The Online Journal of Brandon and Desiree Weaver

"There's something I ought to tell you, I guess now's as good a time
as any. You're gonna have every young buck West of the Missouri around
here trying to marry you. Mostly because you're a handsome filly, but
partly cause I own everything in this country from here to there. And
they'll think your gonna inherit it. Well, your not. I'm going to
leave most of it, well, to the nation, really, for a park, where no
lumber mill, can cut down all the trees for houses with leaky roofs.
Nobody will kill all the beaver for hats for dudes. Or murder the
buffalo for robes.

"What I'm gonna give you is a 500 cow spread on the upper Green River.
While that might not seem like much, that's more than we had, your
mother and I. Some folks are gonna say I'm doing all this so I can sit
up in the hereafter and look down on a park named after me. Or that I
was disappointed in you, didn't want you to get all that money. But
the real reason, Becky, is because I love you, and I want you and some
young man to have what I had. Because all the gold in the United
States Treasury and all the harp music in heaven can't equal what
happens between a man and a woman, with all that growing together. I
can't explain it any better than that."

Star Wars Celebration IV: A lot of fun was had on our Friday visit to the celebration. It was billed as the "largest Star Wars party", celebrating 30 years of Star Wars (to the day).

The first thing we did was spend a lot of time marveling and, well, gawking. It was quite a sight. There were so many stormtroopers, jedi, boba fett's, clone troopers, princess leia's, queen amadala's in any of her assorted dresses, rebel pilots, rebel soldiers, aliens, sith, a gamorrean guard, a life-size Jabba the Hutt....The list went on and on.

After gawking for a while we found ourselves watching "Star Wars in 30min" a play with a cast of about a dozen running through the original trilogy at break-neak speed. It was quite hilarious, but best described in person.

I've always enjoyed playing Star Wars video games. Running out into a digital world shooting a bunch of stormtroopers has always lifted my spirits. However, I may have found a new passion...Star Wars Lasertag. That was perhaps the highlight of my day. Running around shooting live stormtroopers--that was great. My team won all three of our rounds. The best moment of the game was round three...both teams were in our respective corners of the playing field. The command was given to attack...I ran to the other side of the field then slid the last ten feet into my position behind an abondoned tank, flanking three stormtroopers. I didn't last long in so forward a position, but drawing their fire did provide the needed distraction for the rest of the team to advance. I got many complements for my slide move. Memories I won't soon forget.

From Star Wars Cel...

There is this group of droid builders we visited, who had built some truely amazing droids. Throughout the conference we saw many R2 units (along with many other droids) zooming around flirting (more or less) with many onlookers. These guys are spending thousands of dollars (literally) to design and construct these droids. Me and Dez picked out a few favorites. I'd just like to give a little shout out to all my Mysty Homies! Hey oh! (Because, ah, everyone knows that Mysties shout "hey oh" all time. Right. Ah-hem.)

From Star Wars Cel...

Next, we went to the much anticipated Costume Pagent. The room was packed. The costumes ranged from halirous, to cute (they had a kids catagory) to literally 1000's of hours of work. Some of the girls who had sown and embroidered their Amadala dresses produced some truely amazing gowns. My favorite costumes where: this cute little (5-year old-ish) kid in a pretty fuzzy ewok costume; A man dressed as "The George Lucas Jedi" with flannel jedi robes; the gamorrean guard--who won best in show--his costume could have come straight from the movie it was so good.