BYU football fireside

Today at work, my boss told me that the BYU football players were having a fireside tonight at the stake center in Carrollton. He said that it was a "casual dress" fireside, so Alison and I decided to go straight there from work. Mom picked up Autumn for me, so we just headed out at 5:00. We stopped at this one house real quick so I could try out an elliptical I want to buy that I found on craigslist.com. It was a great machine, and I think I'll end up buying it.

Anyways, we got to the stake center at 6:30 and the fireside started at 7:00. We thought we were way early (especially by Mormon Standard Time), but to our dismay when we got there, everyone going into the building was dressed up in nice church clothes. We were wearing jeans and flip flops! Oh, well...we just decided that if anyone said anything to us then we would just tell them we were investigators and this was the best we had.

We walked in, and the place was already full! They had the whole cultural hall full of chairs like it was stake conference. I thought we could find a seat near the front b/c there were just 2 of us, but people had entire rows saved. After asking about 3 people if they were saving the whole row, I was getting annoyed. We finally found a seat towards the back and sat and waited and waited. I was glad we got there when we did, b/c people were standing in the aisles, in the hall, and they even had people go listen to the fireside in the primary and relief society and high council rooms! The fireside was supposed to start at 7, but didn't start until 7:30.

There were 3 old people behind us and they were so funny. One of them was trying to explain to the other 2 how to send text messages. Alison and I just sat there and listened to them and laughed. I died laughing when I saw this picture when I downloaded it. I guess they were disapproving of us taking a picture of ourselves! Oh, well.

It was good, and a few of the players spoke and then one of the line backers played a beautiful piano piece. Then they all sang "Army of Helaman". That was really neat. Then Sis. Mendenhall spoke and she said that her and Coach dated for 1 1/2 years then called it off and didn't see each other for 10 years! Then one day they happened to meet back up when they were by chance sitting and waiting at a gate for the same plane. They rekindled that old flame and got married. She was 30, and he was 32, which is really old by Mormon Standards. That gave me hope. LOL!

Coach Mendenhall spoke after her, and it was good. The underlying theme of all their messages was being a disciple of Christ and being a good example. After it was over, they said the players could only stay for 15 minutes and then had to get back on the buses. There was a mad rush to the front, and the players were surrounded, so Alison and I left. It was nice and I'm glad we went.

While we were in the fireside, someone had come and put "Y" stickers under every one's windshield wipers, but when we got to my car, I didn't have one. I was really tempted to take one off of someone else's car, but figured that wouldn't be good to steal at a church stake center!