Rise and Shout!

Tom and I traveled down to Provo last weekend to attend the BYU Alumni Conference. BYU hosts us once a year to train us on how to be Chapter Representatives of BYU (we are the chapter co-chairs of the Boise area BYU Alumni Association). It is fun being back at BYU and feeling the "spirit of the Y". I still LOVE that place. In spite of the horrendous road construction all the way from Salt Lake to Provo, we got there on Thursday evening in time for the banquet with President Samuelson. He told the alumni about some of the building projects on campus and opened it up for questions. Afterwards we went to Whitney's new apartment and hung out with her. She joined us on Friday morning at our hotel for breakfast. mmm, mmm, belgian waffles.
We spent Friday in classes. They took us on a tour of the new BYU TV facility. It really is a state of the art building. We saw all 3 studios and I had to take a picture of the "True Blue" set, just for Devin. (those are just some random people sitting in the chair Jimmer sat in) Devin loves that show! We snuck away at lunchtime so we could visit Miss Morris at Spring Creek elementary school in Provo where she is student teaching. She is so cute and does such a good job with her class. Her cooperating teacher pulled us aside to tell us how much she LOVES Whitney and how she has called the principal, superintendent, etc, to tell them that "they have to find a place for this girl". Hopefully it will all work out. It was fun to see her and her little class of 2nd graders doing their art project. Friday evening, they had a tailgate party at the Alumni house and Cosmo and the BYU cheerleaders came to get us all pumped up. We took Whitney to the tailgate dinner and the game and loved cheering on those BYU Cougars. I was so happy to see so many "true blue" Cougar fans cheering on the Cougars a week after their debacle of a loss to Utah. I just can't help loving the Cougars win or lose. There is so much more to a great university than their football team.
After an exciting game, thankfully the Cougars won 24-17.
Saturday we had breakfast with Tom Holmoe (the BYU Athletic Director). He is a great speaker and told some great stories about Brandon Davies, Jim McMahon, the BYU/Utah game, etc. He also opened it up for questions and Tom had to ask him about whether or not BYU was joining the Big 12. Of course he was pretty tight lipped on that whole issue but I felt like he did leave the door open. We had classes until noon and then we hosted the Boise area BYU students at a pizza party at the Hinckley center Alumni house. We had over 90 students attend.

We bought 20 pizzas from Costco (thank you Whitney and Lauren for being our pizza delivery team) and lots of soda and bottled water. We didn't have any leftovers! We were so pleased with the turnout. We had a BYU trivia contest and then gave out BYU prizes in a drawing. I think everyone had a great time!
That night after the RS broadcast, we met Patty and Hal at Gloria's Little Italy Restaurant in downtown Provo for dinner. It was fun being with them and the food was really good!
We woke up early Sunday morning and hopped in the car and drove back to Boise so we could make it back to church by 1:00 pm so Tom could speak in Sacrament meeting and I could teach the RS lesson. It was a great weekend. GO COUGARS!!