"I'm Most Definitely In New York... Concrete Jungle Where Dreams Are Made Of. There's Nothing You Can't Do"

Hello!

Wow. You would not BELIEVE the past two weeks I've had.

No. Five. Oops.

For starters, we finally got to see the NKOTBSB concert I had gotten tickets to for my 22nd Birthday. 23rd year of my life officially rocks. My lovely cousin and my aunt from Mexico came to Houston to go to the show with us. We had tons of fun reliving the good old days with our beloved Backstreet Boys.

Preparing for a long night with some Ziegenbock

Shopping at the Outlets outside of Houston

Silly Dress Up Time in Marshall's

Silly Cousin Time at 2:30AM

Waiting to see our beloved BSB (and NKOTB)

That was so much fun. There was much screaming and crying and singing along... we basically reverted to 10 and 15 year old us. It was quite amusing.

The following weekend was more relaxing. The weekend after that, no. I must give some backstory before I continue.

So, my cousin Rodrigo is the biggest Rihanna fan I know. He's basically in love with her and had been emailing me all these contests to sign up for so we could win tickets to see her. There was one on Billboard.com, one on socialitelife.com, one on another radio station... Lord knows how many contests I entered. Finally, during game 5 of the NBA finals, he emails me a link to this contest being held by Nivea Skincare.

Oh. I entered that contest alright...

Apparently Rihanna is the new face of Nivea and they were doing a contest to fly you out to either NYC or Las Vegas for a show of hers. The grand prize is a trip for two overseas to Prague to see her perform. Quite frankly, I was damn tired of entering all these contests because (1) I'm not a  Rihanna super-fan, and (2) all this entering and all his emails were cutting into NBA Finals time. Seriously, I'd get messages during critical free-throws and potential overtimes... I was already on edge.

A few weeks went by... the Mavericks WON the NBA Finals...

That's my boy!

...my cousins came in from Mexico, I had passed Organic Chem 1. I thought to myself "this is hopeless, we're never going to win". With that, I asked Mommy if it were okay to buy the cheapest seats in the Toyota Center (Ew. The essence of the Houston Rockets lingers there.) and she said yes. That weekend, Rodrigo flew in and we went to see Rihanna. He was quite excited...

The other less flattering picture shows his smile
practically ripping his face in half.

I felt like I had done something nice. If we didn't win the contest, at least he had seen her perform. The rest of his time in Houston was spent touring the city and eating at La Mex. Of course.

Then it was time for him to go home to Mexico. It was a fun weekend we had, and I was looking forward to the next time I'd have someone come and visit. Little did I know...

...it would be the very next weekend, AND it would be the very same guest.

The following Thursday, my parents and I were eating dinner when one of them asked me about the contest I had entered, if I had heard anything. I said no and went to get my laptop and phone since I had missed a phone call and wanted to look something up online. I saw that I also had a missed email on my phone, and I opened it up. It literally said "Congrats! You've Won Nivea's Skin2Skin Challenge!"

I lost my shit at that moment and my parents probably thought there was a spider or something on the table like in that stupid Sprint commercial where the guy destroys the phone with the shoe. Ridiculous.

Anyways, I called the man back and after a game of phone tag, I got a hold of Rodrigo and he said yes he would come back to Houston in the next few days so we could fly out to New York City and go see Rihanna perform. It was amazing. I wasn't all that excited about the whole trip and the meeting her part, it was more the fact that I had helped make my cousin's dream come true and that this was all happening to the most deserving person I could think of.

Rodrigo came back that Saturday, we were gone on Monday, saw Rihanna perform and met her on Tuesday, came back on Wednesday, and now I'm writing to you a week later.

The trip itself was amazing. The JetBlue flight crew was so nice, no one quit their job and went out the emergency slide (although I was hoping someone would). The flight was a little bumpy but what do you expect? The hotel was decent but the booking and miscommunications were unimpressive. The company in charge of the contest was a promotional/public relations company by the name of XOMAD. The man they put in charge of getting us our tickets, t-shirts, and Nivea products was Harrison and he seemed to have his ish together and made sure the trip was awesome. Mommy had hooked us up with 3-Day Passes for the Gray Line's Hop-On/Hop-Off tour, so we got to explore Uptown and Downtown in 3 days on our own terms. It was most enjoyable. Time for a highlights photo montage!

Oh, just push play for the ultimate photo enjoying experience:

The first day, the last day, and the first half of the second day were all devoted to sightseeing. We usually ate out. We ate at Sabarro, Gray's Papaya, and little hot dog stands here and there. Where we ate dinner most nights was a restaurant located inside the hotel, Raffles. I was kind of mad because they thew away my braces, but their spaghetti and meatballs were AMAZING. The sauce was spicy and delicious. Rodri's burger was quite good, too. His french fries were good, too.

Tuesday, we went sightseeing and then off we were to see Rihanna. We were greeted by Harrison again and he brought us our tickets and t-shirts signed by Rihanna. Rodrigo was so excited about the t-shirts because he had something that could remind him of the trip.

We then went inside and waited for the main event. I'll only put a few of my favorite photos because they're rather high-def and take a long time to upload...




Feel free to listen along with the photos :)

These are oddly in reverse chronological order, but as you can see, NYC had quite the surprise when Kanye West... yes, YEEZY himself, came on the stage to sing Run This Town and All Of The Lights with Rihanna. While Rodrigo was screaming the whole show for Rihanna, the moment Kanye came out, I let out a shriek that rivaled all the screaming he had done in the past two hours. Needless to say, I was excited :)

After that, we went back to the hotel, bought goodies from the pharmacy nearby and binged out while watching a night-long marathon of The Nanny. The following day we went sightseeing, ate at Gray's, found the famous bridge from like, every chick-flick EVER, then went home to Houston.

And that concludes our trip to NYC to meet the one and only Rihanna. We had a fun time and we are most grateful to our friends who voted and sent the photo along to their friends. I'm very grateful that I was able to share this with my dear cousin. Thank you!

Seriously. Look at that smile... he's so excited!
Me: I almost wore a t-shirt with Shy Ronnie on it.
Rihanna: AAAAAHAHAHAHA That would've been awesome!
Rodrigo: ................. (whispers) i love you, rihanna.

-Ally

"You've Gotta Learn How To Fall Before You Learn To Fly"

(By Paul Simon)

If that's true, Daddy's just about to get his wings. According to Mommy, he's had a few spills in the past five months. Today during dinner, I noticed a HUGE purple bruise on his arm:

Me: Oh my GOD! What happened to your arm...
Daddy: Oh. Yeah that was from Saturday.
Mommy: Oh my goodness!
Daddy: Mommy did it. Punched me right in the arm.
Mommy: Oh, right.
Me: Jeez, Mommy...

Now, if you know Mommy, you'll know she's not exactly the heavyweight champion of the world, and the story that Daddy's telling is bullshit. What actually happened was that he was standing on a chair, installing some cabinet openers (not knobs or handles, but push-and-open ones), right in front of the elliptical machine. As he stepped down from the chair, his foot slipped on the rounded back of the machine instead of the floor, and he fell down. Adding to the harrowing events that unfolded, the machinery he was working with went whirring across his face, nearly taking one of his eyes out. Insanity.

In addition to that embarrassing/terrifying accident, Daddy also came crashing through the ceiling. It was like one of those moments you see on a sitcom. Apparently during a home improvement session (those happen quite frequently in this house) Daddy just went right through the ceiling and got his leg stuck.

Like Ceiling Cat, but less cute and more embarrassing.

Mommy loves to tell that story. I don't know why, but perhaps it validates her claims that Daddy should not be doing home improvement without help from contractors or someone with more experience.

That's all for now. I'll talk to y'all later :)

Ally