SUN VALLEY 08!!

Yeah... maybe about time to write about Christmas, eh??  For those of you who don't know, I had the absolute best Christmas this year.  I went to Sun Valley, Idaho, as

 part of a group called The Sun Valley Carolers.  We left for Sun Valley on December 15th and stayed there until December 31st.

I loved our schedule.  We got to basically just chill out during the day, and then we performed at night!  Our performance rounds were different each night.  We had a number of restaurants we would go in between, and would sing 3 or 4 songs at each stop.  We would also stop and sing for people along our path.  We did all sorts of fun stuff during the days.  Snowboarding, shopping, ice skating, bowling, playing games… rough life.  :)

Let’s talk about snowboarding.  I loved it!  Yes.  YES it hurts. Oh, and I should throw out there that I am by NO means good at it, I just really like it!  My first experience was really… not so good.  It took me an entire hour to get down the hill ONCE.  And not only that, but I was in one heck of a lot of pain by the time I made it to the bottom.  It took me forever to figure out how to just stand up.  Once I finally was able to get up and stay up for at least 30 seconds at a time it started to get really fun!  By the end of the two weeks I definitely loved it.

 On Christmas Eve we performed at the annual ice show.  All the carolers went and stood on the corner of the ice at the ice skating rink and we sang songs while the ice skaters… well… skated to them.  It was so funny though, cause it wasn’t just snowing… it was blizzarding!  By the end of the show (it lasted about an hour and a half) the guys had two inches of snow on their top hats and the girls had two inches of snow on their heads.  Huh.  We were seriously being buried alive.  It was so great.  By the end of the show we all looked like drowned rats.  :)  After our shows that night a few of us had a bit of a party.  We watched It’s a Wonderful Life and had hot chocolate and cider.  We also had a group sleepover in my hotel room.  This next part will probably only be funny if you know Cory Keate.  By the time we finally decided to go to bed it was about 4:00 in the morning.  We were all so tired, and yet so energetic at the same time!  I was sleeping on my bed, and Cory slept on the floor between the two beds.  

5:00 AM, I wake up to a strange tapping feeling.  I look over, and all I see is one slipper, held in the outstretched arm of Cory.  He was still lying on the floor, but had his arm fully extended straight up so that he could repeatedly whack me with his slipper!  I asked him what the heck he was doing.  He looked at me.  He looked at the slipper.  He looked at me.  He looked at the slipper.  Finally he answered, “I… have NO idea.”  He had been totally asleep!  We laughed for about 30 minutes STRAIGHT.  It was the kind of laughing where you’re trying so hard NOT to laugh that you end up snorting and making all sorts of weird noises.  Then you’ll finally ALMOST get control and one bursts out laughing again.  We were trying so hard not to wake everyone else up!  Loved it.  :)

 On Christmas night, we decided we were starving.  We wanted something to eat so badly, but there is NOWHERE to buy food at night in Sun Valley or Ketchum.  And when I say nowhere… I really mean it.  Not a restaurant, grocery store, or gas station.  It was like 10:30, so we decided we were going to drive to a nearby town to go to a McDonalds they had there.  It was a lot farther away than we thought it would be, but we knew it would be worth it anyway.  We drove all the way there only to find out that McDonalds was closed!  Not even the drive-through was open and it was only 11:00!  We were sooo disappointed.  We knew that we still needed to find food somewhere.  We were driving back to Sun Valley watching for ANY food opportunity when we passed the hospital.  :)  We pulled in because we knew that the hospital would have a cafeteria.  The hospital was closed.  What?  You couldn’t go in after visiting hours (9:00).  Dejected, we got back in the car and kept driving.  As we got into Ketchum, we saw a little… diner that looked open.  Luck!  This tiny, smoky diner was open until 2 am.  So we spent Christmas night in a funny, quirky, smoky little diner where they played music WAY too loud, and where we got to listen to their chatty, crazy worker.  We were sooo grateful for that food, though!  It was really quite fun.  THEN a few days later we were hungry after rounds again, so we tried McDonalds again.  We thought that since it was no longer a holiday we’d probably we okay.  Wrong again.  :(  We found a gas station on the way back that time.  Mmmm… Hot Pockets.  :)

 There were a couple of nights we had dances to go to.  (Crazy fun!) There was even one night (due to lack of sleep) that we stayed up making sock puppet music videos.  No, really.  :)  They were brilliant.

 Anyway… I’m not sure why I’m posting about all these random stories.  My favorite part of Sun Valley was the people I got to work with.  We had so much fun.  We had the opportunity every night to sing about the Christmas season and to bring the magic of the holiday to people.  It was an experience that I will never forget.

 Sorry for another long post!