruit to on it top off.
The park opened at 8:00 AM on Thanksgiving Day. We were about 45 minutes away so we left so that we arrived there early right as the park opened.

On the trolly with our little nephews (Ethan and Ryan) on our way into the park.

I just love Disneyland! There is just a great magical air about it. I am so happy that we were able to come. When we arrived we headed straight for Pirates of the Caribbean. That is one of my most favorite rides. Stacy, one of my best friends collects pictures of people in front of the Pirates sign so John and I had to make a stop and get that photo for her.

Pirates Of the Caribbean

As you come out of Pirates you walk right into New Orleans Square. It was decked out for Christmas and looked just amazing. It was also decorated for the new movie The Princess and the Frog which is going to be in theaters soon. John and I would love to go to New Orleans someday.

Dawn, Emilee, Joe and John
Kris was so great to run and get all of the fast passes for us to ride the big rides. Kris and Ashley have season passes (I’m so jealous!) so they know all of the quick ways around the park. When we went on the Indiana Jones ride (another favorite) we had a fast pass and only waited about 20 minutes. I was just amazed; we just waltzed passed so many people. I think that the fast pass thing was one of the best things ever invented!

Kris and John inside Indiana Jones.
Next we made our way over to the Haunted Mansion. I absolutely love this ride during Halloween and Christmas time because they completely change it to a Nightmare Before Christmas Theme. That move just happens to be one of my favorites to I guess that is why I love it so much.

Jack the Pumpkin King

Splash Mountain got the best of me for sure!
I think that it took about three hours for me to dry off.

Little Ethan just cracks me up! This is the great face that he would make periodically, which made us all laugh. The best part is he knew this fact and would randomly do it just to get a rise out of us. I loved it; he is a fantastic little nephew!

I thought that Ryan looked so cute going up to this door trying to open it, I just had to take a picture.

The buzz and Woody shooting game has got to be on my list of best ride/games at Disneyland. I had never been on it before and my score definitely showed! I am not so great at the shooting but it was great fun none the less.

Everyone’s 3-D Glasses

While we were waiting in line for it’s a small world the Christmas parade was conveniently taking place at the same time to we got to watch it as it went by. As you can tell both John and Ryan are enjoying this event. I really am not the largest fan of the it’s a small world ride because it plays the same song over..and..over..and ..over…and I think you get the point, it gets a little old after a while…..except for Christmastime. For Christmas they play multiple Christmas songs throughout the ride and to top it off all of the dolls are decorated for the season as well. It makes it a really entertaining ride.

We had a great day!

On Friday we had our traditional thanksgiving meal but not until after we enjoyed a very busy morning shopping! I never woke-up early to do Black Friday shopping until I meet John's mother five years ago. It is pretty much a tradition now to go when I am with her for Black Friday. We found so great deals and I am very happy about the fun things that I bought. I found a really great black sweater that I am saving for myself for christmas...I can't wait:) That night Joe and Dawn stayed hope with the little guys and use adults went to the Blind Side. When we were in line at the theater Kris and Ashley were ahead of us and when they purchased their tickets John overheard the price and thought to himself...did they buy our tickets?...the he saw the price per ticket $12. We come from the small town that is an expensive ticket to a movie. Therefore it was $24 to go to the film. There is California prices for you. To top it off get this, anytime that I go to a movie I always wear a sweater becasue I get cold easy and the AC is usually crancked up pretty high. I thought for sure that in California this would be the case too right?...WRONG! I have never been to a more uncomfortable theater in my life. It might as well have been a sauna! I am one who is always cold and I was fanning myself with some papers that I luckily had in my coat pocket. I feel sorry for those who normally have an elevated body temperature that were in that theater. On an upside to the story the movie was great. I would probably see it again....just in another location!

I am so grateful that we had the opportunity to come out to visit Kris and Ashley for Thanksgiving. We have wanted to travel out to California for the last year and a half and just haven't made it until now and I'm so glad that we did. We had a time with Johns excellent family. We just wisht that Emily and her family could have been there.

Bryce Canyon

Over spring break JD and I went to Bryce Canyon. We had so much fun! Initially we were planning on going to Moab because I have never been to Arches. As we were on our way there we called and found out that there was no vacancy available anywhere. So we decided to go to Bryce Canyon instead.

The drive down was pretty fun! We stopped at Big Rock Candy Mountain to go for a little walk. I even took a picture of the interesting colored mountain but it doesn't do it any justice. I think that someday JD and I will go to Big Rock Candy Mountain and go the the bike trails they have there. It looked pretty fun.

As we approached Bryce Canyon both of us forgot where to turn off to head into the canyon. Once we pulled into Tropic we realized that we had gone too far. We were okay for the detour because we really like Tropic. John's grandmother is from Tropic and so it was like a trip down memory lane.

We stayed at Ruby's Inn, which we enjoyed a lot. The next morning and headed out for the trails. We hiked down into the canyon and then went on the Navajo Loop. It wasn't super long just a little under 1.5miles but not all of the snow had melted at that point so most of the trail wasn't groomed very well. We trudged thorough plenty of mud and snow. Due to the snow we were essentially alone on the entire trail. It was great! We got in a lot of good conversation. It was absolutely beautiful, I just wish that I was a better photographer. The snow looked great on the red hoodoo's.

We had a great time and are excited for our next trip there.

Unexpectedly Wicked

After class on Thursday my friend Desiree and I were at the school talking about what we should do for the rest of the eventing. Her roommate won lottery tickets to see the musical "Wicked" at the Capital Theater last week and saw the show for only $25. Desiree thought it would be fun to head downtown and just try to win one of those lottery tickets - That sounded like much more fun than studying so that's exactly what we did.

We made it to the theater at about 5:45PM and put our names in the drawing, just in case they happened to pull my name out I didn't want any confusion as to who it was so I included how to phonetically pronounce my name (Kuchenmeister - kook-en-my-ster) on my entry card - I know I'm a dork. There were about 400 people at the lottery and only 20 tickets to give away - the odds really weren't that great. At 6:00 they began to draw names out, it was so nerve racking and exciting. After five names had been drawn out I just didn't want to think about the odds I had of winning so I decided to look at all of the advertisements on the windows and other things. Then the weirdest thing happened- the announcer said Emilee Kuchenmeister. What!!!!.....my delayed response was a pretty loud..WAAHOOO! I could hardly believe that my name was called I was so excited and had tingles all over - honestly I never win anything. We bought our 11th row ticket for Thursday's show for $25 each - I honestly felt like I was stealing them because the tickets were so good.

P.F. Changs

Desiree and I decided to eat at P.F. Changs before the show started. The wait was surprisingly longer than we thought it would have been for a Thursday night. It must have been ladies night there too because all of the tables were filled with groups of women. Because we had limited time before the show we decided only to get an appetizer (lettuce wraps of course) and dessert. That was the best dessert I have had in a while - It consisted of pineapple coconut ice cream in the middle, deep fried banana's wrapped in egg roll shells, drizzled in caramel and some fresh fruit on the side. It was perfect!

We finished eating with only about ten minutes to spare before the show started, so we ran for a block to get back to the theater in time. I think we would have taken it a little slower if we knew that they were going to start the show ten minutes late but that's okay.

This is Glinda helping Elphaba (the green one) how to be popular. I think that was one of the most hilarious scenes I have ever seen - Glinda did a great job.

These are some pictures from Emerald city. One of my favorite costumes from the production is the yellow one in the bottom left corner.

Oh my what an amazing production! The message was very inspiring and I was extremely pleased with the performances of the actors and the musicians, the costumes, technical lighting and special effects that were required to make the whole thing come together. Now that I have seen this show I would definitely pay full price to see it again any day. Thanks Desiree for the suggestion I'm so glad that we were able to go it was way better than studying.

Blog Book

I have been truly inspired by my friend Becky this week. She has made the cutest book from posts she puts on her blog. It is a hard bound book and was digitally scrap booked. What a great memory for her family to have about all of the fun things she has done in the last year along her thoughts on life. This is her first "year book" and she will make many more volumes in the future. The website that she used to make her book is http://www.blurb.com/. The software for it is free to download, you make your book at your own convenience and then when it's finished you pay them to publish it. It was really affordable and looks fabulous. Here is a few of the pages that Becky made for her book

I have never been very good at keeping a journal but I do a little bit of a better job at keeping up with my blog. I am going to follow her example and make a book myself. I started mine yesterday and Have so many ideas of how I will document my life. I am more excited about keeping track of my personal history now more than I have ever been. Thanks Becky!

Volley Ball

For the last few months John has been playing city league volley ball. The championship tournemant was last night and I got to watch him play a couple games (he usually plays his games while I'm at school so I was excited to actually watch a few for a change.) I didn't realize how good he was until I watched him play those games. He had some great spikes, dives and serves! The tournement was a double elimination backet. His team lost their first game and needed to win every other game they played in order to win the competition. They had to sit out one game and then they released the beast! They played three games in a row, won all of them, and were named the Champions. I knew that I married a winner! The last team they played was really good and therefore it was very fun to watch them play. Their team recieved a pizza stone as their prize (I know that is kind of a wierd gift for winning in a sport....you'd think they would have won t-shirts or something). It was a lot of fun for me to be there. Way to go John!

Sound Jobs

The last couple of weekends John has been working for Snow College by doing sound jobs. On Friday the 20th of February Snow was having an all-you-can-eat Pizza party with games and to end the evening they had John Allred perform a concert. It was really fun to just hang out, talk and eat. I have never seen that many pizza's in one location in my entire life. There were about 200 large (16") pizzas. It was crazy! I ate way too much but it was worth it. When the games were done the concert started with Allred. He is an amazing artist, I was really impressed with his talent. His sound is quite unique and I liked it a lot. If you ever get a chance to see him in concert you won't be disappointed.

Then on February 27th John was the DJ for another Snow College dance. This time they wanted to have Karaoke. It was pretty fun to be there because many of the students were really having fun with the karaoke. A group of guys were singing to the backstreet boys song "I want it that way" and were on the stage dancing just like they were in a music video. It was so funny! I love going with John to his different activities that he participates in due to his awesome DJ skills.

Jazz Game

Last night while Desiree and I were studying Stacy called and invited us to go to the Jazz game because here dad (who is a junior jazz coach) had extra tickets. We were very excited for the break from studying so we went with her. It was so much fun. I haven't been to a game in a long time and the energy there makes it so much better. I love the jazz bear too - he's always doing crazy entertaining stuff. I guess that maybe Des and I brought some good luck with us too because they won against the Dalas Maveriks. Maybe I should attend more games;) j/k

Miss America Pageant

So on Sunday my mother got this crazy idea that we should go to the Miss America Pageant to watch Miss Utah (Kayla Barclay) compete in Las Vegas. I guess I was feeling spontaneous with her and so off we went! On Monday afternoon after John got done with work we (John, my mom, and I) jumped in the car and drove to Vegas to make it to the first preliminary night of the pageant (Tuesday) night. We got there in good time at about six o'clock so we decided to go to a show. We went to the cirque de soleil show "LOVE" featuring music from the Beatles. John is a huge Beatles fan and so he was way excited to see it. I enjoyed the show very much and was really glad that we chose to see it. I would highly recomend seeing it especially if you like the Beatles music!

We stayed at the lovely Paris Hotel which was right next to the Planet Hollywood hotel where the pageant took place. On Tuesday the pageant wasn't scheduled to start until 8:00 PM therefore we had tons of time to kill. We walked around the Strip and looked at the gardens at the Belagio hotel and price shopped some item there. I saw some very darling shoes that I would have looked great in but I wasn't willing to spend $1,200 on them, I know I'm just too practical...lol. We also went to the shopping mall inside of Ceasars Palace and we found some really cute purses so my mom and I both bought a purse. It was really fun. John is a great sport to follow us around and go into the shops that we went to...thanks babe!

The Pageant was really fun to watch because every contestant was well prepared and very talented. I would have not wanted to judge that competition! We got there late and thought that we would have to sit quite a ways away from everything but where we found seats happened to be with the Utah couwd so that was great fun! I think that we were the loudest cheering crowd there. Kayla participated in two portions of competition that night, she did swim suit and evening gown. She looked great and represented Utah well. Unfortunatly I didn't bring my camera with me to the pageant so I don't have any pictures from the pageant, but that's okay we still had lots of fun.

Once the pageat was over at about 10:30 PM vegas time (11:30PM Utah time) we started our long drive home. My mom and I watched three movies while John drove us the whole way home. We got to Manti at about 4:45 AM and I could have driven up to Salt Lake and gotten to school by 8:00AM but I decided that sleep would suit me better. Therefore I just went to sleep and missed another day of school. I'm not sure how this skipping class will affect my upcoming exam but I will find out next Friday.

We had a great time and I am glad that we went because I'm not sure how many more times I will know someone competeing in the Miss America Pageant and it was fun to support her there!

Girl Friends

Today was pretty fun because I went to lunch with my friend Lizzie and Becca. We were the best of friends when we were little girls and don't see eachother very often so it was great to get together and chat for a while. Thanks Girls I love ya!

Miss Utah 2008

Saturday night was really fun! My good friend Kayla Barclay (Miss Utah 2008) showcased her competition attire at Snow College preparatory for the Miss America pageant next week. Kayla is just the perfect person to be a positive role model for young girls not only in Utah but hopefully accross the country. She is virtuous, careing, talented and stands up for what she believes. Honestly I think that she has an amazingly good chance of not only getting in the top ten at Miss America but even winning the competion.

To start the event she first had a mock interview (of which my sweetheart John was on the interviewing pannel) on stage and she did a steller job! She really has her act together and truly cares and knows a great deal about the most important issues facing our country right now. Her elequent speaking will take her many places in the competition and in life. Next she modeled her bathing suit. As I mentioned before, Kayla stands up for what she believes, She will be wearing a one-piece suit at the competition. This is not because she wouldn't look great in a two piece, but because she believes that by wearing a two piece she shows respect for her body and that she can turn heads and look good without showing everything she has! She then modeled some of the dresses that she will be wearing at the competition. Many of them were designed specifically for her. I loved every one of them, and think that they are stunning. Some of her dresses are shown on the Miss Utah homepage, if you want to see them then check out this web site http://missutah.wordpress.com/, and http://www.missutahpageant.org/.

I along with many others wish Kayla the best of luck at the Miss America pageant next week. She will do so well and I am very excited to see her on the Miss America reality T.V show as well as the final night of the competition Jan. 24th.

Old Friends

Last Saturday my good friend Becca and I went up to the Olive Garden in Provo to meet up with some of our friends from good old North Sanpete High School. It was pretty fun to see how everyone has changed and what they are doing with their lives. We spent most of our time together waiting to be seated hough, it's funny because when Jaclyn called to make the reservations, the resturant informed her that they don't make reservations on weekends. The person she spoke with said that during the early afternoon they were usually not very busy. Boy was that employee wrong for that day. I think that we waited a good hour or more just to be seated. It was okay though because we got lots of good conversation in.