Brides and Babies

Post dated: July 24, 2010

You know how you’ll go a few weekends in a row and have absolutely NOTHING to do, then all of a sudden you have 3 events in the same weekend, or in my case the same day?

This is exactly what happened to me.

My dear friend Tara is was getting married in August (since I’m post dating this, obviously she has already gotten married) so most of her showers of course fell in the summer months.  Unfortunately because of class and my summer travels, I had not been able to attend any of the many bridals showers and events to which I had been invited.  When she had her lingerie shower here in town, it happened to fall on a weekend when I had nothing going on, so I jumped at the chance to go.

Right after I RSVP’d, I was sorting through the rest of my mail and found yet another invitation.  I opened it up and found this….

(obviously not the full invitations because I cut off the info for privacy reasons, but isn’t she adorable?)

One of my best friends from college invited me to her little girl’s birthday party.  I was so excited until I looked at the date and realized it was the EXACT date of my friend Tara’s lingerie shower.  I was determined to make both because let’s face it, who can say no to that face?  So since the shower was from 2-4, and the birthday party was from 4 –6, I decided I was going to stay as long as I could at Tara’s, and then drive the hour drive to Harper’s birthday party until 6.

Anyway, I left the house that afternoon armed with lots of pink presents (one was an engagement present for the bride’s sister/my best friend who had just gotten engaged as well!)

Casey, the brides sister/my best friend, has a background in interior design so she is extremely good at decorating.  Every time I threw a party, I always reeled her into help me decorate (not to mention, we bonded over our love for parties when we were both VP’s of Special Events for our Student Alumni Association here at UA)  Anyway, true to form, everything was adorable!

     She made everything herself…told you, she is amazing!

We ate, laughed, chatted, played some adorable shower games, and then I headed to Birmingham for my second event of the day, BUT not before I snapped a couple of pictures with my favorite girls!! :)

Casey, my best friend, and I on the left; Tara, the bride, and I on the right

 

The birthday girl with her parents…is she not the cutest thing?

 

Harper’s big brother Aiden, the pirate (if you can’t tell she did fairies and pirates…like Peter Pan ;))  My friend had Aiden when she was in college so he has a lot of “aunts” because she would bring him to class with her.  (In fact the last picture I had with him was this one:

 

Back in 2005 so yes, it has been a while! :)

Back to the party…

I bought her a tutu (her mom has been thinking about starting her in dance and of course I am always an advocate for dance :)) and the original Angelina Ballerina book because it was always my favorite (and thankfully she didn’t have it already :))

Then, I got pictures with my two favorite kiddos!!  Seriously, I would take both of them home in a heart beat!

When I gave her the tutu, her mom told me it actually matched the outfit she had on earlier (the tutu was different shades of pink, white, and had little black and white polka dot ribbons), so she put it on to model for me….so cute!

Me with my favorite little ballerina! :)

I haven’t had a picture with my friend Christina (their mom) in a long time either so I got an updated one to add to the collection.  LOVE HER (although I look really tired here!)

So that was my day in a nutshell!! I was exhausted, but my heart was so filled with joy after seeing some of my favorites :)

Remember Me?

Yeah, it has definitely been a while!!  In fact, it has been such a long while, I have no idea where to begin to catch up!

Over the next week or so, I hope to play catch up on my many adventures over the past month (and there have been quite a few) as well as the ones I’m about to have (I’ll share those too of course), so keep an eye out for quite a few new posts.  Since I plan on backdating them (because that’s the only way I remember dates of things haha), I’ll link them all here for my non-reader readers :)

But for now, I’m going to be taking a few days to readjust being back in T-town and get my house AND life back in order :)

I hope everyone is having a FABULOUS summer and thanks for hanging in there with me…I promise I’ll catch up soon!

Now if you’ll excuse me while I go unpack the million bags I seem to have lying around, and start on the first of many loads of laundry…*sigh*

See you soon!

Posts (The ones in gray are linked)

• ISTE 2010
• 4th of July Weekend Part I
• 4th of July Weekend Part II
• Arkansas Part I:  Brunch, BBQ, and FIRE!
• Arkansas Part II:  Week 1 Highlights
• Arkansas Part III:  Boats, Brunch and Breweries Part I
• Arkansas Part IV:  Boats, Brunch, and Breweries Part II
• Arkansas Part V:  Week 2 Highlights
• New Job!
• Babies and Brides
• Tara’s Wedding

Arkansas Trip V: Week Two Highlights

My second and final week in Arkansas was pretty uneventful.  Here’s the rundown :)

Monday, July 12, 2010

I spent a relaxing day at home, and then went to dinner with Alex at a cute little place called the Oak Street Bistro.  I had the chicken salad sandwich which was amazing and we shared a piece of Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie that was absolutely to die for (even better since it was free because our food took too long to get there! :))

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Alex left me the jeep and I met Alex at HP to hang out for a little while, go eat lunch with he and his coworkers at an awesome home cooking place called Holly’s Country Cooking and then spent the afternoon hanging out at HP.  Then, we went to a pretty little Mexican place called El Parian (there were a TON in Conway) that had the most amazing booths for dinner.

Alex’s to do list for the day…it was so nice to see me on that list :)

Yummy food from Holly’s

 

My view for the day :)

Us before heading to dinner :)

  

The booth at El Parian

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

I spent the entire day at HP and enjoyed a fabulous lunch at the Fish House with Alex and his coworkers.  Then, I had the bright idea that I wanted to make dinner which is always entertaining!  Luckily for me, my three cheese pasta bake turned out well!! You can find the recipe here…it was amazing! :)

Working hard at HP :)

In a building full of Arkansas fans, I had to make sure they knew who Alex rooted for :)

Taking my dish out of the oven

Finito…believe me, it is as yummy as it looks!

      I even made homemade cheesy garlic bread to go with it.

Note:  Again, I have posted the recipe on my cooking blog, and you can find it here :)

Thursday, July 15, 2010

It was finally time for me to leave Arkansas which was a bit bittersweet for me!  I LOVED spending the time with Alex again and getting to see him every day was just amazing, however, I was excited about him coming to spend the weekend with me in Tuscaloosa!

Before he left for work, my sweetie made breakfast and even gave me a new coffee mug to drink the yummy Kona coffee out of.

He knows me too well ;)

Eggs and coffee…yummy way to start our last morning in Arkansas!

As soon as he got off work, we were T-town bound!

It was a great trip, but I was definitely excited to get back!!

Arkansas Part IV: Boats, Brunch, and Breweries Part II

As I’ve mentioned before, Alex is a huge beer connoisseur so when he found out that Little Rock had their own brewery, he couldn’t wait to go check it out.  He has been quite a few times, and jokingly mentioned he wanted me to go while I was in town.  Since he had been such a sweetheart about doing things I wanted to do, I agreed to go.

Before we headed to Little Rock, we stopped off by Michaelangelo’s (where we had lunch earlier in the week) for an all you can eat Mimosa brunch.

It was delicious as it looks!

It was so good that Alex was ready for a nap while shopping :)

After we shopped for a little while, we headed to Little Rock to the Diamond Bear Brewery to start our tour!

 

   While we waited for the tour to start, they offer you three free samples of their beer.  Since that is not at all my style, I gave my three samples to Alex and I enjoyed my unlimited glasses of their homemade root beer (which is amazing!)

Then it was time for the tour to begin!  Even though Alex has been many times, he still gets super excited every time (hence the expression below).   Since I know nothing about beer, I gave him the camera and let him snap away.

I could show you all of the pictures he took, but that would require me telling you what they are and that’s just not going to happen haha  I will share some of my favorites of us though :)

 

Me in front of the heater things…yeah see, I didn’t pay attention (yep, still clutching my root beer :))

  Us

Although I make fun of him, it was pretty interesting and I did learn a few things while I was there.

We decided that we were going to check out a Traveler’s baseball game after we left the brewery, but since we had a little time in between, we decided to go grab something to eat and kill some time.

Last time I was there, we saw this place called the Flying Fish, but we didn’t get to go.  Alex was determined to go so we decided to eat lunch there.  I had some yummy shrimp and Alex, being Alex, ordered frog legs.  I tried one and it wasn’t that bad, but when he picked up the frog legs and made them dance, I thought I was going to die…bleh!

 

My favorite part about this restaurant is the Billy the Bass adoption center.  Apparently you bring in one of those obnoxious Billy the Bass singing fish, and they hang it up. 

After lunch, we decided to go find Little Rock’s namesake, “La Petite Roche”.  According to all the tourist info, it is in the park that we visited on my last trip so we headed there.

We literally checked out every rock there…We were expecting to see like one rock with a sign saying “this is it”, but no such luck.  You have to walk around and read a bunch of signs like this

only to find out that there is not just one rock, but a cluster of rocks in which they built the bridge on…I think…that’s what we got out of it at least.

Alex explaining something to me…maybe pointing out the rocks…I don’t know, I wasn’t listening ;)

 

We’ve decided that this cluster of rocks is part of the “La Petite Roche”…your guess is as good as mine though

Self-portrait!

As you can see, it was getting kind of cloudy so we headed back to the car to avoid getting soaked…good thing because the bottom fell out as soon as we got there!  Needless to say, the Travs game was off (at least for us) so we decided to go grab some dessert and head back to the house to relax.

We ended up at Fresh Market and we got the fruit tart (we got that on my last visit too) and some water/tea and ended up eating in the car.

     

It was a WONDERFUL day and a wonderful end to a fabulous weekend!

Next up:  My last week in Arkansas :(

Arkansas Trip: Boats, Brunch & Breweries Part I

Although I got to see Alex every evening, I was so excited for us to get to spend the entire weekend together!  We had lots of plans (unfortunately we didn’t get to do them all) and our weekend was definitely full!!

Every Saturday, there is a Farmer’s Market in Little Rock so we went to check it out.  I have never been to a true Farmer’s Market (it’s not a big thing here in T-town), so I was excited to go.

Unfortunately, it rained most of the time we were there, but we did have a chance to walk around and get a yummy lunch while we were there!

Enjoying the Farmer’s Market The set-up under the pavilion  The food vendors inside…we had an amazing lunch while waiting out the rain :)

Then, we changed clothes and got ready to tackle our second event of the day:  a dinner cruise on the Arkansas Queen!

During my last visit, we saw the boat and I told Alex how fun that would be to be able to see Arkansas from the river.  We have a riverboat here in T-town and I adore going on the cruises here!  Well, Alex surprised me by booking a dinner cruise while I was there! :)

We had to wait a while on the captain, but we did get the cheesy pre-boarding picture before getting on the boat.

A picture of the picture, but you get the idea!  Cheesy, but I loved it so they definitely made another $10 off of me haha

Apparently when Alex called, he requested a window seat…we were one of the few ones on the boat that got one and we were on the mezzanine level with one about 6 other people…it was perfect!

      

The view from our table…so pretty!

Us enjoying our seats (you can kind of see it is fairly empty behind Alex)

Our view from the mezzanine…this area was packed by the time we departed!

While everyone else was boarding (thankfully we were at the front of the line), we decided to check out the boat.  Of course our first stop was the top observation deck!  It was such a pretty view!

 

He’s so sweet…I think I’ll keep him ;)

When they made the announcement that we were departing, we headed down to the main deck to hang out at the front of the boat.  We were probably one of the youngest couples there, and everyone kept asking us what we were celebrating.  When we told them nothing, they oohed and ahhed and talked about how sweet it was that this was just a “date” for us.  Anyway, everytime someone saw us taking a self-portrait, they’d offer to take a picture of us.  The one below is definitely my favorite from the cruise!

    

We hung out on the main deck for a while and then returned to our seats when they let us know it was time for dinner.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pics of the meal, but it was as good as it sounds!

While we ate, we got to enjoy some amazing music by an onboard pianist

After dinner, we headed back out the deck to check out the scenery

Right before we were about to dock, Alex and I headed up top to take one last look at the city lights!

   

So pretty!! Anyway, we had a wonderful time and hope to go back and do it again soon! :)  Thanks babe for a wonderful date night!

Disclaimer:  This is by no means all of the pictures I took, so if you would like to see more, visit my picasa album here.