Rose Bowl!

 Happy New Year- 2022

New Years Weekend was EPIC-- we had a great time with some of our besties Laura and Eric Belnap.

We stayed at our beloved friend's St. George home then off to California and the Rose Bowl and Rose parade festivities. We stayed in a NICE hotel in Pomona, CA.- the Sheraton- a Marriott property.   Then traveled into Pasadena for the Rose stuff. We drove there on Friday afternoon and arrived while the rose parade judges were doing their judging, so all of the floats were on display. 

We got to be up close and personal especially once we met up with our friend, Candy Revels Tippets…she’s a hired florist for this event. She started out as a volunteer and did such a good job, they hired her. Candy gave us a behind-the-scenes tour..and we got on even climb on and get our pics taken on the Utah float. Those flower-all organic floats are amazing. And smell delicious. It’s so cool, and a labor of love how they get all of the parts and pieces covered with smashed-up dried peas, or cauliflower or oatmeal, or wheat, or cocoa or whatever… it’s so creative. You have to really think out of the box. To affix the seeds etc.. they paint on small portions of glue and then roll the seeds on sponge width at a time. It takes forever! They have to cut all of their fresh roses and other flowers - thousands of them- and put them in individual water vials. Candy gave us roses from the floats.

It was so fun to be close up to all of this. And then we didn’t feel the need to wake up and be on the parade route by 6 am for an 8 am parade and find parking with 100,000 strangers.We bought a lot of Rose Bowl swag.

We celebrated New Year's Eve early with bad BBQ, some noisemakers and I was in bed by ten while Wayne watched football and hung on the phone with DELTA ( his New years Eve date?) trying to get our money back from our canceled Israel trip. He was successful.

On game day, we rolled out of bed, put on our Rose Bowl sweatshirts, had a leisurely breakfast then headed to the Stadium. Laura forgot her Handicap parking pass…but Wayne talked his way very nicely to the handicapped parking lot…which was a blessing considering the state of our friends with Laura’s legs and Eric’s Shoulder. We were a stone's throw from the stadium. It was fun to meet up with Mark and Jill’s family and Pat, Kirstie, Anna, and Becca Welch for a big family picture. The mood was electric. SO many Utah Fans…it was like a home game. With Ohio and Utah both wearing red it was hard to tell, but out of 87,000 people- easily 60,000 were from Utah.

We met up with Laila’s Markus for a bit - got him some expensive food  ( all stadium food is priced too high) and a rose bowl beanie and sent him back to his seat. Laila gave him a game ticket for Christmas.

The game was EPIC… really such a good game. It had everything..lots of touchdowns, few penalties, an end zone to end zone run by Covey for a TD. SO much cheering and high-fives all around! The weather was perfect and all was amazing until the last 2 minutes…when our QB got injured and then in the last 9 seconds of the game we lost. It was devastating. We were so glad to be there though. (Still mad we lost- hopefully, this isn’t indicative of 2022)