I never thought I'd say this again. I'm getting the pig!*

Welcome to Weekend Palooza!

What a weekend! To start it off I had dinner with Marissa on Friday night after work. Marissa is a new friend, it all started with my new Visiting Teaching assignment in December and I have to say, I'm happy with this one. I've known her for a while and once we were both at a game night where she kept laughing at what I said, so I kind of knew then that I wanted to be friends with her. Dinner was pretty much like that, we both were laughing and telling stories and having a good time.

Marissa's birthday was Sunday, so Saturday night she was having a joint birthday party with Brother Ben and his twin sister Brittani (who were also born on the 20th). Marissa told me how her friend was coming down from D.C. and he worked for the NRA so somehow we decided that I needed to pretend that I was a member of PETA. Joking around about it at dinner was easy enough but I warned her that when the time came I would probably be unable to play my part...I know me, I have these brilliant ideas and can't follow through because I get too nervous. We shall work on this.

Before dinner finished I let Marissa know that if she needed any help (i.e. baking cupcakes or something) then to just let me know.

Saturday morning I woke up around 6:30 with a stomach ache, it's nothing, probably just my appendix about to explode. I stayed up because I had to get up at 8 anyway (and because it really hurt). I had a basketball game at 9 and I was riding with Lori and Ashley. The game started off well (I was feeling better at this point) and we were only about 4 points behind. Then our fan club arrived and everything went down hill. I told Orin (the president of our fan club) that he is bad luck. Highlights: I stuffed Katie B. and hit nothing but ball, but they called a foul on me (I had a total of 4 fouls called on me). One of the girls from the other team was surrounded by three of us from my team, she panicked or something but she threw the ball right at my chest. I was so shocked I didn't even grab for the ball, I just couldn't figure out what happened. (Katie said that they randomly break out into dodgeball and we should do that at our next game - they won't call anything...I know for a fact).

Lori dropped me off at basketball and before I could even finish preparing my breakfast (Captain Crunch), Ben (not Brother Ben) and his friend James showed up for soccer. We drove to the park and had a pretty good group. I suck at soccer though, I won't try to even pretend I'm any good with it. I'm not good with the feet and when the ball comes anywhere above the waist I just want to reach out and grab it. That's a no-no in soccer. I hate it when I am really bad at a sport. And...my ankles are killing me, something about tripping on the ball anytime I tried.

From there I went to lunch with Ben and James. It was James' birthday so we went to Red Robin. Did you know you can buy their lemonade glasses for $4? I learned that and I bought one. It was really windy this weekend and when we got out into the parking lot the balloon they had given James began to attack Ben, first the ribbon tried to cut his throat, then the balloon itself just started to beat him in the face. He tried to run, but I was holding the balloon and ran with him so it would keep attacking him. It was the funniest thing but I have a feeling only funny if you were there.

Then I came home, took a shower and went over to Marissa and Lori's house where I made rice crispy treats and was forced to draw a poster...I don't do posters. But it was fun, I feel like I should have done more considering the amount of time I was there, but that's it. Treats and a poster. The party was at Brianna's house, so the girls had to leave to get there early and set up. I was planning to go to the party late because I never go to those things on time, but I went early to help them. First I ran to the store to find glasses and animal crackers (P.S. the party was celebrating nerdiness).

Ashley and me in our nerdiness

Brother Ben and I got to work on blowing up balloons. This is not a favorite past time...at all. I feel like my eardrums are going to burst and in Brother Ben's case...I worried he was going to have a brain aneurysm. I have never seen someone's face turn so red while blowing up balloons. He wanted to blow up a balloon within a balloon. I told him it couldn't be done. I didn't believe him, I had no faith he could do it...

He proved me wrong:

Again:

There's two in there

And again:

Three!

The party was a great success. I played some Mad Libs, Bananagrams, I helped put together a puzzle of the United States, I "slapped in" in the world's longest game of Egyptian Ratscrew, I played speed, I "unzipped" someone (this is a mental thing where you tell them to not let you push their arms down, they succeed at first but then you "unzip" them and they can't keep their arms up - if you are interested I will show you...ew, maybe we'll take a video and post it), I threw a deck of cards (cooler than it sounds). I stayed a lot longer than I thought I would.

I didn't pretend to be a member of PETA but at every chance I mentioned how I love animals. Before I left I tried to help clean up, Brianna didn't want to pop the balloons so I pulled out my technique of popless balloon popping, which Brianna helped me to discover an even easier way. So I sat there, collecting balloons and putting them out of their misery. Finally, I left. I forced my eyes to stay open the whole way home because let me tell you, they wanted to close. My mom told me once that the people who fall asleep while driving don't even realize it, they thought they were okay, so I felt like knowing that I could fall asleep while driving was to my advantage, at least I knew I wasn't okay, so I would fight it more.


I made it home safely. I slept in later than usual on Sunday and was tired the whole day. I went to church, went to my family's house for dinner and stayed there until close to 8. Then I came home and fell asleep on the couch...I really did, I slept there all night without waking up and going to my bed. I haven't done that in a long time.

I had Monday off, but that's going to have to wait for a different post, because this one is already long enough! For those of you who made it to this point, congratulations!