Wonderful Weekend

Happy Fourth of July! This weekend has been awesome. I've had so much fun with so many great people. Let me catch you up on what I've done.

Friday

Ally, Rosi and I were bored and wanted to do something. We came up with a few plans, but decided against them because we didn't really want to spend money. Ally really wanted to prank someone so we decided to do that. We had a hard time coming up with pranks. We took a trip to the Dollar Tree to see if we could find anything (and cheap) there that could be used for pranking. No luck. We then went to Walmart and bought 10 goldfish and three rubber ducks. One guy in the ward, Patty (Patrick- who is also my home teacher), really likes rubber ducks. The one bathroom in his apartment is decorated with rubber ducks (the apartments at Sparks are town house style with two bathrooms...oh Arcadia, why can't you have two bathrooms?) . We went to Phil's apartment (only one person was home) and used their cups and containers to put the fish all over their apartment. Downstairs anyway, since we can't go upstairs where the rooms are. My favorite part was that there was a bowl shaped like a toilet. We put a couple fish in it and stuck it in the bathroom. 

We then headed over to Patty's. We stood outside his door for a few minutes trying to come up with a way to leave the ducks without him realizing what we were doing. We decided to just knock on his door and go with the flow. We went in and hung out for a bit. Phil came in with fireworks. While we were heading out to watch the fireworks, Rosi asked to use the bathroom so she could place the ducks (that she had hidden in her purse) in the sink filled with water.

We went outside and set off over $100 dollars worth of fireworks in the parking lot across from the complexes. I guess no cost is too great when it come to boys and exploding things. I would never spend that much, but they were really good fireworks. The first one they set off did not exactly go the way it was supposed to. It had nine little tubes/cannons on it that shot out fireworks. After the first one shot straight up, all hell broke loose. Excuse the language, but I think that's the best way to describe it. They started shooting sideways. One almost hit some cars, one hit a building (and went the direction all of us girls were standing), and then they kept following us. It would come our way, we would run a further and a slightly different direction and we would almost be hit again. It was pure chaos. There was about seven or eight of us girls just running and screaming for our lives. We laughed when it was over and we didn't feel like we were going to die anymore. We all wished it was recorded so we could have seen it because the guys thought it was hilarious and I can only imagine what we looked like. We figure that's how it would feel to be shot at. It was fun night.

Saturday

I went to the Stadium of Fire!! It was pretty awesome. It was at the football stadium, hence the name. They had some guys parachute in and the last one to drop in had the American flag. All of the guys stuck their landings, except the guy with the flag. He fell and crashed into a guy. The military men that were on the field rushed over and grabbed grabbed the flag. Since it touched the ground, aren't they supposed to burn it now? Anyway, they had a ton of little girls from all different dance schools that made up the Stadium of Fire Dancers. They were so cute! There performances were awesome. 

For the National Anthem, they showed a clip of David Archuleta singing it for the first time in the stadium back in 2003 and then he came out and finished singing it. He was AMAZING!!!!! I still can't believe I got to see him. During "the rockets' red glare" they had red flares go off and during "the bombs bursting in air" they had loud booms go off. It was a nice touch. Oh yeah, Ally and I had great seats. The stage was in one end zone and we were in the other, so we had a perfect view. Not ideal for pictures, which was sad, but still great. We also saw Katelyn from our seats. David is so good at singing live! I love when people sound as good live as they do on their CD. It's not the case with everyone. 

David first sang A Little Too Not Over You. Then he sang, The Other Side of Down (the title track from his latest album), Stomping The Roses (also from the album), his first single Crush and ended with a patriotic medley. I love him! I love him! I LOVE HIM!! He is just so cute and an amazing singer. In between his songs he would talk a little bit. I guess he gets nervous when he talks because he got a little awkward, but it was so ADORKABLE! He can belt it like no other, but when he talks he gets so nervous. Funny how that works. I really wish he was the headliner instead of Brad Paisley, but I still enjoyed the concert.

Brad Paisley sang a bunch of songs and I only knew one of them. It's not that I don't like him, I'm just not a huge country fan. He had some interesting videos that played during his songs. Some were music videos that went with the songs and others were just weird animations and stuff.

Towards the end, they had the dancers perform again. They had traded their red, white and blue pom poms for lights or glow balls or something (similar to a glow stick). They danced to Katy Perry's Firework and that's when some fireworks went off. They used different colored lights to stand and form the head and torch of the Statue of Liberty. It was cool. 

The concert ended with probably the best firework display I have ever seen. It was big and long. It was awesome. They had some music playing and some of the fireworks really went with the music. I'm so glad I went to the Stadium of Fire with Ally! It was totally worth the $56. It was an amazing night.

Sunday

It was fast Sunday and we had Break the Fast with another ward. We had Hawaiian Haystacks for dinner. It was good. I haven't had haystacks since girl's camp, so it's been a while. I made red, white and blue cupcakes and I was going to take them, but I was trying a new frosting recipe and it there were some hiccups. I wasn't completely happy with the appearance of the finished product so I decided not to take them. They tasted fine so some people came over afterwards to eat them. I layered the batter (red, white and blue) so they looked patriotic. 

While the wrapper looks like the colors stayed in their perfect
horizontal layers, they didn't quite bake that way.

See what I mean? But they still look cool.

After ward prayer, there is always a movie. Usually we are in an apartment, but this time we took it outside. Phil moved his t.v. and couches outside and there were blankets to lay on. We watched Mulan and no doubt we belted out the songs! I'm sure the neighborhood enjoyed our performance. When it was over, most of us weren't ready to go so we watched The Blindside too. I mean, it was a holiday weekend so we could stay up cause it's not there was school or work (for most) the next day. It was fun.

Today

The only thing I did today to celebrate the 4th was to eat hot dogs for dinner. No one really did anything around here to celebrate. Rosi invited me over to eat some of the giant cookie she made to look like the American Flag and it was good. I enjoyed (well, I still am enjoying) watching some fireworks from my bedroom window. I could even hear part of the parade this morning since I left my window open last night...I think that's what it sounded like. While I didn't go all out and celebrate today, I'm ok because I had a wonderful weekend. And my hot dogs were delicious!