Blast from the Past: Baby Shelece

Tonight my Dad let me access his computer to get some of his pics from our Disneyland trip.

While I was in there, I did some digging through really old pics just for fun... and I found some classics! :)

Our 1989 family Christmas picture!

Me on my 2nd birthday. My mom's parents gave me that Baby Goofy doll. I slept with it every night until... oh, probably 8th grade. :) It's still in a place of honor in my room.

Me and my mom on the same birthday (you can see the back of Goofy's head in the foreground).

Little me. Look how cute I was! :)

I love that we both have the same expression on our faces

That's a Chipmunk doll I'm holding--Britney from Alvin and the Chipmunks. I was OBSESSED with that show from age 2 to age 8. I used to pretend that my human form was a disguise, and I was really Britney.

Oops

I am not a big fan of telemarketers.

Mostly I screen their calls, if I can. Recently I got a call and tried a new tactic. They asked to speak to Shelece. I said she wasn't in right now but I could take a message for her.

The telemarketer in question said, "Oh. I'll just call back later then. Thanks." And I felt like I had hit the jackpot.

Today I accidentally answered another telemarketer's call. I tried the same tactic, thinking it was genius. They would either hang up, or leave a message, without expecting me to commit to a sale, because I wasn't the person they wanted to talk to. (Yeah, I know. But it seemed so brilliant at the time.)

Here's basically how the conversation went:

T: Hello, may I please speak with Shelece?
S: She's not in right now. Can I please take a message?
T: Oh. Sure... *Proceeds to make sales pitch*.
S: Okay, thanks. I'll let her know.
T: ...Don't you want my contact info?
S: Oh... Is it different than what popped up on the caller id?
T: You have to dial an extension, extension ???.
S: Okay, great. I'll let her know.
T: Okay. Thanks, Shelece. Have a great day.
S: *pause while I try to figure out how to address him calling me by name when I told him I wasn't Shelece* Uh... Thanks. You too.

Yeah. Guy totally had me figured out. Cuz it's not that hard to do.

Lesson learned. Keep screening calls, and never be afraid to flat out say you aren't interested in their product.

Duh.

And She's Off!

Dropping Kristie off at the entrance to the MTC

Sister McAllister goes off to Finland

Or, at least to the MTC.

The last week and a half have been a blur. Shauna and I flew out to Colorado on the 20th, to attend Kristie's farewell talk on the 22nd. (Mormon missionaries usually speak to the members of their congregation on the Sunday before they go out--Kristie was speaking two weeks out because the first Sunday of each month is reserved for a special meeting called fast and testimony meeting). Then it snowed so much that church was canceled for our entire stake!

The new plan was for Kristie to give her talk right before the testimonies started on fast Sunday. So Shauna and I opted to stay in Colorado until we got to hear her speak. She did a great job. :) I can tell she is ready to be a missionary.

On Sunday, we had a family party with Dad's side of the family to wish her well. On Monday, we came back to Utah, and had a family party with Mom's side of the family too. It was fun seeing so much of my extended family in such a short period. They are all proud and excited for Kristie to serve.

We will drop Kristie off at the Missionary Training Center on Wednesday. I will miss her like crazy while she is gone, but I am so proud of her for serving the Lord, and I know He needs her in Finland right now.

A Brave New Look

So you all remember my latest hair experiment, when I decided to go ombre. It didn't quite go as planned, although I did manage to get it toned down a bit. 

For the most part, I was able to relax and have fun with it. But in certain lighting, especially as its grown out more, it just looks SO two toned. No real transition between the two colors, just brown on top and blond everywhere else. And I kept remembering what the stylist said when I went to get it fixed. I asked if there was anyway she could bring the brown down to my jawline, like we originally discussed, and she warned that if we did, it would look too two toned.

Anyway, all of that is to say that it's finally time to retire the ombre and go for a more natural look. After loads of internet research, I decided to try something called ecaille.

Here's my celebrity inspiration:

So... basically ecaille is quite a bit like ombre (as you can tell from this picture's subtle caption--hardy-har). It is dark on top and light on the bottom, but inside of being two tones blended together, you mix in lots of highlights in various tones to create a more natural look. Ecaille is French for tortoiseshell--the idea is to mix the sorts of colors that you'd see in a tortoiseshell comb.

Anyway, that's the idea. I am well aware this could go awry, like the last attempt. But this time I'm going in to see my favorite hairstylist, someone who's been doing all the McAllister women hair since... I don't even know. Five or six years, I think? I trust her.

So here's my before pics:

SOOO two toned! Ack!

And... here's after!

Sooo much more subtle! :) I am very pleased.

Indiana Jones victory

So I've pretty much always been an Indiana Jones fan. It was one of the three franchises my daddy got me into when I was a little kid (the other two being Star Trek and Star Wars, naturally--but don't worry, my mom got me into chick flicks too). I've seen all the movies... but it's been probably 10 years, so I am a little fuzzy on all the details.

When we went to Disneyland, we went on the Indiana Jones ride a TON. It's one of our favorites--but Kristie can barely remember the movies. So when I came home this weekend for Kristie's farewell, I snagged a copy of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" to bring with me (my favorite Indy movie!). I watched it with my sisters last night. I forgot how campy and how wonderful these movies are. I was cracking up the whole time over the cheesy 80s effects and the way vehicles blew up at the slightest touch and just... everything! :) My sisters seemed to be loving it too, but I wasn't sure if they were really into it, especially Kristie, since she's not a nerd like the rest of us haha.

But tonight Kristie came to tell me she LOVED it and she wants to rent the other movies before she leaves on her mission! At first I was afraid she was just saying it to be nice, but she reminded me that 90% of the time she falls asleep during movies, and she was wide awake for the whole thing last time. 

This makes me almost as happy as when she admitted she likes Star Trek too. :)

Journey to the Happiest Place on Earth!!

So, my family went on a semi-spontaneous trip to Disneyland at the end of January.

If you know my family at all, you know this is very unlike us. :) But it was a good time to go. Shauna had just graduated BYU and was still job hunting, Kristie has the semester off school while she prepares for her mission in March. And we'd heard that January is a great time to go to Disneyland to avoid the crowds. With the measles outbreak going on, we had a pretty good shot at an empty park.

The first day was the absolute best. The park was almost empty. We could (and did) walk onto any ride we wanted. Didn't even need to get a fast pass. We took a bunch of pictures with characters and we didn't even have to wait in line!

I quickly succumbed to the temptation to get a mouse hat, while everyone else resisted... which resulted (as usual) in people thinking I was the youngest in our family instead of the oldest, but whatever. :)

We got to see the parades in both parks (Disneyland and California Adventure). We waited for a little bit to see the Disneyland one, but we walked right up to the California Adventure one when it was starting and managed to find an awesome spot.

Waiting for the Disneyland parade

The second day, we mostly spent in California Adventure. There were a lot more crowds than the day before, and we had to wait in lines for rides, but never for very long. The longest was half an hour (yes, I made my family wait half in hour for the Peter Pan ride... okay, I didn't make them, but they knew I wanted to, so they supported me in my choice. :) And yeah, I know the Peter Pan ride isn't in California Adventure--we did some park hopping! It was still really fun, but not quite as perfect at the day before.

One cool and kind of funny experience. We wanted to try this Toy Story ride called Midway Mania, but Shauna and Mom get a little bit motion sick, and there was a sign out front warning that this ride could cause motion sickness. There was also a 30 minute wait to get on to the ride. There was much debating whether or not Mom and Shauna wanted to try it. Mom finally asked an employee about it, and when he couldn't quite convince us that the ride was good for everyone in our family, he offered to let me, Dad, and Kristie skip the line to ride it to see if it was something Mom and Shauna could handle.  Just like that, he whisked us through to the handicap access point and let us on the ride, no waiting. And once we were done, we collected Mom and Shauna, and he let us skip the line again to go through together.

Excellent customer service. Who knew motion sickness could come so in handy? :)

At the end of the day, we watched the Fantasmic show. We got fastpasses in the morning so we had a great place to watch. It's quite an impressive show--I liked it a lot. When it was over, we had five minutes left before Disneyland closed, so we frantically ran into Pirates of the Caribbean for one last ride. Pirates has always been one of our favorites, because it's awesome, and because it's high capacity so the line is always short. We probably rode it 5 or 6 times in those 2 days. It was a great way to finish things up.

On our last day in California, we headed to Huntington Beach. Dad grew up in California, and when he was a kid, his family brought visiting relatives to Huntington because it has fire pits there, so they could roast hot dogs when people got hungry. We had a great time just chilling at the beach.  I was too much of a coward to go into the cold water, but Shauna and Kristie had a ball wading in and looking for shells.

The whole trip was amazing and so relaxing. Disneyland really is one of the happiest places on Earth. The little kids that come there are so happy and so excited! For them it is a dream come true.

I've made some happy memories there myself over the years and I intend to keep going back. :) I miss it a lot already!