Happy Halloween

Okay, I was at WalMart this morning because I needed to get some eggs. Well I decided to have a little fun too, and I thought that Kent would enjoy this. Gus and Frankie didn't really enjoy it all that much, but I got some good laughs from it and the police officer riding through the neighborhood stopped to chat about how cute they were.

Neither of them were liking the elastic straps around the back legs.

And finally, Frankie the Weenie...dog. HAHAHA!!!

Hangin' Tough with a Pocket Full of Sunshine!

OMG!!! Words cannot truly express how much fun I had last night at the concert. I had so much fun with Shannon, Erica and Brandy!! We met up around 1ish to leave for the ATL. We checked into our hotel and changed-thanks Shannon-for the Boys. Had to get a little glam :) We stopped and picked up some grub at the Wendy's across the street and when we walked in, we were amongst about 50 other ladies our ages going to the concert. It was at the Gwinnett Center right outside of ATL. What a nice venue! Anyway, the whole time we are stuck in traffic, we see all of these other vehicles with stuff written all over their cars. We had nothing, but found some things hilarious. Such as: My heart belongs to Donnie; NKOTB or Bust, ATL bound, We've been waiting 15 years for this, etc, etc. We got to our seats-7th row on the side lower level. WOW! There were some major '80s rejects there. I mean, I know that I am at this concert too, but I was wearing normal clothes with my hair fixed like it always is in 2008! We saw some homemade puff paint t-shirts, crimped hair, leg warmers, spandex, huge buttons and finally- my fave- the sequin headband with the side ponytail. CLASSIC!!! I took pics of some of these, but I will not post them to protect the innocent. Natasha Beddingfield opened first. She was amazing! She was only on stage for about 25 min, but she put on a great performance. I knew most everything that she sang too, which always makes it more fun. Then Lady GaGa performed. One word sums it up-weird! I could've stayed out in the lobby during her 20-30 min. Then on to the big show! After they played a short video of some old school pics and wording, they opened with a new song-Single. Great beginning to the show, very upbeat! They played all of the great vintage songs! We were jumping up and down, screaming every word like we were 12 again! They also came out to the floor like right in front of us on a revolving stage to sing a few songs, so we got an even closer look! But when Jordan busts out in his high voice singing in an open white shirt with the wind machine blowing on him-I really was 12 again! I was infatuated with him so many years ago! Such sweet memories! The show lasted about 3.5 hours and I didn't want it to end! When they left the stage the 1st time, the audience started singing the words to Hangin' Tough. Then they busted back out with Step by Step and Hangin' Tough to finish it off. It was definitely a night that I will never forget! Now I am 26 again and in the real world at work. It's really a bummer to have so much fun then get kicked back into reality. Maybe I will win the lottery, quit work and become a groupie-A girl can dream! Here are a few pics of our great night:

The beginning to the best concert ever!

I can't believe we are really here!

Crazy screaming mid 20s-30 year old ladies-What What!!!

Revolving stage in front of us:

Be Still My Heart:

Brandy & Erica:

Shannon and Yours Truly:

I think I may have shed a tear when it was over :(

Almost time-NKOTB!!!

At the begining of this year, one of my dreams came true. Some people can think that I am crazy and that is fine with me. When I was a wee child, I had a slight (maybe, huge) obsession with New Kids on the Block. I was completely in love with Jordan Knight. They were very important to me. I had the huge buttons, the sleeping bags, the t-shirts, the posters, etc. So when I found out they were getting back together and going on tour, I was super pumped. I know, I know, some people (my husband) think that I am absolutely absurd for being that excited about it. I am however, not the only one. Tomorrow night, I will be in ATL for the concert with 3 other girls from work. I can't believe that it is here. When they appeared on the Today show, I was sitting on my bed calling my older sister. Needless to say, she's not as big a fan as me, but I was singing every word to their medley of Hangin' Tough, Step by Step, Cover Girl, The Right Stuff, Please Don't Go Girl, the list could go on and on. Our tickets are on the 6th row since I bought them during the presale so I know that we will have a great view. I will be able to relive my tween years to the fullest! They have changed quite a bit and I am not so sure of the new music, but I will tell you that when they sing their vintage songs, I will be acting bananas!!!

Jamaica

Well, unfortunately, I am now back at work. Back to the same ol' routine. Back to reality! It has been a wonderful vacation!! I do believe that we wrote a new definition to the word lazy!!! We lived in the ocean for the first 2 days, just lounging around, soaking in the sun. It did rain everyday that we were there but it was mostly a short afternoon shower, except on Thurs and Fri. Those days, it rained about 4 hours each day. During the afternoon short showers, we chose to take an afternoon nap. :) Bliss!!! Then Wed, we took a sunset cruise from our hotel, went snorkeling and saw a huge stingray digging in the sand, an anchor and cannon from a sunken pirate ship, and tons of other sea creatures. It was really awesome. Then we went swimming through a cave and to Rick's Cafe. It was a restaurant on the edge of a cliff where there was an awesome view of the sunset. There was also a place to cliff jump. Which Kent nor I partook in. We really aren't the daredevil type. We just enjoyed watching other people try to gain the courage to jump off. We ate, then we were on our way back to the hotel. Then we spent the remainder of the days in the pool and lounging around. We did venture out off of the hotel grounds on Friday since it was our last day and we thought we would take in some of the local shops and ate at Margarittaville. Their shopping center was Times Square Shopping Mall. I've been to NYC 3 times and when I think of Times Square, that's what is on my mind. Nope!!

This was it. There were about 12-15 shops that had essentially the exact same items. i bought 2 photo albums, a pair of flip flops and Kent bought a hat. Then we had lunch:

Of course it started raining while we were there, and our taxi driver had a blow out on the way back making me think that he just took off with our $$ and souveniers. Alas, he came back and we spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool. On Sat, before we headed to the airport, Kent had made friends with our taxi driver and he was taking us on the west side to get some lobster. We had heard from other hotel guests that the lobster there was the best. So they were right!! It was the best lobster I have ever eaten!! Not too bad priced either!

Well, I guess I will leave you with some more of my pics. I only took about 100, but I will spare you and give you a glimpse:

The view from our balcony:
Our sunset pic:

One of the many towel arrangements we came back to: I loved this tree!:

I am really good at taking pics of ourselves: And finally, one of just the beautiful sunset:

Back!!

Before I post about Jamaica, I wanted to go back and post about the Breast Cancer Walk. I can't believe that I never posted and gave it the full attention it deserves. I think that between all of the reminiscing about the wedding, the trip and the time with no modem, I was a little crazy. Anyway, On Oct 11th, Heather and I did the Breast Cancer Run/Walk at Linn Park. If you have been reading my blog, you know that my grandmother had a single masectomy at the end of Sept, so I did this in honor of her. Heather decided that she would join me and our church's team for the walk. We had a really good time and it was awesome to see how many people were there and how many survivors were there. Very inspirational!!! Our Church of the Highlands team was headed up by Monique who is a 4 year survivor herself. After we finished the race, Monique had invited the team back to her house and had cooked an amazing meal!! Home made lasagna and eggplant ziti, salad, bread, desserts, desserts, desserts. OH My!!!! It was amazing! It was a really great day, topped off with a great meal with great fellowship with some awesome people!! Thanks to Monique for doing such a great job at leading our team!!!

Be Back in a Week...

I am signing off for the next 8 days. When Kent gets off work tonight, we are headed to ATL to spend the night with my uncle. Then we must be at the airport at 6am eastern time to check in for our flight to Jamaica. We are staying here:

until next Sat. Pray for safe travel and at least one day of great weather. I looked at weather.com everyday is a 30-60% chance of scattered thundershowers. But that will be alright. A rainy day in Jamaica is a better day than a sunny day here at work. :) I hope you all have a great week and weekend. I will meet you in the blogging atmosphere soon...

Service Banquet

Thursday night, our service awards banquet for work was held at the Cahaba Grand Conference Center. This was to recognize people working for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, & 40 years. I have been working there for 5 years. There were three people honered that had been there for 40 years. They played a video and had coworkers video messages to them playing before they received their award. One coworker made the comment, "It's really hard to imagine someone working in the same position for 40 years." That really made everyone laugh, but I really feel that way too! I mean, I'm not turning in my notice any time soon, but to do the same thing for 40 years, almost seems impossible. I just can't wrap my mind around it. I know that 5 years has really flown by pretty fast, but 40 years. That's crazy to me. The banquet was nice and the food was really good. The pic is of Heather, myself, and Beth. Heather has worked there for 5 years and Beth has for 10 years. It was a fun night, until I had to rush to get ready to actually go to work. Sad times. HAHA!!

Award!

Last week while I was on the no modem time, I received an award from Terri @ Bama Bargains. I absolutely love her blog and feel as though we might have been family in a former life!! HAHA!! I must say that my mailbox has been loaded all thanks to her and her lists of freebies! I had free breakfast 3 days last week from my samples.

The rules are, I am supposed to list 6 things that make me happy and then pass the award on to 6 other bloggers. Here goes:

6 things that make me happy:

1. The fact that I will be in Jamaica with my husband in less than 4 days, for 7 nights.

2. My house will be clean when I get back.

3. The fact that my grandmother has done so incredibly well since her masectomy.

4. A patient's mother told me yesterday that I was "invaluable."

5. Every time I see my niece and she smiles at me and then giggles.

6. Serving coffee at Church of the Highlands.

I will be cutting the 2nd requirement in half due to time restraints. I am at work. 3 other people I will pass this award to:

1. Heather: my BFF whom I can get into some great conversations with and value our friendship more than she will ever know. She does however, need to find more time to actually blog and not just read other's. :)

2. Jillian: my resp girl! She has a great passion for life and following in faith that is very inspiring. I also love the fact that her dog has got to be on some crack or something to be that hyper.

3. Courtney: day shift trader. She is such a dedicated scrapbooker and very creative with all of her pages. Almost vacation time too!!!

Wedding Day 2

Okay, prepare yourselves for another long post.
The morning of the wedding was supposed to be essentially stress free. Ha! That didn't quite work out so well! My dad woke up not feeling very well, but pushed through and really didn't tell me exactly what was going on. He has adult onset diabetes and didn't have a great morning. My parents were to go and pick up my flowers at the florist that morning. I had ordered them and paid a deposit several months ahead of time and said that we would come pick them up around 9am. We had heard horror stories about the traffic on Shrimp Festival weekend, so we wanted to have everything done in plenty of time. A little while after my parents leave, I get a call from my mom. She asks me, "What were your flowers supposed to look like?" I am thinking that they weren't like what I had told her and she wanted to be sure before they left they had the right ones. NOPE! They didn't have ANY flowers for me. They had "misplaced" my order. I go all hysterical since I had given them the picture of exactly how I wanted my bouquet to look. I had no other picture. It was supposed to be stapled to my order. After sobbing and attempting to explain what my bouquet was supposed to look like, I tell everyone what is going on. Kent has gone to the store with a friend so he is no where to console my crazy thoughts. Anyway, I go bananas trying to get internet access to give me peace of mind that I did write them $100 check that had already gone through on my account. My older sis ended up knowing someone who was nearby that had library access and printed of the check for me. The florist didn't ask for it. They took the hysterical bride's word for it, and my parents went to the grocery stores and WalMart to scrounge up all of the hot pink roses they could find to take back to the florist. In the meantime, my younger sis gets me calm and then Kent walks in. The flood gates opened up again. And he whisked me off to the shrimp festival to walk around and get my mind off of the situation. All I had ordered was 3 bouquets and 2 single Stargazer lilies. Thank goodness this wasn't a church wedding and I didn't order any centerpieces or arrangements! My bouquet ended up looking very pretty, but by the time I saw it, I felt as though it was tainted. The single lilies however, needed some help. Since they didn't have the order, they didn't allow the lilies to open up so we ended up giving our mothers some flower buds. Oh well! That afternoon rolls around and since I had done everything myself I was getting all of the tables ready for the reception, the chairs lined up and all that jazz. I had some help from my wonderful BFFs from high school. I went to shower and get ready for the ceremony. My photographer called to say that he was going to be running behind because the ferry traffic was behind and he had to catch the next one out since he was coming from Mobile. That was fine. I just got ready and walked around in my flannel pjs telling everyone what to do. I can be a little bossy at times. :) My photog finally got there and as we were standing on the porch discussing what pics to start with, a white van drove up. The girls got out and came up to me and say, "Does anyone know how to pick a lock on a van. We have 2 wedding cakes locked in there." I say to my photog, "One more thing goes wrong and we are getting married while we are in Cabo." I then proceeded to walk inside and tell my brother in law that there was a white van outside, with the keys and my wedding cake in it. He needed to take care of this, I was going to get ready for my wedding set to start in 1.5 hours. Come to find out, Kent had come back at this point from the Mexican restaurant nearby and heard what was going on. He told the driver that he was going to get a coat hanger and a brick. He would give the coat hanger 10 min then it would be the brick's turn. He was not going to let anything else go wrong for his soon to be wife today! Here they are breaking into the van:

I then went and got ready after throwing out a few other instructions to by standers. (My sign in table was still leaned up against the house.) I got dressed and then had Kent come in just he and I. Since we couldn't exactly avoid seeing each other, I wanted us to have some one on one time when he saw me in my dress. After telling me the story how he broke in the van, he got a little teary-eyed. He's such a softie!
After that everything went smoothly. I didn't worry anymore about the rental company spying on us, or the flowers, or the cake. Everything was great. I greeted everyone as they were coming in and chatted it up as we waited. Everything was incredibly laid back and smooth.
I had my sisters as my maid and matron of honor:
And I married into a very loving, wonderful family:

After the ceremony, the photog, Kent and I took a stroll down the beach. I won't bore you with too many but these 2 are my favorite pics from the wedding:

Just to show you, here is my actual wedding cake that I tried to somewhat replicate the other day:

We had a great time at the reception, just hanging out, mingling with all of our family and friends. When we "left" I had the sparklers for our exit. I thought they would look great, and I was right. I loved them and all the little kiddos were excited, and since they were wedding sparklers, they were like 3x longer than normal so they lasted forever. As will the memories from this day Oct 13, 2007. Thank you for reading and letting me go back. I didn't have a blog then, so I feel like I am reliving it.And it is WONDERFUL!!:)

The Wedding Part 1

***WARNING*** I am indulging myself in the memories of last year. If you can't make it through the entire post, that's okay. I am breaking it up a little bit. :)
Before Kent and I got engaged, we had talked about getting hitched on the beach. His mom had a beach wedding the year before, and we thought that it would be perfect for us. I decided that I didn't want to do it behind a condo. I wanted to rent a house that we could do everything at so it would be a little more personal and not a bunch of random strangers standing on their balconies staring at us. I ended up finding a house for rent by the owner that was one house back from beachfront. It was located in Fort Morgan and since it was the same weekend as the Shrimp Festival, we thought that location would be less crowded. The house directly in front of it was through a company that would not allow weddings there. We just decided that we would do everything from the second house and all of the tables for the reception could be more to the side since beside them was essentially an empty lot. We did however do the actual ceremony smack in front of the first house. It's the beach, not the house, right!?!

We decided on Oct 13th since we wanted to wait until after Labor Day for the rental rates to go down and it was more toward the end of hurricane season. Somehow, Kent found a lyric in a Widespread Panic song that said something like "I woke up on 10-13." Apparently he saw it as a sign. Whatever!!! Anyway, my family had the house directly on the beach and Kent's family had the one right behind it. I basically did everything. From the invitations, to the decorations, party favors, to shopping for most of the food. I am ADD when it comes to what I want and I knew what I wanted and how I wanted it done. Control freak-maybe a little. I had made the drive a couple of times to see the house, order my cake, photographer, flowers, etc. Everything else, we were bringing with us. Heather rode down with me since Kent was going to be late getting out of work and he was riding with his friend who catered our rehearsal dinner. They were going to be traveling with the smoker-BBQ and trailer. When we got to our house, it looked like no one had been there in a couple of months. Dusty, dead flies in the window sill. We won't mention everything, but that was the first disappointment. My mom called the rental company who explained that no one had rented that house in a while and the maid service was suppose to clean before we got there, but apparently hadn't-DUH!! What were we to do though? My wedding was planned for in front of that house so we just had to deal. While the cleaning lady was there, she heard talk of a wedding, told the company who then called me to reprimand me. I informed them that I had spoken with the owner of the house behind ours and everything was going to be centered from that house. They were okay with that, but I was still a little nervous as to whether I was going to get my deposit back. Anyway, the second house was wonderful, nicely decorated, clean, Great!! So Thurs night, my family went to eat at Lulu's. Then Fri morning, Heather and I went and got our nails done. $8 for a french manicure. Cheap and it looked good! Then we had the rehearsal. Everything was great only it was quite windy. We had a feast! BBQ, corn on the cob, potato salad, baked beans, boiled shrimp, key lime cups, banana pudding, ...etc. I am sure I am missing something but it was fabulous! I ate until I was miserable!

I also had most of my BFF from high school there who came to the dinner and hung out for a while afterward. We took some good pics at sunset on the bottom level of the house.

And here's my sis & bro in law. I told you that it was windy. They decided to hoard up by the smoke pit to attempt to warm up.

Anniversary Night

Okay, so October 13th 2008 is our first anniversary. I can honestly say that I LOVE this man!!! It is really hard to believe that it has already been a year! This time last year, we were driving home from the Fort Morgan, getting home to sleep a couple of hours to go hop on a plane to Cabo. It's flown by so incredibly fast. I've always heard that the first year is the hardest, but if it is, I can't imagine how easy the rest of our years are going to be. Don't get me wrong, we have our differences at times, but we have never really gotten into a fight that I can remember, over anything that truly matters. I mean, he can't stand it when he comes home and I have every TV in the house on, and I can't stand it when he leaves his wet towels on the floor. But those things don't really matter. We exchanged presents on Saturday. I had just gotten home from the Breast Cancer Walk, and Kent truly surprised me with the sparklies that you see on my ear in the next couple of photos. I now have real diamond earrings, and they are soooo pretty!!! I gave him a Georgia coach's shirt (he's a huge GA fan) and tickets to go see New Orleans vs ATL. Much better tickets than the ones I got him last year for one of his wedding presents.
Anyway, today I woke up with many things on my to do list. We had apparently forgotten to pay the water bill and got a notice that it will be turned off tomorrow if we don't pay. We really need a better bill system!! Anyway, I drove to the water dept to drop off that payment, went to CVS to snag some good loot and headed to WalMart. I had planned our menu yesterday at work and knew that I needed some cake flour and other essential baking ingredients. I didn't think that they would have the right cut of meat for the prime rib that I planned on cooking, and I was right. Neither did Publix or Bruno's. Apparently a rib roast is hard to come by these days. I ended up buying a bottom round and pretended as though it were a rib roast. The only thing that I have ever roasted is a chicken a couple of months back, so I thought this would be a good choice and it just sounds so "uppety"-prime rib. I cleaned the house and cooked basically all day long. My wonderful mother in law saved one of our cheesecakes from the wedding, so I picked it up yesterday from her house. I won't lie, I was a little iffy on whether or not it would be okay to eat, so I needed a plan B. I made a homemade cake that resembled our wedding cake. Kent is really not that into cake, but I thought that my coworkers might enjoy it this week too. And I thought that I would be a bit nostalgic. :) I made the cake and iced it with buttercream frosting then I mixed up some cocoa in the frosting that was left over and there you go:

I really think that it turned out good. The pic makes the chocolate look like butterscotch, but I promise, it was chocolate. In the mean time, I roasted the meat and chopped up some veggies for our main course: Chopped up some crusty Italian bread for an appetizer, displayed in dishes that we bought on our honeymoon:
And here's the finished product, I did leave the veggies in a little long, but they were still really good!

I also went a little nostalgic on the bottled coke since that is what we had at our reception. The table:

And then finally to dessert. The cheesecake was really good. I chopped up some strawberries and bought some Redi-whip to spice it up a bit. It was still really good and creamy. Thanks to Donna for keeping this for us on our anniversary!!!!

This was afterward. You can see my sparklies in the first pic :)