"Come on Down"

I have dreamed my whole life to be on "The Price is Right" and Monday August 10, 2009 I finally had my chance!
We planned a family vacation with Mike's family to Oceanside, California where we would rent a beach house. This is the second year the family has done a vacation in California at a beach house. The first time was 2 years ago, we wanted to attend a taping of TPIR because it was the last year Bob Barker would be hosting, but no such luck, Bob didn't do any taping of shows during the summer. So this year Mike's parents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and wanted to do the beach house thing again. My sister-in-law thought we should try again to attend a taping. I, of course, said "absolutely!" We did some checking and things worked out, Drew Carey is the new host and he tapes all year, so we booked our tickets.
Booking tickets sounds like a good idea but it does not guarantee you a seat in the audience. We, which consisted of Mandy, Mike, Myself, Claramae, Keaton, Brenda, & Milly, decided that we would leave Oceanside at 3am. Everyone was ready to go, except Mandy, of course we all gave her crap for making us wait, which we would have done to anyone that had made us wait. I had the honor of driving because I was so excited that I needed to be in control of something. I decided that I would not even stop at McDonalds for a coke, which is not like me, but we needed to get up there and get in line for our tickets. It was a one hour and fifty minute drive and the roads were perfect until we got on the 101 and things started backing up, there was a bad accident that we had to crawl through. Emergency vehicles had just gotten there and I know that God was watching over us because if we had left 20 minutes earlier we would have been a part of that accident. (Thank you Mandy).

We arrived at the Studio between 5 and 5:30am, thinking we would be there at a good time. Wrong, the people at the front of the line had actually gotten there the night before and took turns sleeping and waiting. I thought we were crazy, but that is insane! While we waited in line we met "polka dot lady" she was from Arizona, had been staying in California for vacation and had already been to a taping the week before so she filled us in on the scoop of the show and her plan to get called down, it helped pass the time. Finally the line moved and they passed out the order of arrival passes, I thought we had lucky numbers starting with 169-176, "we were so in!" Everyone kept laughing at me because I was so sure at every moment "we were so in!" At this point we were free to leave and come back at 8:30am so we went to .... you guessed it, McDonalds for breakfast.

Next step was to hurry back to the studio and wait. When it was time they began calling numbers 1-40, 41-80, 81-100, 101-120, only 2 more sets to go! "We are so in!", but wait, they told us to sit tight and they would be with us in 30 minutes. Oh no, here came the groups, yes the groups that "polka dot lady" had told us about, they don't have to show up until 9am. So we waited some more and counted while they kept coming, Claramae was trying to be negative and I said "NO, we will not be negative, we are so in.". There was one group that was waiting for some of their group that did not show up so they had to give up their group spot because of that we just made it in! "Yes, we are so in!"

Once we got our guaranteed seat we got to wait some more! OMG We were going to be on TPIR! I had a hard time containing myself, I felt like a bottle of pop that was being opened slowly, Excite, calm down, bubbles, calm down! I was a very excited woman! They passed out numbers, name badges, and an information card to fill out something interesting about yourself. On my card I wrote:
"I sell real estate in Utah. I have been practicing my "Come on Down" face eversince I was a little kid. Oh and by the way it is my mother-in-law's 50th wedding anniversary. And it's my son's 17th birthday so I want to win something for his birthday."
After they came around and picked up our cards some guy came around and took our pictures, I had to pose of course, I think that was the clincher.
Then we had to wait some more. I made some friends with a group from Utah and a couple of girls that were sitting next to us. They were from Texas and Arkansas and had flown in to stay with a friend that lived in the area going to school. When they landed at the airport the friend called them and told them she was to stressed to have them stay at her house. WOW, some friend, I cannot believe that a friend would wait until you landed in the airport to bail on you. The thing that killed me was when they told me the friend got mad that they didn't call her so she could spend some time with them on the weekend. (The Nerve) We became good friends, we agreed that if either of us won the showcase we could storm the stage!
So after waiting some more we finally moved to the next waiting place. This was the place to wait and meet the producers for a 10 second interview. 10 seconds? How do you make an impression in 10 seconds? After each group met with the producer they were herded toward security, and we moved on down the bench to wait for our turn, and then it was. I was so giddy I almost couldn't stand it and I had a hard time talking. So our turn was over and we headed over to security, I thought by this time we weren't worthy.
Well we made it to security, and I knew "we are so in!" After going through security we got to another waiting place and Mike encouraged me to run up and down the rows trying to get people to do the wave. That's all I needed, I didn't run up and down the rows but I started the wave... several times. It got to the point where the people at my end of the rows were booing those that stopped the wave. Finally the wave made it to the end, just as I was getting ready to start another wave from the other end of the line they started moving us again, I thought to another waiting place. This time it was for real, we were going to the studio! I could hardly contain myself!
We were the last ones in the studio, they split our group and put the girls in the front row and the boys in the back. While we were getting settled Rich Fields was giving us the low down on how to act if we got to be contestants. They had people all over the stage getting us to scream and yell and get crazy, quite the adrenalin rush. All of the sudden, they start calling names, I really wasn't sure the show had started taping, next thing I know I see my name on a card and I hear "Ali Overton, Come on Down!" I was in total shock! This was for real, but it felt like a dream, I was really in contestants row!

New Year, New Teeth!

I know it's hard to believe that Claire is 7 years old and losing her teeth. She has lost 4 of her bottom teeth and we have been waiting for her 2 front teeth to fall out. When she was 2 the dentist put caps on those teeth because the teeth were dying. At 7 they were looking awful because the enamal was coming off and her new teeth were growing in behind, causing them to spread apart. She was looking somewhat like a hillbilly.
Here she is on our way to the dentist office. We had been tugging, twisting, pulling and wishing the teeth would fall out soon, they were loose but nothing was happening. Finally I gave in and called the dentist. I thought the dentist will be able to pop them right out and I'm going to feel like an idiot because we couldn't do it on our own. I WAS WRONG!
Look at these suckers! Full on root! The dentist even said there was no way they would have come out on their own. I felt much better, just a bit poorer.
Here she is without her 2 front teeth! Why did we wait so long? She looks so cute!
She had her teeth in a little box for the tooth fairy! Yuck! She got $4 for those teeth! I guess the tooth fairy has been cutting back with this economy.

We had the family over Christmas Eve for the annual Party! Mike and I worked together to get the house and the food ready. We had so many fun activities planned and the kids were very excited. I spent the day before baking cookies, star cookies from scratch, so the kids could make cookie Christmas trees. It was a good idea! I had almost enough cookies for each of the younger kids to make a tree, so I rolled out the last of the dough, cut out the last of the stars needed, placed them on the cookie sheet and carefully put them in the oven. In the mean time I was cleaning up the mess, getting dinner ready, and having great conversation with the family. As I was wiping down the last of the flour that had been spread on the roll out mat, I began to smell a burning..., it was food..., my first thought was something on the burner..., but I looked over and didn't see any smoking like you would expect. OH MY..... IT WAS THE COOKIES! I frantically opened the oven and quickly pulled out the cookie sheet, but it was too late. The cookies were now pointed hockey pucks. I called Ashley in tears "Christmas is ruined!" I wasn't really crying but really wanted to cancel the party..... all because of burned cookies. So we decided to just let them decorate the cookies, the kids wouldn't care either way.




On Christmas Eve Ashley was getting ready to leave for our house. She was in charge of bringing Pink Piggy Pie, our traditional Christmas Eve dessert. The plan was for her to bake the crust at home and finish the rest when she got to our house. So I was waiting for them to come over, when the phone rings, it's Ashley crying, "Christmas is ruined!" She wasn't really crying, Mckenzie had gotten out of her car seat and kicked the pan of crust it hit something and broke the crust to pieces. We decided that would just make it easier to serve.

Ashley and Justin also brought the wii so the older kids and adults could play guitar hero or something. After we were done eating, the kids were playing the wii, others were just sitting around visiting, and the kitchen lights started flickering and just went out. Apparently the same thing happened in the basement where the kids were playing wii. Crazy, half the lights go out in my house, so we started messing with the breakers and determined that we would have to call an electrician. "Now Christmas is ruined" not really. We still got to finish the party with half of our electricity.





That was the Eve of Christmas! Santa still found our house even in the dark! Claire woke up early, this is the first year we haven't had to wake her up. She was so funny! After opening up presents we went back to bed for a while before getting ready to go up to Ty and Mandy's house. While I was cutting up the ingredients for our pasta salad, the other half of our power went out. What a Christmas! It turned out the power company was responsible for both halves of our power going out so no electrician needed.