Thursday, September 16, 2010

Everyday - Buddy Holly

There is a commercial on TV that is using this song and I couldn't get it out of my head the whole day and last night while hanging out with a buddy I heard Stand By Me and I told him that the whole entire Stand By Me album reminds me of a trip I took with my grandparents when I was 9 or 10.  My grandparents took me and four of my close in age cousins to Scotsdale and Tucson, Arizona.

My grandma (aka Tutu) is a very particular lady.  She required that we all matched all the time.  She did this to my dad and his brothers when they were little so she continued on the torture to her grandchildren.  She had 15 grandchildren so stop for a moment to think of the family pictures of all of us kids...yep we were all matching!


Tutu called my mom and informed her of all the outfits that she needed to get for me so I could match my other cousins.  She then told my mom that for the airplane trip I needed to have a white shirt, white sweater, white keds type shoes, hair in a pony tail and pink shorts.  So when we went shopping the good mom she is, she let me pick out whatever pink shorts I wanted.  So I show up at the airport ready to on my first airplane ride and the look on Tutu's face was horror!  I did not choose the right color pink and I looked different than my other cousins.  As you can see at the picture above that my cousins had light pink shorts on and since my mom let me choose whatever pink shorts I wanted I chose the bright pink shorts with the stripes on the bottom - damn I'm hot!  So needless to say the trip didn't start out well for me - Tutu did not like that I was "always trying to be different".  But my cousin Amy Lee didn't put her hair in a normal pony tail - she was rockin' the side pony tail.  Tutu loved it!  Being different for her was ok.  She had no idea what she did to all of us girls.  We had to wear a side frickin' pony tail for the rest of the trip!!!  Thanks Amy!!  Oh another thing to point out in the picture is that we all had to have animal purses.  Summer had the pink pig, Amber the purple elephant, Sarah had I think a blue hippo, I had a yellow dog and I don't remember what Amy Lee had.  My cousin Sarah and I pretty much made fun of Summer and Amber's purses because it was a pig and Amber's elephant trunk would hit people's butt from behind.  Seriously a lot of laughs from that!

The whole trip in the rental car we listened to the Stand By Me soundtrack.  We all sang out loud and giggled at our acting out each verse of every song.  Little girls - they are just silly.  Here are some more pictures of us all matching.


Too HOT for words...right?


One of these days - I believe the yellow dress day - we wanted to wear our hair in a regular ponytail and everyone was too scared to go ask Tutu.  So being the only one that wasn't that scared of her I go and ask.  On my way over to their hotel room I was thinking how dumb everyone was for being scared to ask to switch up our hair - it's a frickin' pony tail!!  Well... I got yelled at.  Even though I explained multiple times we ALL wanted to wear a regular pony tail - she didn't believe me.  "There you go again Chrystal - trying to be different!  You are just like your mother!"  On the verge of tears I said in most respectful voice I could (because I really wanted to scream at her) "Fine we will wear our stupid hair in a side pony tail and... I'm glad I'm like my mom!"  Then proceed to get my ass out of there as quick as possible because her eyes turned red and steam started coming out of her ears.

Now I'm really setting this trip up like it was the worst trip ever - it really wasn't there were some times - believe me.  We spent most of the trip laughing and having a good time.  My cousin Sarah and I were always getting in trouble because we were laughing and making up songs about our other cousins.  Let's just say the most famous song we ever wrote together was following the tune from Belinda Carlisle's song Circle in the Sand.  The song we made up was not very nice...but hey I was raised by a dad that made up songs all the time.  It's in my blood!  All of the fights and getting in trouble drama only lasted for a little bit and everyone was snapped back in a good mood because thats what you do in a big family right?


Here are the pictures of us at our happiest on the trip.  Swimming and going to water parks!  We got to wear our own non-matching bathing suit!  We were in heaven!  Of course I got the raised eyebrow from Tutu because I wore a bikini - but hey as my cousin Sarah says of me "I think you were born with a six-pack - why not show it off!"  We had so much fun at the water parks and swimming at the hotels we stayed at.  One of the tube slides we went down I seriously was going so fast I flipped over the entire tube - I thought I was going to land on my head!  I was completely silent the rest of the ride down.  No more screaming.


This picture is my favorite picture of us and my Papa Roy.  He was so handsome - we all used to tell him that too.  He was the most affectionate with us - Tutu was too sometimes but I think she liked that we would be affectionate with her.  It's funny how sweet he was with all of us when I think about it because he was the oldest of 8 boys and pretty much helped raise them and raised 4 boys of his own - then most of his grandchildren were all girls except 4 boys.  You would think he would not know what to do with all us girls - but he loved us and we all knew it.


All in all great memorable trip.  Enjoy!


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