"Idol" Weekend

We recently returned from an awesome week in Nevada/Utah. Lamoni went to Vernal to do mini-storage stuff, and I stayed with my parents and we visited family until Lamoni was done. It was awesome to see family. We had a great time and events and pictures are soon to come. . .

Anyway, This all happened the day before we left for Utah. I'm an "American Idol" fan and if any of you have been watching this season, there was a contestant from Oregon. Her name is Kristi Lee Cook. She's a cute little blonde that sings the country style. Her hometown is Selma, Oregon. Yea, it's a very small town. If anyone know the small town I grew up in, Lake Point, UT - yea, Selma is that small!! Anyway, Selma is about 10 miles from our house. We became big fans of Kristi Lee - She's our local lady! You should have seen Lamoni's face when he realized she was from Selma, not Salem. He says, "You mean she's from Selma?" I reply, "Yea babe, if she was a member, she'd be in our ward!" "No way! lets vote!" he says. Her story is kinda cute. She auditioned in California but didn't make it past the first cut of producers. She really wanted to try again but had to sell her best barrel horse to buy a plane ticket to Philly where the next auditions were. Anyway, she made it - she made it to the top 7 and since she's been home she has tried to buy back her horse, but the guy won't budge. (Lamoni thinks he's smart, he should sell it on Ebay) So, Kristi bought a new horse and named him "Idol".

So, we found out that Kristi Lee was going to be signing autographs at the one little grocery store in Selma on Saturday, May 3rd. I really wanted to go, but we had a family baptism at 1pm. Kristi Lee was to be signing autographs from 11am to 1pm. So we showed up at 11am (Dressed in our church clothes, yea we got some crazy looks!) and the line was huge!

I think everyone underestimated the turnout for the event. So, we waited and the line was SOOOOO SLOW!!! Eventually we knew we weren't going to make it. We needed to leave Selma at 12:30 to make it to Grants Pass in time for the baptism. So, reluctantly, we left the line. The ironic thing was we finally made it to the first of the post/chain barriers when we left. Here is a picture of where we were when we left.

I was still able to go up and sneak a few pictures of Kristi Lee sitting at her table. Yea, those flowers needed to be moved. I should've just walked up there and moved them for my shot! Yea, right!!

So, we made it to the baptism and it was beautiful. We're glad we didn't miss it. We were on our way home at about 3:30pm and when we drove by Selma, we saw there was still a TINY line - so we pulled in and jumped out of the car. By golly, I was going to get the autograph after all. Have her hold MaryAlice and take pictures. But NOOOOO - they had the chain blocked off for the line, so I jumped the chain (yep, still in my church clothes!) and some lady came hurrying to me saying they were sorry, but they had to close the line. I looked at her, and then looked at Kristi Lee who was no more than 20 yards away. "We can't meet her?" I asked. The lady explained that Kristi Lee needed to get out of there, so they had to put an end to the line. But the nice thing was we wrote down our name and address and she would be mailing us an autographed picture. Well, no kissing babies, and neat pictures, but at least we can get an autograph through the mail. What a killer experience!