This is Bonnie last night...an accurate reflection on how things are going with Adam

This is called... high relationship drama....
welcome.

The winner is...

So after dress shopping Bonnie had a lengthy conversation with Adam and I answered some emails. Then we got back to gether to look at earring possibilites for Thursday's Gala.
We may or may not have been crying with laughter as we pulled out some of my great aunt's clip-on spanglies...
They looked great on Bonnie, so I clipped them on my ears...but... one kept slipping off due to the lack of spring in the clip.
So we naturally proceeded to imagine the conversations at the gala in the event that the earring starts to slip and fall off...
One thing led to another and pretty soon I ended up like this...

Dress Shopping for the GALA!

This hair thing...

So this fantastic girl that I work with, Heidi, only washes her hair every 2 weeks. And there is a group of women in her home town that only wash their hair once a month.
What?! How is this possible?
They actually train their hair to not produce oil...it's obviously a process, but they did it, so they don't need to wash their hair and it keeps their hairs healthy.
When their hair starts to get oily, they comb it a million times with a bristle brush, put it in a sumo bun on top of their hair with the ends tucked in, and in the morning their hair is not oily anymore. The oils somehow recirculate and...don't really know, but kind of cool.
SO I decided to try it.
I went almost a whole week without washing it and for a few days, I woke up and my hair was significantly less oily than the night before when brushing... pretty cool.
More to come on this.

Bonnie got Lasered!

Bonnie got lasered on Wednesday! Skin lasered because she said she had some acne scarring on her forehead that she is not so happy about...don't really believe her, she looks great. But she did get a rockin deal on the laser treatment, so whatever...
She got it done Wednesday morning and I told her she HAD to come to powerstand for lunch because we were having a hoe down and launching our second core value.
She showed up with her red face...AND gave an announcement in front of the whole company, what a trooper. The CEO laughed when he saw her, but other than that it was great!

Core Value #2: Keep the Cattle Moving... everything turned out great!

random thoughts...

Coming back from laying on the beach was definitely like jumping into a cold pool after being in the jacuzzi-a nice refreshing slap in the face to every cell in the bod.
Wednesday was powerstand and I decided to mix things up and serve cold cereal. It was a total smash hit! Everyone loved it, we had tons, and it came in under the budge. Brilliant. Eventually this table of guys just carried bags of cereal and a gallon of milk to their table to cut down on time going back to the serving area multiple times. You know, we are efficient at One on One.

In addition to shopping for cold cereal at Costco Tuesday night, I was thinking about what I would share if I was ever asked to share what "Throw Your Hat Over the Wall" meant to me. This was the first Core Value that we launch as a company a few weeks ago and I got to be part of the process and watch it come to fruition.

My favorite part of the "Throw Your Hat Over the Wall" story is the end when it says (after the one traveler had thrown his hat over the wall) "and they had no choice but to continue". An experience in my life when I threw my hat over the wall was when I went to China. I bought my $2200 Opening Ceremonies ticket for the Beijing Olympics, essentially throwing my hat over the wall, I had no choice but to continue and successfully get to China. Everything fell in to place and I made it China only to discover that my ticket was fake. I was devastated, I wanted my hat back. However, I learned that the process of getting over the wall was more important than getting my hat back.

Also this week, we had a competition for most creative title, mine was Meredith "Ashton Blvd, as in driving down the" Because our office borders Ashton Blvd so I get questions all the time about if that street was named after me, to which I affirm that it most definitely was.

Sunday was baby Jonathan's blessing. It was so fun to go to church with all my family-I mean we stayed for the whole block, so Sunday School and Relief Society with everyone was such a treat. Then we all gathered at Christina and Sean's for potato bar and yummy other stuff.

After the gathering, Pete and I headed down for our "YSA Stake Reorganization". No changes for me in my ward, but we are a YSA stake now! We had a All-Star line-up...Jule Beck ( I went up and met her), Jay Jensen, Von Keetch (previous stake pres-love him), Steven Snow...wow, they really do care about the YSA of the church. I mean I knew that, but they sent their best to handle this stake conference and I was impressed.

Who Wore it Best?

Great minds think alike...2nd day Bryn and I have sported our violet Shade dresses on the same day

Seussical Thank You and a Dread Party...what?!

Friday night before I went over for Pete's ordination, Joe Pa and his girls Rebecca and Amanda came by to thank me for the tickets to "Suessical the Musical" at the Hale Center Theater that I gave to them, they had gone to see it the night before. Oh my, these girls are the most darling things ever! They brought me the greatest thank you notes, complete with pictures expressing their love for "Dr. Suce".

Dear Meredith,

Sucdicul the masicl was awesome.

They sang a bunch of songs.

I loved it. (picture of Cat in the Hat's hat)

Love, Rebecca

(Other side in all different colors)
Thanks

Thanks

Thanks

Thanks

Thanks

Thanks

Thanks
I Love Dr. Suce!

p.s. Did you get the program?

Dear Meredith

I Love Dr. Seuss

Thank you for inviting me to the play. (Big Heart)

(other side)

Picture of Horton sitting on Mazy's egg and holding the bud with the Who's on it in the storm.

Love it so much! Thanks Joe Pa and Shauntell for raising such brilliant girls!

After the visit and thank you hugs, I went over for Peter's ordination to the Melchizedek Priesthood in preparation for his mission to Bangalore, India-so excited!! It was awesome! Pete shared his testimony, Dad shared his thoughts on ordaining and giving the blessing, Stu piped in about some mission experiences when he used the priesthood, and Mom and I chimed in with our 2 cents. The main thought that was brought up was that the priesthood is used for service, we cannot lay our hands on our own head, they are to be used to bless others.

Afterward I took Pete and Stu out to Kneaders, undivided attention and time with my brothers over good good food, doesn't get better than that. It is one of Stu's favorite places, so I really had to talk him arm into coming, spending time with me was the biggest draw. :)

After a yummy dinner, I went to my friend Eve's "Dread Party", she is putting dreads in her hair. I know, right? I put in 5 or 6 dreads during the hour that I was there. Super involved process and not as unsanitary or repulsive as I imagined.

This is what visiting teaching is all about right? responding to whatever needs they have, even back combing small groups of hair for an hour on Friday evening. Definitely a "Dear Diary" or as in this case, on the blog.
I did these 6 dreads...in the hour that I was there.

Don't really know what's going on back there...

She is committed for a whole year of dreads.

The things money can and cannot buy...

This week I felt the pendulum swing baaaaack and foooooooorrrrrth

Monday I felt like my life was falling apart, like I didn't have anything together, then by Wednesday and after this weekend, I feel like I put most of it back together. Weird.

My goals this week were to complete at least these 3 things after work each day:

Read Scriptures

Exercise

Going to bed early

I was 2 for 3 every day, some combination of the above.

Monday night I surprised Andrea Rose for her birthday, I took her a balloon and some cake bites that I made. Her kids LOVED the balloon and she loved the cake bites.

It was SO good to see her. She just moved back from Madison, WI and started back at UVU to finish her dance degree. She is one of the dearest persons on this planet-totally one of my kindred spirits.

Tuesday I had lunch with Brother Bartholomew, finally. We have both cancelled on each other before, but we made it happen. It was great to catch up with him, fill him in on my life, and get his perspective on online dating... he is totally a fan. So by the end of the conversation I was open to giving it a go. More to come on that for sure.

Wednesday I scheduled a life coach session with Joe Pa (his dream is to be a part time life coach), he is a fantastic communicator, great friend, and knows me really well. We had a good chat and I am currently working on outlining everything on my plate-doing and not doing-and then will prioritize and start to build a routine to make sure I am doing the things I need to do to take care of myself, which is what has been missing recently (hence the meltdown on Monday).

Friday I surprised Mom and snatched her away for some 1on1 time. We met up at Ellis Rasmussen's funeral viewing, (wow, what a legacy) and we went to a few of the Parade of Homes and ooh and ahhed about everything. On our way home we saw that the Orem Summerfest festivities were still going on, so we stopped for a gourmet quesadilla at Paco's, JC's booth at the fair! So fun to see him in action, meet the 5-6 ft grill and see the whole show. Fantastic quesadilla's, good job JC!

Saturday I committed to 7 miles in training for the half-marathon and I made it... with lots of walking inbetween.

After that I spent the rest of the day cleaning, doing laundry, and catching up. It was SO nice! Some serious Mere time and it was great!

Saturday night I went with Mom to Lisa Flanagan's wedding. I know! She is old enough to get married...We watched her grow up around the corner and she has turned out beautiful and great. Her wedding was totally vintage style with the decor, her ruffly dress and bird cage veil... it was at Somewhere Inn Time, totally great.

Then Mom and I sped up to catch the Bath and Body Works sale and caught another Parade of Homes home on the way back. $1,000,000,000 and totally Cape Cod, east coast, vintage style. Old fashioned bathtub, mosaic tiling, dusty 40's colors and furniture and a fantastic sewing room. Very cool. Mom loved it.

The things money can buy...

Let's get DIRTY!

Saturday I ran the Dirty Dash with some coworkers... hilarious 5K race in mud with obstacles.
Our team (before)... "The Team Formerly Known as Prince" (we have the Prince symbol on our wife beaters)

Best Roommate EVER!
The girls...Rachel, Krista, Bonnie, Mere...totally ready for this...we are clean.
The final hill with huge sprinklers and a giant water slide!

After crossing the finish line...so dirty. It's pretty impossible not to look like this after finishing the race.

After the race, people can chuck their muddy shoes onto the pile for donation. 2 HUGE piles of crazy dirty shoes. Total roommate bonding moment!

the COLD showers. Pretty sure I got frostbite all over my body in 10 seconds under this stream. I barely could stay in long enough to get all the dirt out. Bare minimum cleanliness here.

Bonnie's resourceful plastic bag shower cap to protect her helmet on the ride.

So cute.

After the race at Soldier Hollow, we stopped at Granny's for lunch. Best raspberry shakes on the planet! And yummy burgers too!

Our poor washing machine. We washed our clothes 3 times to get the dirt out.

I washed clothes the following week and there were still hints of dirt on some loads....note to self: DO NOT WASH...Throw the dirty dash clothes away! Monday evening I surprised my friend Andrea Rose with a visit for her birthday.

Her darling girl Eva Joy!

Andrea and Eva. Eva loved the balloon I brought

By bestie Andrea!! Love this one.

She just moved back from Wisconsin and recently started back to school to finish her dance degree. We picked up where we left off and all is well, she is back in Utah. Hooray!