As You Wish

Hi everyone! I'm back. It's been about a month since my last post. I have several reasons for my absence, but I'm not going to bore you with them. Instead I'm going to talk about football. Now ladies before you go running for the hills I guess I could elaborate a bit and say it's a bit more about dance than the actual game of football. Are you still with me? Ok good.

Yesterday as I was watching the pregame coverage of Superbowl XVIII with Andrew I noticed for the first time that it was being held in Tampa, Florida at the Buccaneers stadium. I know this doesn't mean much to most, but exactly 8 years ago Superbowl XXXV hosted the Ravens and Giants. The Ravens beat the Giants with a final score of 34 to 7. You know what else happened that day? I was chosen to perform in the pregame and halftime shows of that game.

Thanks to American All-Star I was chosen as a dancer that was invited to perform in London, England and at Superbowl 35 in Tampa. It was an amazing experience.

When I was in high school I was on the Varsity Dance Team for all 4 years (don't judge). Each year we held a summer camp at the beginning of August and we invited American All-Star staff to come out from Louisiana to conduct a week long camp teaching us several routines a day. At the end of the week we would have a "show off" day for friends and parents to perform the routines that we learned throughout the week. After the performances the staff would give out awards and a select few would be chosen to represent American All-Star as a goodwill performer to travel to whichever destination they chose for that particular year. When I was a junior the location was London, England. (I will save London for another post.) Then from the goodwill performance team they would narrow that number down and invite those young ladies to accompany them to the Superbowl to perform. I was lucky enough to be chosen twice (my junior and senior year).

I don't remember the name of the photographer that took our official pictures, but look at how young I look. Wow 17 years old and thinner. To think that I wanted to lose a few pounds at that time makes me laugh now. That's not how I did my hair for the performance. This was an at the last minute kind of thing, so my hair isn't nearly as cute as it could have been. I was 17 at the time too, so who knows what I was thinking.
Pretty snazzy outfit right? We performed in the pregame show to Sting's song "Roxanne" wearing this outfit. I had no idea until I was on the field practicing that this song was about a hooker. Talk about naive. I remember the girl who was placed right in front of me in our formation was quite large and always had the look of death on her face. When we had our dress rehearsal I noticed that she had her skirt on backwards, so the slits that should have been in the front were showing off her rather large behind. I wasn't about to tell her for fear that she might eat my head.

One of our less attractive outfits would have to be the full body white sweat suits that we had to wear while the National Anthem was being sang by the Backstreet Boys and America the Beautiful by Ray Charles.

Ray Charles was quite funny from what I remember. There was some sort of delay and he was standing on his platform waiting patiently. Finally you hear him say into the microphone, "Can we get this damn show on the road?"

After our dress rehearsal with the Backstreet Boys we were told we could change back into our street clothes. At that point in time I wasn't one of those screaming fans that was absolutely in love with the boy bands. I heard some girls screaming over by one of the tunnels, so I figured I would check it out. You know I was curious. It turns out that they were escorting the Backstreet Boys off the field one at a time with about 10 bodyguards per guy, so the screaming girls wouldn't hurt or attack them. I decided instead of screaming my head off I was just going to go into the tunnel and change my clothes. I bent down to drop my bag by the wall, and stood up to pull my pants off. When I turned around about .25 seconds from dropping my sweats I saw this guy right behind me...Needless to say I didn't undress, I just stood there in shock, first at the fact that there were people there, second these people were men, third most of them were gigantic bodyguards, and fourth I didn't want this guy to think I was trying to undress just for him.

All in all it was nice watching the Superbowl yesterday. It brought back some pretty awesome memories. I need to go through pictures from back then because I didn't have a digital camera. I'll have to scan them and hopefully have some more pictures to blog about.

Good job Steelers! I do have to admit though that I was routing for the Cardinals. After hearing their story and the fact that their franchise has never won a superbowl in their history, it made me want the underdog to win. I was happy with the fact that it was such a good game though. I also decided I need to invest some time in learning the rules of football because sometimes I just don't understand and don't want to bother anyone with my questions.

It feels good to have a post finished and ready to publish.

As You Wish - Sorry for ignoring you. I'm back, I love you, and I will be posting more often I'm sure of it. xoxo

This past weekend was pretty fantastic, so I am going to share with you what went down.


Friday - We joined some friends of ours for breakfast and had a great time chatting and catching up.


Saturday - Andrew decided he wanted to take a break from the deck and make a trip to Reno. I'm always up for anything that gets us away from Winnemucca for a couple of days. When we got to town we went to the new Scheels that was just opened last weekend. It was amazing. That store is huge. It has two gigantic fish tanks that you can walk under, they were handing out free hats, it's two levels, it has a running ferris wheel in the center and an airplane hanging from the ceiling. That isn't even the beginning, but I think you get the point. Here is a picture Andrew took of me while trying on one of the hats. What a goober!

After Scheels we made our way over to the Atlantis buffet to meet up with my parents and grandparents. It was an awesome lunch and I love buffets. I feel like everyone walks away happy, because you can get whatever you want. I won't go into details about what I ate because now that I think about it I'm a little ashamed at the amount of food I consumed.

As an added bonus to our stay in Reno Andrew told me that we would get dressed and go dancing at Bubinga which has a pretty strict dress code for getting in. No street clothes, sneakers, etc. I was pretty excited. I love to dance.

When we were ready to go we made our way downtown and ate some dinner. We ordered some pizza and enjoyed a few alcoholic beverages. I had a strawberry daquiri and Andrew had a couple Dos Equis. Upon finishing dinner Andrew pointed out that there was a little something extra in my purse. When I investigated I saw that there were two pieces of paper folded together. You know what they were? Tickets to So You Think You Can Dance! OMG! That is one of my most favorite shows ever. When tickets were first on sale I decided I wasn't going to buy them this year because I should save my money. Being the sweetheart that he is Andrew took it upon himself to surprise me with tickets. I love him!

We didn't end up going to Bubinga, but that was ok. I was happy watching others dance even if I didn't get to.

This was one of my favorite routines between Kherington and Twitch. I heart Mia Michaels and her ability to choreograph.


Picture time before leaving the hotel:

These are Andrew's shoes. I love these shoes.

Sunday - We did some shopping and made our way home.

Thank you Andrew for such a fabulous weekend. You're the best!

If you are interested in reading about our trip to see the show last year click here.

Last night was my first hip hop class. Hi! Have we met? I’m one of the whitest girls you will ever meet. I haven’t ever taken a hip hop class before and I think it just might be the death of me.

My good friend Tovi is teaching this class and I thought what the heck that should be fun. Well friends let me tell you something; I have done approximately 0.000 exercising in the past four years and I’m feeling it today. Everything hurts. I want to take a hot bubble bath right now and have a drink (preferably something with alcohol in it).

So far so good, but it’s not going to be an easy. Throughout the class I thought to myself you want me to do what with my body? Top rock, huh? And when we started learning some simple freezes (simple?) I thought I was going to break my head off. It was not pretty. I think I’m too old for this. The easiest freeze she taught was putting your head on the floor, your hands on the floor in front of you shoulder width apart, and balancing with your knees on your arms? Does that make sense? I didn’t think so. Anyway…after class I told my friend that my head was saying, “Hey your butt isn’t supposed to be up there. What the heck?”

Sometime in early June next year we will be having a recital, so hopefully by then I won’t look like I’m seizuring about on the stage.

Here’s a picture of my interpretation of what hip hop looks like. This was taken right before I walked out the door to go to class. Peace out!