Of the
Downtown Provo Marriott -- in particular Valarie and Karen in the
Concierge Lounge.
These sweet ladies took the best care of me while I worked for a client in Provo and basically lived in their hotel on and off from Feb. 12 - July 15, 2007. Did I mention that I was pregnant and pretty sick the whole time? Val and Karen were my angels and I will forever love them. I don't know if I could have made it without them. Cathy also took great care of me, but she was off the day we visited.
Since these wonderful ladies put so much work into taking care of me while I was pregnant I wanted them to get to spend some time enjoying the "finished product" (Jasper). Valarie's last name is Jasperson -- so she let's everyone know that we named Jasper after her. :>
They got out the toys. They played. They laughed. They smothered him with kisses. They fed him bananas, goldfish and raisins. They were in Heaven.
We had fun reminiscing.
We remembered the many
Apostles and other LDS Church Leaders who we met and visited with while I stayed there. Many of them came to Provo for
BYU Graduation and
Women's Conference. The room next to
my room (#928) is the
Presidential Suite where all of the VIP's stayed. It was always fun to see who my neighbors were.
While I was pregnant with Jasper, about the only thing that did not make me puke in the morning was a fruit smoothie. As crazy as it may seem, I kept my
Vita-Mix blender in my hotel room and made a smoothie every morning at 6AM. We laughed as we remembered the morning that I dizzily traipsed into the Concierge Lounge at 6AM for some OJ and fruit to add to the blender full of ice I was carrying. The lounge was a flutter with ladies in town for Women's Conference. One gal yelled out -- Does that girl have a Vita-Mix in the hotel???? To which Val replied -- Yes. That's Angela...she lives here.
In case you think that Val & Karen were slacking off at work, Jasper & I went to visit at a time when the concierge lounge was closed. These are two hard working ladies, and I do not want taint their reputation.
I am also including a photo of Teny. He used to work for guest services. He would set my wake-up calls and reset my wake-up call when I stayed up too late working and decided to sleep in a little. He took great care of me. One night I was REALLY sick throwing up. Since I had this problem my entire pregnancy, I couldn't tell if I was actually sick , or if it was pregnancy related. I remember calling down to the front desk at 9:30 PM one night to see if he could give me a
Priesthood blessing. He said that Marriott policy did not allow for that, but he called a couple of his friends that came over at 10PM. That blessing got me through the night. I am so happy for Teny, as he has been promoted to Manager. I am glad that someone besides me recognizes hoe great he is.
The next morning the hotel shuttle driver, Edward, took me via Marriott Shuttle to the Emergency Room at Utah Valley Hospital. I spent the day there receiving 4 bags of fluid in an IV because it turns out that I was suffering from a bad case of food poisoning. And when I was feeling much better, Edward drove back to pick me up.
And let's not forget Corey. He now works in Engineering, but for most of my stay he was in Housekeeping. Every night for turndown service you get 2 chocolates on your pillow. Marriott has several varieties, and you are supposed to get 2 different kinds.
But Corey knew that I really only like the chocolate toffee ones. When I would get back to my hotel at night, after a LONG day at work, I always knew if Corey had turned my bed down because he would leave me 2 chocolate toffee treats. It's the little things that matter.
As I said, the Marriott staff took EXCELLENT care of me. THANK YOU EVERYONE!
We count ourselves lucky to still be friends with Deb & Luke. They are real gems! We all lived at Shoreline Ridge while Mike was getting his LLM law degree in 2002-2003 at the University of Utah. (Yes, Mike -- the true bluest of all Cougar fans -- spent a year at the U).
