Peace, Love & Understanding: Utah

We had another busy day at Jay Osmond's Get Together. We started out with getting some pastries and some delicious Hot Chocolate.

After we selected our table (we lucked out), there had a lot of items that they were raffling off...lots of Osmond memorabilia, like albums, puzzles, books, posters, dolls etc. We didn't enter any of the raffles. I loved all the stuff but didn't really have a way to get things back home and if even I did, what would I do with it at home except sit it on a shelf or something.

Prior to the Get Together, I only entered an online raffle - to win drum lessons with Jay...more on that later.

So, they got started talking about the day before and the play. Jay asked "Did you hear anything that you didn't already know?" and everyone agreed that we had heard everything. If you are a lifelong fan, you pretty much know everything about them.

Jay and Karen talked a while and told us the story about how they met and their first date. They met on an LDS app. She didn't know it was Jay when he sent her a message that he wanted to meet her, because they only had User Names. His was CrazyDrummer55. We did an ornament exchange. Our ornaments were the best because they were Jay themed.

We got some cute ones too - I got the US Capitol in DC and Susan got a pretty Lenox Silver Snowflake, which she gave to me since she said it wasn't her taste. I offered her the DC one, but she said she didn't want it.

Karen and Jay then played the Mr. & Mrs. game. So fun. They would ask questions, like "Who takes the longest to get ready? Who is most likely to spend more in Costco?" and things like that. They sat back-to-back so they couldn't see each other, and they held Blue to answer Jay or Pink to answer Karen. They got into a few heated (but light-hearted and fun) disagreements on some of them, which often lead to funny stories about Jay.

By the way...see his shirt? Dotty Dodson, a fan from Nashville, who actually received one of the ornaments I had brought, gave him this shirt. If you are looking up close, it has the lyrics of Crazy Horses.

At our table, Susan and I were the only Americans. Everyone else was from England we made great friends with them, including Eva (the 21 year old I spoke about yesterday) and her mom, along with (right to left) - Cora, Susan and Carol, who all went to Las Vegas the next day to see Donny's show.

They were the best!

We broke from lunch and went to the same French Cafe around the corner but this time we each got a whole croissant each and no dessert one. I was trying to drink a lot of water too because it is so dry out there. I had remembered that when I was there 20 years ago.

After lunch, some (on the other side of the room) played a joke on Jay. He always says he does "Squirreling" which mean he will get easily detracted, like the dog from "Up" and will be in the middle of something and "Squirrel"

So these ladies dressed at Squirrels - cute. Later, I learned they gave their customs away to some soccer players that were staying in the hotel, I'm sure those guys appreciated that.

Then they had the raffle drawing and .... I WON! I gave my chance to drum with Jay to Susan of course. He was only supposed to pick 3 people but ended up picking 6. I wish he would have kept it down to 3 because there was too many people trying to learn and he spread them out on different drums. I was the 2nd person picked.

Unfortunately, when Susan got to the stage, at first she was totally facing me, then she moved to the other drum and her back was to me the entire time....why did she do that? She just didn't think about where I was, she was in awe that she was on the stage, playing drums with Jay...it was a dream come true for her.

Then they took photos with Jay. That took a pretty good while.

Then they had dinner for us. It was pretty good, the chocolate mousse was heavenly.

During dinner, Karen ended up coming over to us she told me and British Susan (the one above with Pink hair) a LOT of stuff. I guess she just needed to unload some things. She talked to the 2 of us probably 45 minutes. I won't tell you everything she said because she didn't really want us to repeat it to anyone, but one thing she said was that Jay really misses Jimmy and Jimmy's wife won't let him really around any of the family. Jay went up to him at Wayne's funeral to hug and talk to him and Michelle ushered him away. She said Jimmy was crying and saying "Noooooo" but she wouldn't let him talk to Jay. It really hurt Jay and she felt so bad for Jimmy. Karen also told us that Wayne was so good to her and when they would visit him, he always said to her, "Sit here with me". I can see Wayne being like that.

Here is Karen with me and Susan (but not the Susan that she was talking with)

Later, they held heads above the drummer to pick the best one and Susan "really won" she got a LOT of applause. . . but there was a guy that was blind and he was hitting the symbols. I guess he got the sympathy vote, and Jay gave him an electronic drum it. Susan was okay with that because she said she didn't have a way to get it home anyone. She knew in her heart that she won and that was all that mattered to her.

Ryan joined Jay on stage, and we all did Osmond sing-alongs. We had a blast. You know, Ryan was fun and I enjoyed him, but I thought they gave him too much stage time. I wanted to hear more of Jay and less of Ryan. He was nice and I later found that those certain Brit girls that dressed as squirrels actually paid his way so he could go to Utah...they wanted to surprise Jay for his birthday.