The underestimated popularity of The Pioneer Woman...

For my birthday this year my best friends Tracey and Stephanie gave me The Pioneer Woman's new cookbook! They actually pre-ordered it so that I received it in the mail the day it was released! They know how much I love her, which was so sweet of them. It's a great cookbook and I've already tried out a bunch of the recipes.

Part of the gift included Tracey taking me to the book signing in Salt Lake.(Stephanie lives in California and isn't a good enough friend to fly out for such an event.) Well, Tracey and I were busy yesterday with our crazy lives and we got off a little later than planned. Ree was going to be signing at the King's English book store in Sugarhouse. She was planning on starting at 7:00 p.m. Now, I've been to book signings, even when it is a very popular author. I know how they usually work. Well, we totally underestimated the popularity of The Pioneer Woman! We weren't able to get there until 7:20 p.m., and this is what we saw...

HUNDREDS of people all around the bookstore and down the block. Ooops. We really messed up. So, we went and asked two cute girls for the story. They said that people started lining up at 3:00 p.m. and by about 6:00 p.m. they had handed out 500 letters (groups of 20 for each letter) and they were long gone. When your letter group was called, it was your turn to enter the store. Our friends had the letter "H" and were waiting for their turn. We took a couple of pictures (really bad ones, sadly... why we look so dang happy is beyond me) and figured we might as well go and drown our sorrows in some molten chocolate cake and creme brulee across the street at our very favorite restaurant, The Paris.

The restaurant was full of women that were waiting for their turn to meet Ree. As we visited with some of the ladies, we got an idea. We asked if you were only allowed to have one book signed with your letter card. They said you could only have one person enter with that card, but could have more than one book signed. After we finished our dessert, we went outside to find our new "best friends" in line. We didn't see them anywhere, then we found out the "H" group was already inside! I lied my way into the store, telling the girl at the door that my friend Kirsten was in there with the letter "H" and she needed this book. I told her that I just needed to hand it to her and I promised to come right back out. With a lot of debating, she finally agreed and I went through the line yelling her name. When I finally found her, I shoved the book (that had my address and $10 in case she needed to ship it back to me) into her hands and said, "Here is the book you needed!" And then I walked out!

We decided to wait for them to come out and they were so darling when they did. She was laughing and thought we were pretty funny. So, I got my book signed but never got to lay eyes on PW. It was a blast though, even getting out of the house!

UPDATE... Kirsten just graciously sent me some photos of PW so that I could be jealous of them. Just kidding, I actually asked her to send them. I planned on Photo-shopping myself & Tracey in the photos. But, now that the story is already out that we DID NOT meet Ree, I will just post this cute picture of our new friends while they were getting my book signed! Thanks girls!