HOLLYWOOD TRIP

*CAUTION - if you do not watch MTV or E! News the following blog may mean nothing to you!*

Thank you to my amazing friend Beth, who let me copy and paste her blog. I am going to add some things but thanks to her she saved me so much typing!!! So this is copyrighted by Beth Sowers , lol!

I just got back from one of the most amazing trips I've ever been on. Seriously. I have sooooo much to say that I feel overwhelmed and I'm afraid this blog with come out very sporadic and jumbled - sorry about that! I just knew I needed to do it quickly before I forgot any of the major highlights!!

I went to Hollywood this past week (June 4-8, 2008) with Julie, Beth, and Carrie. Carrie and I went two days earlier, Julie and Beth couldn't take that much time off work, so they met us Friday morning. We stayed at the Roosevelt Hotel which is really famous, there are always celebrity sightings there. We learned that anytime we dropped the name we got special treatment! So anyway, the 4 of us travel SO well together! They are the kind of girls that you feel really close to and have a blast with, yet they are still so polite and respectful which can sometimes go by the way-side when you get really close to people.

It did start out bad because Carrie and I were working our rears off up until we stepped on the plane. We were early, which never happens for our flight. We were so excited and sat there and chatted in the terminal. The next thing we knew some girl was running to our flight. We went to check in and heard our names over the intercom they were looking for us. Oops! Some other things happend that delayed us and thank goodness our conceriege was able to change our dinner reservations. We got to the hotel and they told me they didn't have anymore of the rooms we booked (keep in mind I booked the cheapest room I could get) She then preceded to tell me they upgraded us to a suite!! YES! We could see the Kodak Theatre, Chinese Theatre, and the Hollywood sign from our hotel windows! Wednesday night we went to dinner at Foxtail where we met the owner, Brent Bolthouse, who also owns Bolthouse Productions & SBE Group. We know him from The Hills (which is an MTV reality show for those of you that don't know) We got our pic taken with him! The dinner was amazing. As soon as we got to the bar, we learned the bartender and girl sitting there were both from MO. It was crazy!! After that we went to the nightclub Les Deux (also seen on The Hills) where they got right in and didn't have to wait in line! Girls Gone Wild was there throwing a party so we got some GGW swag. We also got our pics on the red carpet!!

The next day we rented a car and headed out to see the sites. We took Sunset all the way from Hollywood to Malibu. We went through Beverly Hills and Bel Air on our way. It was a beautiful drive. They didn't have any convertiables available but we at least got a car with a sunroof. On our way we saw the famous Chateau Marmont and Beverly Hills Hotel. There were press and paparrazi every where around the hotel. I made Carrie stop and I went up there to see what was going on. I will hyperlink this story. We also did some shopping on Robertson Blvd. This is where so many stars shop and get photographed all the time. We had lunch at The Ivy. It was amazing. We were able to see paparazzi chase people down the streets. The guy sitting next to us got up and the paps starting chasing him. We asked our waiter who it was and I guess it was the guy that used to host Soul Train. We shopped at Kitson (a Paris fav) and Surly Girl. They were awesome. We almost got our cameras taken away for taking pics inside. On our walk back to our hotel a girl in the street stopped us. She asked us if we wanted to be on the Jimmy Kimmel show. We said well we have dinner reservations. She told us Usher and Deanna Pappas (from the Bachelorette) were on the show and Usher was going to perform 5 songs she said so I am asking you if you want free tickets to an Usher concert. So we said, yes let us call our conceriege and change our dinner reservations. So then we lucked out and got to not only go watch the Jimmy Kimmel show, but we were hand picked to sit in the front row!! Usher was one of his guests, so they got to watch a special private concert afterwards. After that we had a late dinner at Mr. Chow. We didn't see any celebs there. Which I was suprised about. Then we went to Area nightclub (also seen on The Hills), again we had no problem getting in and were even taken to the fast lane! So, as if all this wasn't good enough, when we got back to our hotel someone came up to them and said that there was a movie (Mercy) being filmed there starring Dylan McDermott and Scott Caan and wanted to know if we'd be extras! We immediatly went upstairs and the girl starting doing our makeup. We waited until 4:30am and they still weren't ready for us so we called it a night but we did get their pic taken with Scott. It was really cool to see behind the scenes of a movie shoot.

Julie and Beth got there the next morning, and we immediately got ready and walked to a cute little cafe to grab lunch. Carrie and I were so excited to see them!! We then went on a private star tour - no smelly buses for us! The driver was awesome, he had a photo album of all the celebrities he's driven around before. He was very thorough and explained all the houses we got to see, which included J Lo, P Diddy, the Playboy mansion, Paris Hilton, Jackie Chan, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air houses, Nancy Reagan, Will Smith, Charlie Sheen, and so many more that I can't even remember! It was a lot of fun. We also got to tour a celebrity cemetery/memorial garden....where Marilyn Monroe is buried!! This was amazing to us. We also found it interesting that Hugh Hefner has already bought the spot next to hers! He told us to be buried there costs around 1 million dollars. Ouch! Anna Nicole tried to be buried here and they would not let her. They wanted to atmosphere to remain quiet and thought with her fans there it would change so they denied her.

When we got back we grabbed some frozen coffee drinks at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and then lounged by the pool a little bit and had a few drinks. There are celebrity sightings all the time at this pool (yes, it's been seen on The Hills - LOL!) but unfortunately none that day. So, we decided to start getting ready for our evening. We had dinner that night at STK, a new celeb hangout and steakhouse. Right when we walk in the door we see Heather Locklear!!! We were so excited, but of course didn't want to bother her during her meal. We take our seats and enjoy the expensive meal. Our hotel called in champagne to be sent to our table so we loved that. Then we saw Kristin Cavallari (MTV reality show Laguna Beach, Spring Breakdown, and she's filming two other movies right now) standing at the bar! I asked if we could take our pic with her and she was super nice. She even made her friend take the pic. So, that was really exciting. Well, then we see Heather Locklear leave her table and we think maybe she went to the bathroom, so I nominate Beth to go track her down. Beth is feeling really nervous at this point. She goes in the bathroom and no Heather. There are 3 stalls full so she watches the first one open - no Heather - the second one open - no Heather. So she basically decides she's probably not in there and decide to go to the bathroom. She's halfway in the stall when the third door opens and out walks Heather Locklear! So Beth turns around, fumbles around in my purse a bit so she doesn't look like a huge moron, and finally walk up to her and say "How are you?" "My pants are really tight!" she says. I can tell at this point she's drunk. She says "They are?" and she's like "Yeah, see?" and pulls up her shirt to show Beth her stomach!! Beth tells her that we'd love to have our pic taken with her and she says sure, she'll be right out so I go in the hallway to wait. Well, this guy walks by me and just when he gets past me I bark "David Spade!" He slowly turns to look at me and finally says hesitantly "Yeah...?" And I smiled and said "I thought that was you!" Well right then Heather walks out of the bathroom, sees him, and says "Hi!" I guess they were there together. He looks back and forth at us, kinda like wondering what Heather Locklear is doing standing next to me. I say "We're going to take a picture!" and then he says "You guys could be twins!" Uh, hello, I think I'm going to take that as a compliment! HA! So anyway, we head back downstairs and she ends up being escorted out the back door so we missed our pic with her but we did get a pic with David! However my camera flashes twice which messed him up so it's not the best picture! He told me that my flash is "gay" LOL. Oh, and I forgot to mention the manager of STK kept coming by our table to see how we were doing, which we thought was odd since there were so many celebrities in there and we were just regular people! LOL! We told him we were going to Villa that night, which is a pretty exclusive night club, and he said based on looking at us he didn't think we'd have a problem getting in, but just in case he gave us his card. So that made us feel pretty good! To top it off when we walked out the paparazzi took a ton of pictures of us! They zoomed in on my ring and $12 clutch. I hope I make it in the mags, with trends to watch and not fashion dont's!! It was actually pretty hilarious. Especially because they ended up seeing us hail a cab! HA! When we were leaving we also saw Larry Birkhead pull up (Anna Nicole's Baby Daddy as Beth told us when she spotted him) It was hilarious!

Anyway, that night we went to Villa (again, we've seen it on The Hills) and our concierge had told Brooke over the phone that she'd have to see us first before she could try to get us on the list, and we passed her inspection! So we got there and got right in! Didn't even have to use the manager's card! It was a lot of fun!! We couldn't take any pics there but we managed to get one taken by the waitress. I had fun dancing and accidently knocked some tiny antlers off the wall. So Julie decided to take them home as a Villa souvenier! lol

The next day we went and grabbed coffee and pastries at The Coffeebean and sat in one of the hotel lounges to eat it and relax. We then thought we'd lay by the pool all day, until we saw all the lounge chairs were reserved for bottleservice, which meant we'd have to buy a $400 bottle of alcohol just to sit by our hotel pool!!! It turns out we should have stayed because Lindsay Lohan showed up later at our pool. We decided to pass and rented a car instead and drove to the beach! We went to Hermosa Beach, a cute little beach town. We had a great and relaxing time.

We drove down Robertson Blvd. on the way home and got to see all the ritzy shops and things that the celebrities are always spotted at, we checked out Paris Hilton's house again because we remembered where it was, we also found Sunset Tan, which E! did a reality show about. Before we headed back to the hotel we had ice cream at Pinkberry, which we had seen on The Hills. Pinkberry won't even allow you to take pics inside so we ate our goods outside so we could document it.

That night we had dinner at Eva Longoria's new restaurant Beso. It was really pretty and full of beautiful people - definitely made us feel inadequate! But it was cool, there was a private party going on in the club upstairs so we enjoyed watching person after person walk up there and get denied! We started playing a game guessing if they would get denied out not to entertain ourselves. HA! While we were there we got our pic taken with Shayne Lamas, who just won The Bachelor. I also thought I spotted Ludacris. So Carrie googles him on her phone and we are all like, yeah it's him. Then he stands up and he is sooo tall. So we think he was a NBA player but we are not sure who???

That night we went to Goa nightclub (seen on The Hills) but this time we rolled up in an Escalade (thanks to our hotel) so we felt pretty important. We called our driver Gary and then when we got in, he said where are you girls headed. We said Goa please. He started laughing at us and we were all like, dude what are you laughing at. He said it's two blocks you could have walked there. We felt bad so definitely paid him. When we got there the valet attendants ran up to open our doors and we got to go right to the front of the long line and got right in! They told us we looked really cute! The club was awesome - really cool looking. We got our pic in the same booth the Hills girls partied in. The bartender was from Missouri and had gone to MU so we talked to him for a long time. He was roommates with Brad Smith! Then he introduced us to his roommate, Jareb Dauplaise, from Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and soon to be Transformers 2. He was really cool and talked to us for a long time. He assumed we were aspiring actresses and couldn't believe it when we said we were from Missouri because he said we "fit right in"! Which we took as a compliment, but at the same time were offended on behalf of our state.

When we got back to the hotel we were walking up the stairs and saw Rihanna walking down them!!! She looked at us and smiled (I'm sure she was amused by the looks on our faces) so Brooke chased her down outside and asked for a pic and she said "Not right now sweetheart, maybe later." We think she was annoyed her car wasn't there yet to pick her up. I can't believe I was able to talk to her with her bodyguards around her. So, we realize she must have just left Teddy's (the Roosevelt's exclusive club, our concierge told us she couldn't even get us in, it's basically just for celebs) so we go back in and decide to sit in the lounge outside Teddy's to wait and see who might come walking out. We saw Regina Hall from the Scary Movie series, but I can't remember if we saw anyone else.... (Brooke and Carrie if you're reading this you might have to remind me! HA!)

The only scary thing of the trip was right when we walked back into our hotel room our last night there was a knock on our door and someone kept yelling "Hey!" We looked through the peephole and realized it was a guy we had met at Goa! We were freaked out because no one had told him our room number, plus this hotel is so well protected, you even have to have a room key to use the elevator! So we were like how did he find us and get up here?! So we call our new security friend that we had just had a photo shoot with by the elevators (LOL) and he checked into it for us. He was like "Do NOT leave this room under any circumstances!" Which really freaked us out!! He ended up seeing the guy leave the hotel with some girls and he claimed he had just knocked on the wrong door. But still, it was weird that we randomly meet him at the club, and then he ends up knocking on OUR door!!

Anyway, I know this was a long story, and I applaud those of you that stuck it out! LOL!! It was just so amazing, and I already can't wait to go back!

Thanks, Beth for letting me pitch in my comments and use your words! You are the best!!

I will add pics and more hyperlinks soon!!!

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a great Memorial Day Weekend!! My mom and I went to Cape to visit Lauren & Brian. They just moved to Cape from Anna, IL. We got to see Brian's new office. He was on call all weekend and super busy. We got to see the bad sides of being a vet. He received calls all throughout the night from people with sick pets. Their pets of course felt bad all week but they waited to call during Memorial Day weekend and late too! It was interesting to say the least. The girls did a lot of shopping. I got some cute dresses for my Hollywood trip! We went to some really cool stores in Downtown Cape and Jackson. On Monday, Jon got rained out of the field so we decided to go to the air show. But it was on Saturday & Sunday so we decided to go to the Memorial Day parade instead. It was so cool to see all the veterans in the parade. They were all so proud and happy to represent us. It gave me chills sometimes. Plus, we saw lots of shriners. Jon and I both love them. I am not sure if you ever grow out of loving the Shriners in their little cars. However, these guys were from the Lake & were crazy!! I have never seen Shriners drive so crazy, fast & reckless during a parade. I was like, please hold your kids back! They had one guy in a semi that I swear was about to turn over. It was really awesome & made us laugh. We then went to the Courthouse for a service. It was nice to see all the veterans dressed in their uniforms & honoring their own. Then we had lunch on the patio at boone Tavern. Later in the day we went on a 4 mile bide ride on the trial by our house. Jon had already ran 4 miles earlier in the day. I am terribly out of shape and had to stop a couple of times. Later that day we bbq'd with our neighbors the Lucas'. It was a great weekend!! I have a few pics below in a slide show.