There and there and back again.

These last two weeks have been full of family! Those are the best kind of weeks. I made it out to Utah for my grandma's funeral, which was such a blessing. There is no where I would have rather been that day than celebrating her life with the people that loved her most! And there are a lot of those people....

Quite a crew, huh? All of her grandchildren made it except for the three that are on missions. My sister and I played a duet at her funeral, and we realized it was our first time ever performing a duet together. I don't know how that has never happened before? It was a version of one of my favorite primary songs that has always reminded me of my grandma.

My aunts did a great job at setting up a display to remember what my grandma was all about: Family pictures, her missionary plaques, pictures of Christ, homemade bread, her Polariod camera in action, one of her pioneer dresses, Little House on the Prairie boks, and all her favorite flowers from the desert (complete with a cactus - she wrote a list of flowers and plants she wanted displayed at her funeral 20 years ago and it made us all smile). Who couldn't love this cute woman?

I took lots of pictures of pictures that day, because these are just great. A lot of them are some I've never seen before. I think it's so fun to see pictures of my grandparents when they were newlyweds. They are just beautiful to me.

When I looked for my grandma's old Polaroid to include it in the display, I found this picture underneath it. My cousin's adorable dog, Ammy, took good care of my grandma. They took care of each other. She loved to go sit outside in her yard when the irrigation would flood Deseret. This is a picture of her totally in her element. I just laughed because I realized that my grandma was totally in to Instagram before Instagram was even a thing. She had that Polaroid out all the time, and my cousins and I loved to be the one who got to hold the picture face down until it had finally developed. It was so hard not to peek!

My trip to Utah was so, so wonderful. I loved being able to remember my grandma with my family. She lived a great life.

From there, I flew down to meet up with all of Michael's family in Florida. We had been looking forward to this family reunion for a long time! Beach, summer, family, good food, no worries....it's the best.

Aren't Michael's sisters beautiful? And they make beautiful children, too. We love playing with those cute nieces and nephews!

We rode horses one night along the beach, and it was so relaxing and beautiful. My horse hated Michael's horse though, so that was a tiny issue. My horse also hated the water. Poor thing.

Here's a sunset to leave you with. Isn't it gorgeous? We had so much fun that week just catching up with family. The only 5 minutes that weren't fun in Florida were the last 5 minutes of game 7 in the NBA finals... so we won't dwell on that. We had a few dolphin sightings and sand dollar findings, and even saw a shark or two. In the semi-distance. It was hard to leave that beautiful place! But don't worry, even more family time  is coming up over the 4th of July...can't wait :)

Thank you, Daetwyler family, for the fun time together!

Reminders

Don't you love the little reminders in life that you married the right person?

Maybe from a cookie, or from a thought.

That's a good, good feeling.

T-Swift, in Concert.

We called the radio station at least 800 times. I wish I was exaggerating. Being caller #9 is just not that easy. It takes a skill that I apparently don't have. But we still found ourselves with free Taylor Swift tickets through other means, like I said before. And Friday finally came. 

Can you tell that I felt like I was at work for 19 hours that day? Because I did. I was a little distracted, and more than ready for concert time. We hit up Punch Burger (pun intended) before the show and it was delicious. We split those waffle fries, don't judge.

Two days before the show Keds was SO nice to give me four more tickets that they weren't going to be using that night. !!! I had to have a drawing out of my friends who could go...no way I was choosing. Everyone was nice about it, although there was some attempted bribing afterwards. (Summer held strong and kept her ticket, even with offers of a month of babysitting and movie passes. Taylor Swift, people. You don't just give that up.) Michael and I got there early for our backstage tour. !!! (So many exclamation marks are justified in this post.)

Taylor's MOM (!!!) took our tour group around and told us all about the RED tour. We learned some crazy stuff, like...the tour hires 120 local people at every location to help unload everything, they have "toaster" elevators under the stage that literally pop dancers up on top, 70 people are on the RED tour, Taylor has 11 costume changes that night with the fastest one at 4.5 seconds, there is no auto-tuning or lip syncing in her shows and there never has been, she is crazy involved with almost every detail of the concert, and after their 66 stops in the states this summer they are headed to Australia, then Asia, then Europe. Full on world tour, people. She sings about all these boyfriends and break ups...but when does she have time for either of those?

One of my favorite moments of the tour was when Michael recognized an announcer from Hank FM (the radio station of caller #10 haters). I saw his name tag and knew his name all too well...

Me: "Hey, Dave O'Brien!"

D: Turned around, acting innocent.

M: "Oh, I've called you sooooo many times!"

D: "Really? Did I answer?"

M: "No!"

D: Laughed as though this was ok.

M: Continued on with the backstage tour, no thanks to Dave O'Brien or his impossible contests.

(We still listen to Hank FM.)

Ed Sheeran opened for Taylor Swift, and he was crazy talented. He was a one man show - recorded his own beats and guitar, then kept them playing as he sang and even rapped, all while fading music in and out with foot pedals. I thought he was incredible. And not just because I loved his English accent.

After his performance, there was some ultimate anticipation in that room that we shared with 18,000 other (mostly female and mostly screaming) fans. Then, Taylor. Everyone talks about how her performances are over the top productions, and it's the truth.

At one point her dancers carried her in front of our section to a smaller stage right by us, and we were just a few rows away from her. Poor Michael, all that screaming. 

He wasn't the only guy in the audience...maybe the only one in our section though. Good sport. He really did enjoy it. You couldn't not have fun though, it was hilarious how much people just went crazy every time she would somehow announce the next song.

I loved having friends there with us. Becca had only been to one other concert, so I think the bar is set kind of high for her third. 

On our walk back to our car, we saw this semi along with a few blacked out cars and limos. What a crazy life, right? She did Cleveland Thursday, Indianapolis Friday, Lexington Saturday...and that is just three days of one country of her world tour. How do you even have a voice after all that?

Had to get the shirt. The whole experience was just too fun to not remember. It was my first time actually applying "the secret" to something very specific in life, which is random and a little too cosmic for me, but there's definitely something going on there. We read the book in book club, but I won't go into details about it. Just know that I put this concert on my calendar in December and I just knew that somehow we would get there (preferably for free because dental school is such a money sucker). Then through a random string of events, I suddenly had two backstage passes, six tickets, and a freaked out husband.

!!!