The Bachelors Party

I know the wedding was weeks ago but I am only now recovering from the wonderful week that led up to Alex and Wendy's wedding and the days following. When my family comes home I love every minute that we are together and we usually stay up till the wee hours of the morning playing and visiting. That is normally OK because we can sleep-in the following morning but not this week. We would stay up until after 2:00 and then have to get up early the next morning. Wednesday was Alex's bachelors party and we were up at 5:00 to haul him off to the beach.

Thursday was our day to get the venue ready for the wedding and I was up at 7:00 to go pick up the rental van,

Friday, of course, was the wedding. No one slept in on that day

Saturday was family pictures at the beach at 8:00. We were all up before 7:00

Sunday was the first trip to the airport, up at 4:30

Monday was another airport trip at 4:30 and everyone of those days we were up until at least 2:00. I was so exhausted.

Today I want to share what a wonderfully exhausting day we had at Alex's bachelors party that Ben had planned out. As I mentioned, it all started at 5:00. The boys from Utah wimped out on us and couldn't drag themselves out of bed on time and Trevor, Alycia, Sam and Sarah couldn't drive from Provo in one day so they overnighted in St George and missed out on the early morning events. Frank arrived at 5:00 AM and we all gathered together to wake up Alex. Justin flew down on Tuesday just so he could join in the party and of course we played until about 3:00 so most of us were working on less than two or three hours of sleep. 

Ben and Frank had bought a package of adult diapers for Alex to wear. I repeat, this was Ben's plan and I claim no responsibility for any of it but I was there and I took pictures as evidence. Frank, Ben, Brandon, Justin and myself all rushed into Alex's room and forced him to change into the diaper. We then hauled him off to Pacific Beach for an early morning dip into the ocean. Thank goodness the beach was nearly empty at that morning because everyone except myself decided that it would be a good idea to change into diapers and join Alex. Here is a picture of them before they all ran into the ocean. The picture of them coming out of the ocean with the waterlogged diapers is much more interesting but I decided not to share that one with you. 

Following the early morning dip we went to "The Broken Yolk" for breakfast. They have this 12 egg omelette that is free if you can eat it within an hour. When the food came there was no way that he was going to eat that omelette. In fact, we should have just ordered the omelette and the rest of us would have been satisfied with just that. I had two eggs over easy and that was plenty for me. 

After breakfast it was back to the beach. By this time the beach was much more crowded and they weren't done with the diapers yet. This time it was just Alex and they made him stroll down the crowded beach with all of the onlookers. All of the women were pulling their children as far away from Alex as they could get him and all of the guys were grinning and making comments like "that must have been a heck of a bet". I felt bad for Alex but when they pulled out a can of creamed butternut squash and poured it into his diaper I felt even worse. You can only imagine what that looked like coming out of his diaper. I was looking around for fear someone had called the police but luckily it was all over before anyone came. We sent Alex into the ocean to clean himself up and then we were off to the house to pick up the late comers and head off to the paint ball park on Camp Pendleton. The boys have had paint ball guns for years but I've never actually gone to a paintball park with them. Boy have I been missing out. That was a ton of fun. I was having way too much fun to take any pictures. If Justin sends me one of the pictures he took I will add it to the blog. The last battle was a free for all and it was by far the best. Ben and I ended up in a standing shoot out from about fifteen feet away. We shot each other up until finally I dove for cover calling for an alliance. At the end of the day I counted at least twenty round dark bruises all over my body. Two of them were bleeding quite nicely. It was so much fun. 

From the paint ball park it was straight to the cart race track with a short break for dinner. These little carts can hit speeds up to fifty miles an hour. We had one practice race, a qualifying race and then the grand finale with trophies and all. It was also a ton of fun but when you come in last every single race it just isn't as much fun. I enjoyed shooting people a whole lot more. My average lap time was only one or two seconds slower than the fastest lap time but after sixteen laps that adds up. I think on the final race I was finally figuring out the tricks of braking and accelerating around the hair pin turns but it was too little too late. Ben won first place with Justin coming in second and Pat third. Ben's trophy now has a coveted spot on his mantle alongside the family pictures. 

After the races we headed to the church where we set up three XBox's so everyone could have a humongous Halo tournament. We also had a nasty poison ball war in the gym with tennis balls. By this time I was starting to feel my paintball wounds. Brandon totally flaked out in some corner and it took us twenty minutes to find him. The final hurrah for the day were the Rocky Mountain Oysters. I've always wanted to try these but never got the chance. Fried with enough butter and garlic they really don't taste all that bad. I rather enjoyed them. Ben brought five pounds of them and that was more than enough for the twenty some odd people who were there that night. 

By the time we got the church cleaned up and got to bed it was somewhere around 2:00 and I had to go pick up the rental truck by 8:00 the next morning. My week of sleep deprivation was under way.

-------------------trivia--------------------

Thai Ngoc, born 1942, claimed in 2006 to have 

been awake for 33 years or 11,700 nights.

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