lesson learned

so this weekend i learned that i need to limit the partying. when i was a freshman in college i survived on an average of three hours of sleep a night and could go out and have fun at pretty much any hour. in the past few days, i learned that those days are definitely over.

as a recap: friday we went back to the wilshire ward to go to the baptism of our friend yuri. she is the coolest girl and we were lucky enough to have her and the missionaries over for one of her lessons while she was investigating the church.

it's kind of amazing we are still friends actually because at one point during that lesson, the sister missionary from mexico took yuri around our whole apartment pointing out things that set us apart from the world. wedding pictures: "married forever, not just till death." entertainment center: "no bad movies." refrigerator (which was almost empty and not that clean, i might add): "healthy food, no alcohol." imagine that awkward little walk with a strong latina accent and you've almost got the whole experience. yeah. we still talk about that one.

anyway, it was so good to be there and see yuri on her special day.

jesse, yuri, sister burton (one of the missionaries -- not the one from my story ;), me, brandon

i should say here that we took the train to the church, because i THOUGHT the last subway stop was close to our old building. um, not really. we ended up walking like two miles to get there, but of course we didn't miss anything because the baptism started 30 min. late. but on the walk i realized i haven't shared much on the bloggy blog about the AMAZING los angeles stake center.

this is the exterior of the building...it kind of looks like a huge white mosque. the building was commissioned by heber j. grant himself in the 1930s and has been around ever since. president hinckley actually came in 2003 to rededicate the place after some renovations.

here's the front of the chapel -- hard to tell, but at the top of the dome there's a huge stained-glass mural of christ knocking at the door. it's amazing! it also provides a nice distraction from boring sacrament meeting speakers :)

these are the walls of the chapel. more stained glass, painted walls, even painted beams in the ceiling. it really is a beautiful building. (sorry for the fuzzy pictures...i was trying to be stealth-mode)

after the baptism we went to dinner with some LA friends at the grove, it was SO much fun to be back in the familiar neighborhood with our old friends. but then we had to ride the stupid train home, and got back at midnight. a little late but not so bad.

but then saturday came. this weekend was the stagecoach festival, an annual country music weekend-long concert extravaganza. i've been wanting to go for a while, and luckily for me toyota is the main sponsor so i got hooked up with two free passes.

we drove almost two hours just to get there (it was in indio, out past palm springs) and saw taylor swift, dierks bentley, the judds, dwight yoakam and rascal flatts. you better believe i wore my cowboy boots -- we had a great time! (just don't ask me about how tim mcgraw AND carrie underwood played today and how i decided not to go...still a little upset about that one. oh well, i have my priorities straight, right?)

all good and fun, until we left at 11:00 p.m. and still had the two hour drive ahead of us. let's just say i was reallllly tired when we got home. i just don't hold out like i used to, i guess.

thank goodness for sunday, my day of rest! we celebrated cinco de mayo a night early with THESE bad boys -- homemade cafe rio knock offs! it was the best. i'm almost ready for the workweek again.

and that was my weekend. longest post ever? probably. ten points if you made it this far.