So, we're up to Thursday already. Man, it seems so long ago that this all happened, the memories are becoming more and more fuzzy each day. So, I'll have to hurry up and finish this series before they fade away altogether.
Well, like I'd said, I had to be up at the crack of dawn that morning. The boys opted to sleep in so it was just me and Mom who got up. Woman Casual Wear started at 8:30 and we had to catch the shuttle at 8, so I had to set the alarm for 6:30. This time, I made sure I plugged in my hot rollers and had them up in my hair before we even left. That takes quite a bit of time, though, so Mom and I had to rush down to the hotel lobby before I had a chance to take them out. I rode to the theatre with my hair all up in rollers!
At the Cashman, the restroom was once again filled with all the usual suspects, including the "J-crew" (Judy, Jamie, and Jennica). For my hair, I'd wanted it at least partially up because my top had a very thick collar around the neck and I wanted it to stand out. Judy ended up pulling some of it back and letting the rest free fall in a cascade of pretty little tendrils. While we were waiting to be called back, we practiced walking again (they had the timed music working now so we actually had to pay attention to all the bells and gongs this time). We also practiced giving our introductions, which Judy helped us write several weeks ago. I was pretty excited to give mine because I knew it would make an impression!
The wait time is much shorter during the modeling competitions since we spend all of 30 seconds on the stage. Again, they took us backstage in groups of ten for individual modeling and collective judging. Once my group was called back and waiting to go on, I got to listen to some of the other girls' introductions. Most of them were name, age, where they're from, school name (if applicable) and a fact or two about themselves. The lengths varied, though. Some girls were over and done with in 5 seconds and others talked until the last harp swing, then had to hurry it up to make it to the final X on time. My speech had been trimmed down quite a bit since its inception because I was so worried about the timing. Turns out, I wouldn't have had anything to worry about because you actually have a lot more time than you'd think. As long as you made your way from the front X to the back X when you heard the last harp swing, you were fine. The trickiest part was trying not to listen to what the MC was saying about you because it caused you to miss the dings that told you approximately where you needed to be on stage.
When it got to my turn, I did a quick brush-off of my black polyester pants, then put on my best smile paired with my best posture, waited for the first harp sweep, then walked up to the X at center stage, where the MC was waiting with the mic. He told them my name, contestant number, and state then handed the mic over to me and I began my introduction.
"Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs!" I said, "Je suis très hereuse d'être ici au spectacle historique de la Cendrillon! [Pause] Interpreted, that is: Hello, ladies and gentlemen! I'm very happy to be here at the Cinderella Pageant, where I've had the opportunity to use my linguistic abilities. Representing the state of Ohio, I am April Yeager!" Applause, applause, and I walked up to the X at the front of the stage, where I acknowledged my judges one at a time, then acknowledged the audience, then did my little pageant spin and walked to the last X on stage left. I was there in plenty of time, no sweat at all! After the gong, I walked off stage and breathed a huge sigh of relief. Immediately, someone asked me, "What language was that?" (Ha ha, I knew it'd leave an impression!)
After collective judging, we had to do another close-up out in the foyer. Something was amiss, though. Apparently, one of the other contestants had gotten sick from something she ate the night before and had thrown up...on 2 other contestants! They all had to be paper-toweled off and dried up just enough to make the stains imperceptible to the judges. I was so preoccupied with that situation, I forgot to sneak a peak at the judges notebooks again.
Aside from all that, we also got our pictures taken with the MC for our photo package. I was in a silly mood, so when it was my turn, I asked him if I could sit on his lap. (I didn't, though.) :) Mom was very pleased with my onstage performance that day and she told Dad all about it back at the hotel. He and Rob were just waking up. I had to get changed into my blue Cinderella T-shirt and white shorts for the "Cindy Fair" luncheon. I wasn't sure what all that entailed so I was surprised to see the ballroom filled with tables and chairs, and a giant pumpkin off in the corner. I thought it was one of those bounce houses where you jump around inside of it. The floor around it was covered with a white tarp with numbered squares all over it. The gimmick was that we had to dance around the pumpkin on the squares to music. Periodically, they'd stop the music and then call out a bunch of numbers. If they called out the number of the square you were standing on, you won a prize! That game took up most of the morning. I ended up winning a really cute prize, but I can't remember what it was exactly. (It was purple, and that's all I can think of.)
Besides the "square dancing" game, several of the MCs were walking around the room with microphones, asking people questions about where they're from while the camera guy followed close behind. He came over to me once and asked where we were from. I answered Ohio then our whole table erupted in the "O-H....I-O!" cheer, which we'd been doing pretty much all week. The photographer also got a picture of me, Jamie, and Jennica in a Charlie's Angels pose.
The luncheon was only a little over an hour long. After that, I had the rest of the day to relax and do nothing up until the 50's party that night. Of course, nobody wanted to spend a day in Vegas doing nothing. So the fam and I put on our comfortable clothes and took the shuttle to the strip where we took a long walk up and down it, checking out the other hotels. Once again, the heat was excruciating. We stopped several times to rest, breathe, and get sprayed on by the little misters hanging from several outdoor kiosks.
The first place we stopped was New York, New York. Jamie and Jennica had been there earlier in the week and rode the Manhattan Express roller coaster. It looked like a fun ride so Rob and I decided to go on it. It was $12 a person, though, so Mom and Dad sat out. To be honest, I wasn't expecting it to compare to the rides at Cedar Point. But, to my amazement, it was pretty comparable Millennium Force and the Magnum. Lots of spiral turns and barrel rolls (albeit slightly jerky in some parts). We even bought the picture they took of us on the ride. Rob didn't really care to buy it, but we had Dad's credit card on us, so I made him do it anyway. After that, we wanted to ride the stuff at the top of the Stratosphere. We'd seen a show about it on the Travel Channel recently and it looked so cool! There was the "Big Shot" which was like the Power Tower at Cedar Point, a roller coaster (which I can't remember the name of), a set of swings that spun you around over the edge of the building, and a seesaw-like contraption that hung over the side and rolled you one way, then the other. That one looked too scary for me to do, but I definitely wanted to do the roller coaster, Big Shot, and swings.
My parents asked one of the locals they'd met about the rides and he said the swings were actually the scariest one because the updraft catches you and tips you right over, so you're looking straight down. After hearing that, I decided I'd just stick to the roller coaster and Big Shot. Much to our chagrin, though, New York New York and The Stratosphere were on completely opposite sides of the strip, and the shuttle only took you one way. So, we had to walk the whole rest of the way there. The heat was the most unbearable it had been all week. So much so that Mom was starting to hallucinate from it. We even got a picture of an egg that someone had actually fried on the sidewalk! (Side note: There are a lot of pennies, nickels, and dimes on the sidewalks of Vegas which no one ever seems interested in picking up. Well, when Mom bent down to claim one, she found out why people just leave them there. Ever touched your hand to a griddle? Yeah, it's like that.)
We stopped inside the Venetian so Dad could film the interior since he hadn't brought the video camera with him on Sunday. It felt so wonderful to be inside the air-conditioning for a while. But, when we went back outside to continue our trek to the Stratosphere, the heat resumed in full force. It was around 3 o'clock then, so it was at its peak for the day. My feet were killing me, and one of my fake toenails had come loose again in my shoe, which was just irritating me more and more by the second. When I checked our map of the strip, it didn't seem like we'd gotten very far at all in the 2 hours or so we'd just spent walking. Finally, we decided we couldn't take it anymore and conceded to a cab ride. That cost us about 8 bucks, and it was worth it! But not really, because once we'd walked through the hotel and casino (up the stairs since the escalator was broken) and got in line to buy passes to the fun stuff, we found out their credit card machine was down. They could only take cash and we hadn't brought enough. God dang it!
So we went right back down and took another cab ride back to the hotel. I promptly collapsed on the bed and proceeded to sleep off that grueling hike we'd just done.
Mom woke me up between 5:30 and 6:00 and we called my grandparents to check on Kirby. They were about to go to bed so we made it a short conversation (although I did get to say hi to Kirbs over the phone, which apparently freaked her out).
For the 50's party, Judy had gotten all of us matching costumes. We had a black and white polka-dotted mini skirt with pink lace trim, a black ribbed sweater top with a feather trim around the collar, a pony tail holder that matched our skirts, white tube socks and saddle shoes. She'd wanted to sew our initials on our sweaters with pink sequin trimming, but it hadn't worked out due to the stretchiness of the fabric.
We all met downstairs in the lobby where Judy was waiting to give us a "surprise." We had to close our eyes and wait until she told us to open them. When we did, we were all wearing hot pink glasses shaped like cat's eyes with rhinestones in the corners, 50's style! I loved them! I thought it was the best part of the whole outfit! We took several pictures of us as a group, both outside and by the entrance of the ballroom. Then Mom, Dad, and Rob all left to go down to The Broiler, a seafood restaurant down in the hotel casino. (Oh, darn. Sorry I missed out on that one. ICK!!)
This party was pretty much what you'd expect: Oldies music, root beer floats, ice cream sundaes, and more dancing. There was one unexpected surprise, though, that I had to race down to The Broiler to grab Mom and bring her back upstairs to see. It was the tiniest little poodle I'd ever seen in my life, dressed up in her own poodle skirt with a pink sweater and scarf! The lady who was walking her said her name was Precious and that she was a hearing assistance dog, so she was trained to alert her to noises she couldn't hear, like sirens or the doorbell. I spent a long time asking all sorts of questions about her and taking a bunch of pictures of her in that cute little ensemble. If I'd been missing Kirby before then, seeing that dog nearly made me want to hop a plane straight home without even staying for the finals!
I managed to stick it out, though. Filling up on floats and sundaes helped fill the void.
This party went later than the other ones, probably because there was no competition the next morning, just the finals at 2:00. Also, the women needed to run through the finale one more time since they'd decided to change some of the elements we had rehearsed the day before. Once that was over, instead of going right to bed, a group of us decided to take another excursion down the strip. This time, I made sure to wear my tennis shoes so my feet were guaranteed comfort.
While we were standing outside the hotel waiting for the lot attendant to come around with Judy's car, we met a group of high school-aged boys who were there for a basketball tournament. They said they were from some town in Kansas, which is where Judy's husband was from. The funny thing was that they were called the "Keys" and Judy's last name is Kyees! These boys appeared to be taking over the whole city because there were groups of them every where we went, and you could always tell who they were because there would be about 10 of them walking around together and towering over everything else in that hotel.
The first place we went to was a restaurant inside Circus Circus. I'd only brought $20 with me so I wasn't planning on ordering anything major. But then Judy said she wanted to treat everyone as her way of rewarding us for all our hard work. So I ordered chicken parm, of course! During our meal, a group of those basketball boys who were sitting at a nearby table kept staring at Jamie. Then, on their way out, one of them slapped a napkin down in front of her with his phone number written on it! Everyone thought that was so hilarious! Then Jennica got the bright idea to have Jamie write her own name on it (in very girly handwriting) and give it to another guy in the hotel so that, if he called it, instead of getting her, he'd get the guy that gave it to her! (Which she did, and we ended up running into him later that night in the lobby, where she confessed it wasn't really her number.)
After dinner, we went down to the gaming and casino area. We walked around looking at a plethora of challenging activities around us. One of them was a basketball hoop shoot. If you could sink one shot, you got a prize. Not too hard, right? Wrong!! Those things just bounced right off the hoop at $1 per shot. Judy asked a couple of those basketball players who walked by to do it for her, and even they couldn't sink it! Finally, she gave up and we moved on to another game. This was a horse race of sorts, but the trick is you have to roll a rubber ball up an incline and make it land in one of the holes. If it goes down a yellow hole, your horse moves 3 spaces, if it's a blue hole it moves 4 spaces, and if it's a red hole the horse moves 5. The first one to the finish line wins, and the prizes get bigger depending on how many people are playing. I watched everyone play this one for a while, waiting for someone from our group to win. Eventually, Jennica won a small stuffed animal, which she decided to give to Tomi. But Judy wanted to keep trying. Finally, I decided it looked too fun so I handed a dollar over to the lady running it and sat down in front of one of the lanes. I only got about halfway to the finish line before someone else won. The next time, I decided to switch lanes. I was at lane number 12 and thought I should go to my lucky number, 11. Well, it worked! I won on only my second try! The lady gave me a choice of stuffed animals between a pink pig or a green frog. Well, being that this was Cinderella week, you can guess which one I chose! I named him Herman, just because.
Once we tired of that, we went to a game where you have to squirt water in a clown's mouth, which inflates a balloon on top of his head, and the first one to pop wins. I absolutely hate the sound of balloons popping, but Judy made me play it anyway because they needed at least 5 players. After that, we found a more difficult game that only Judy played. You had to hold a ball at the top of an incline and let it roll into one of several slots all marked with a number from 1-6. The number on the slot was how many points it was worth. You had 6 balls and in order to win, had to get under 11 points or over 28. Well, it's hard to do because the numbers aren't in order and the 6's and 1's are all in the middle, of course. Judy worked at figuring that one out for several minutes and, lo and behold, she won it! She got a very large stuffed polar bear in addition to the prizes she'd already won.
After that, we wanted to head over to the Stratosphere to check out the rides. We weren't sure what time it closed, though, so we had to hurry. We all ran through the casino, up the stairs, and over to the line where you buy the tickets. It had just closed less than 10 minutes ago. I guess something just didn't want me to ride those things. So we went to the gift shop, where I bought a bright orange tank top that said "Las Vegas County Jail" in black letters on both the front and back. I think I wore it to bed that night, too.
It was after 1 am then, so we all went back to the hotel to rest up for the big day tomorrow. Just 48 hours to go before I could see my Kirby again!
