Big weekend

It was a big weekend for me... well, not really for me personally, but for people I care about...

Alan and Stephanie got engaged! woohoo! I'm excited to bring in a new family member... yay for new sisters! No details yet, but they're hoping for a May 2010 wedding in Wisconsin.

Christy won another Emmy! Recall her nomination in October? The ceremony was this weekend, and she won Emmy number two, and got to accept it in the fabulous purple dress Sarah and I helped pick out. What a rockstar.

The Gators are playing to the National Championship game! And, it's in Miami this year. Not that I can afford the ticket, but I'm sure the post game celebration will be pretty great. Who else would be stoked if the stadium got a "2008" added to it?

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving week in NYC was, as expected, great. The weather was beautiful, it was really fun to share it with the whole family plus friends, and New York is always fun to visit.

Jon and I arrived to LGA on Wednesday night, pretty late, and called it a night. He was staying with his friend Joe, I stayed at Sarah's. Thanksgiving morning started off early with watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which was really pretty cool. I think it may be my one and only trip to see the parade, but I'm glad we watched it. A large midday feast was followed up with a walk through Central Park- the picture of all of us above. I hadn't seen Felicia in over a year, so it was really great to see them. The rest of the week was spent doing touristy stuff- which I always enjoy, but it has come to the point that when I visit NYC, I've done all the really big things, so I like to focus on hanging out and walking around. We got to do a lot of that around Sarah's neighborhood, hitting up some restaurants and sights that she's been telling me about lately. Big fan of Lansky's and Zabar's. Good tasty food :) We got to give Stephanie her first taste of Jewish food, and New York for that matter.

One silly, but amazingly cool thing, that we visited was the Charmin Times Square toilets. I'm not really sure why I was so amused/impressed/amazed with the whole thing, but it was so cool. It had to have cost them a fortune, and was so gimicky. But awesome. I'm kind of a big fan of anywhere in NYC that offers public toilets that are fully stocked with TP (and different Charmin variaties, of course!) and cleaned after every usage. Go Charmin... and the catchy jingle that they play in the building is still going through my head....

We thankfully had amazing weather until my last day- Sunday. We should have renamed it Rainday in an effort to truly capture how amazingly horrible it was. There was a light rain all day, but not really light enough to need an umbrella. And it was too windy to use an umbrella... they kept turning inside out like in the cartoons. Plus, it was freezing and got dark at like 4pm.

Overall, it was such a fun trip, and I'm so happy we all got to get together to celebrate together. I guess the next big, full family adventure is our wedding... I can't wait until February!

Think Pink

Today's entry is pink, in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month!

There are very few things that will get me out of bed before 6:30 on Saturday mornings... Day After Thanksgiving shopping, fun trips, and this morning, the Susan G Komen Race for the Cure 5K. Thousands of people participated, raising probably well over a million dollars (actual figures will be posted when they're available.) Breast Cancer is one charity and awareness campaign that I can really get behind. My grandma is a survivor, and I have two close friends who are dealing with it in their families right now. So this morning I walked for them. Since we're not in shape to run (bad us!), Christy, her sister, her mom & coworkers, and I walked the 5K. It was really fun.... like I said, there were thousands of people participating, everyone was wearing pink... including the men, the dogs, the kids, and everyone else. The survivors wore pink race shirts, and everyone else wore white with pink designs. Some of my favorite shirts had tag lines like: "Cancer Sucks A%@," "I Love Boobs," "Save the Tata's" & "Save Second Base." There's nothing quite like seeing a grown man in a black t-shirt that says "I Love Boobs all over the front of it... in public... and it be completely acceptable. After the race was over, we went to Bay Front Park and shared in the festivities... Yoplait was giving out free yogurt, there were free bananas, music. Overall, it was just a fun morning. Some pictures from the day:

Christy with her mom and sisterMe and ChristyOne of my favorite shirts... it had a bunch of different names for boobs!

Lots of people running for their moms
And to top off the fun day... Christy got a text message that she got nominated for an Emmy... make that 2 Emmy's! She won one last year for a special segment she helped produce on hurricanes. I told her that her Emmy needs some friends... this is the text message she got during the race.

Wedding Bells!

This past weekend, the entire family met in Rome, GA for Kathryn's wedding.

Alan, Stephanie, and I arrived close to the same time into Atlanta, and we spent the day adventuring in downtown. We walked through Olympic Park, went to the Coca-Cola Museum, and Underground Atlanta. We met up with everyone else later in the afternoon and drove to Rome for the rehearsal dinner. We stayed there until close to midnight- it was so much fun to see everyone. Alan has had to miss every similar gathering in the past four and a half years because of deployments, so it was great to have him there. Everyone was excited to catch up with him.

Saturday, we went out to lunch then went back to the hotel to get ready for the 3:00 wedding. The wedding went really well- it was all outside, and we had perfect weather. As always, I love weddings. The reception went well into the night, and fun was had by all. Our family had taken over the bed and breakfast for the weekend, so there was no need to monitor our noise level... which, if you've been around my family much, you know can be quite loud.

I took a ton of pictures- I put some of my favorites on Facebook. I also have the full album available on Kodak Gallery.

Fun on the weekends

I've had two back to back weekends that were both great....

OCTOBER 3-5

We're lucky enough to be friends with Mrs. Diane and Kristy any day of the week, but we're even luckier to be friends with them when Kristy has extra friends and family buddy passes for cheap airfare on the airline she works for. A handful of extra tickets resulted in a last minute trip to New York City to go see Sarah. Woohoo! We had so much fun- I hadn't spent time with Kristy in awhile, and it was fun to see her and hear all about the new business she's starting. We didn't do a whole lot while we were there- just hung out, did a lot of walking, some sightseeing, and a whole lot of hanging out. We happened to be in town the same weekend as two of our friends from London, so that was an added fun surprise. One thing we did that I've never done before was walked across the Brooklyn Bridge- it's quite the view of the city!

Mom and Daughters on the Brooklyn Bridge

Happy Birthday Oscar!

This is slightly belated, but I wanted to shout out to Oscar, who celebrated his 17th birthday on Saturday. That's right- 17 years. Go Oscar! Before I left Tallahassee, we had a chicken party for him- he loves KFC, so we got him some and ate it all together. He even had his baby bed on the chair so he could sit at the table with us. That dog is the best- he's brought so much happiness to our whole family!

Dad sent me a picture yesterday of his actual birthday party- he got ice cream cake and got to wear his adorable birthday outfit. Go Boo!