Say Oprah and They Will Come!

At the beginning of December Chris called from work informing me that day was the day to get Oprah tickets for January. He gave me the number and said I had an hour left to try. Yeah right, with only an hour left this would be impossible. But since he went through the effort to let me know I decided I'd at least try. After about 10-15 mins of ringing, busy, hang-up and ringing again I got through and now had access to four tickets! I decided to go with the end of the month giving anyone more of a chance to get out here. All five wanted to come but due to conflicts, three of my sisters couldn't make it, but Heidi and Camille did!

(many of the photos seen below are taken from Camille's camera)

(Camille in agreeance to yummy pizza:)

They flew in on the 29th the day before the showing. That night we had my favorite pizza from Unos, four cheese and pesto, and then headed off to the Children's Museum (free night).

Jared and Camille

Heidi and Spencer

Heidi and I being silly then normal below Man that man was attractive!

Camille in little archaeologist clothes and in action below Below Camille was trying to get her head out of the head from a previous picture and I snapped an extra shot and got an even better expression.

By the time we got home we were exhausted and ready to go to bed since we had to leave my house by 6:20ish to get to Oprah's studio on time.

The day of the showing happened to be the coldest days they were here. Camille wore boots but these weren't warm boots. In fact she wore no socks at all! CRAZY!!!! Plus she had no gloves and we didn't wear hats because we didn't want to mess up our hair, of course:). We didn't have to wait too long for the bus since we were able to track it but we waited long enough. Once off the bus we ran to the studio (partly cause we were later than we wanted and because you're warmer when running). At the studio we met up with my friend Beth who gladly filled our 4th spot.

Beth and me

me, Heidi, Camille

We had to be there at 7:00 and it was to last till 11:00. That means a lot of sitting and waiting. While you're waiting there's lots of posters and clips of past shows. Of course these are the big give away shows so you get a little excited, what if....:) We finally make it into the studio where you wait some more while they fill time. During this time we got a gift... an Oprah pen found under our seats. Unfortunately we didn't have the lucky pens with an additional gift.

FINALLY Oprah comes out on stage with Lisa Ling and here's the gist of the show. It was a follow up show of stories Lisa had done in the past. The first was of heroine addicts. One a family of 5 where everyone was addicted except for the toddler and the other story of a pregnant teen. The family was currently receiving treatment and so far was a success story. The girl ended up having a healthy baby who she gave up for adoption but since has relapsed and is in prison.

The next story was on the FLDS church in Texas where all the children were taken away. She went back and "for the first time" talked to the children that were involved. So I guess that was a little interesting when she talked to the kids but besides that, not too interesting. I've heard so much on this topic that it would've been nice to hear something different.

So we left... disappointed, but hey! We saw Oprah right?! I'll have to try again next season and hopefully I'll get a fun show. Who cares about gifts, I just want to it to be more interesting!



Our wait for the bus on the way home was very long. We didn't have Internet access so we had no idea how long we'd have to wait. I didn't time it but it was too long. We were all cold and poor Heidi's nose was too many shades too red.


Once at home we were hungry had pizza leftovers and picked up the kids to take them to Jared's Basketball.



That evening we started Pride and Prejudice. The long one. Camille has that movie memorized! We were only able to stay up for an hour of it before we zonked. The next day we had things planned but decided to just enjoy sitting and watching the movie. It felt especially good for Heidi to just sit (she's used to running after 6 kids, who dearly missed her while she was gone).


That night we headed off to a ballet of Cinderella. It was fun but we decided we'd definitely like the nutcracker more. My favorite Characters were the step sisters. I thought they had some fun dances.

Camille, Me, Heidi

Heidi by the sign with her son's name

As for the rest of the time I just thoroughly enjoyed laughing, talking, and crying with my sisters. We missed the other three and wish they could've been there. I'm so grateful for my sisters, they really are some of my best friends!

Camille and me