A little Recap

How was your Easter weekend? Ours was just fabulous but I'll get to that in the next post. First I'll need to catch you up on what has transpired in our lives over the past couple of days. Last Thursday was the annual Get Fit Stay Fit Corporate Challenge sponsored by our local Chamber of Commerce. JandJ Foods was a sponsor so many of our staff members were there helping and walking/running. We had a tent set up and were giving away bananas. It is just a fun time and you get to see everyone you know. Here are a couple of pics:

I actually didn't get to run/walk this year with my family which made me very sad. I sustained an unfortunate foot injury while climbing Dunn River Falls in Jamaica while we were on our vacation. This is another story for another day. So G took my place running. We all had a great time. Since I couldn't run and was a little down about the whole situation, D's mom decided the only way I would feel better was if we all went to Brewsters for ice cream after the race. I was in total agreement that that would cheer me up so we piled in the car and celebrated the post-race with butter pecan ice cream. Have you had Brewster's butter pecan ice cream? oh. my.word. It is unbelievably good. You must try it. By the way, I felt much better after the ice cream. :)

E and I had a two full day of meetings with brides on Friday and Saturday. On Friday afternoon we had an initial meeting with a bride who is getting married in May, yes, as in next month. She's suddenly a little stressed and we were called in for the rescue.

Then Friday night, we traveled to Athens to meet with a bride and her mom. The wedding is in June. This is such an interesting wedding. The ceremony will be at 10:00 in the morning (E and I have decided we'll need to get up at about 4:00 that morning) with a brunch and band to follow. At first, I didn't think I much liked the idea of a 10:00 a.m. wedding but the more we talk with this bride about the plans, I think it's going to be great. The venue is perfect; great band for the reception; and some fun things planned for the guests.

Then Saturday we met with one of our September couples for planning meetings with their florist and cake designer. Cake meetings are my favorites. We got to go along for their tasting and honestly, sampling Key Lime, Italian Cream, Carrot and Classic White cake to decide which one is the best (when they are all amazing) is not the worst thing in the world to do.
After that, E and I went over some notes together at the office and then hopped in the car for a meeting with a bride at Montaluce Winery in Dahlonega. Her special day is in two weeks (May 7th) and it is going to be a great wedding. I hope I get to take some photos to share. She just has the coolest plans for the decor, flowers, favors, and food. We have enjoyed her so much. Neither she or the groom are from Georgia so this is truly a destination wedding for them.

So when I got back into town Saturday night, I grabbed a pizza at Little Caesars (our favorite no-time-to-cook meal) and came home and put on my pajamas. NetFlix had been kind enough to send us a movie so we settled in. Have you seen "Life as We Know it?" It was filmed in Atlanta. Josh Duhamel's character "works" for the Atlanta Hawks so there are lots of city shots of the ATL. But the best part of this movie to me was the house where it was filmed. I love houses and especially movie houses. This house is awesome. It is beautiful but comfortable; decorated incredibly. I LOVED this house. What makes it even better, it is an actual house in Atlanta, in the suburb of Brookhaven. And it is for sale, or at least it was, if you are interested. I sure would be if I lived in Brookhaven . . . and had an extra $1.775 million. Here's a link if you're a house lover like me:

http://hookedonhouses.net/2010/10/17/for-sale-the-colonial-style-house-from-life-as-we-know-it/

Seriously, what's not to love?

Well, look who's back in Blogland!

Yes, I'm back. And can I just say, it is GOOD to be home. Good, I say. We had two fab.u.lous weeks in the sun, full of fun and food. You know, I sat down Monday night, and not one single person put a plate of food or a drink with a little umbrella in front of me. Yes, back to reality I am.

For those of you who might wonder where we traveled off to, the first week we were on a cruise celebrating the wedding of the son of one of my adopted sisters. It was great. He married a precious young woman whom we couldn't love more. We were blessed and honored that they wanted us two old folks traveling along on their wedding extravaganza. I've just got to tell you this story before I go any further because it may go down as one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my life. Let me set the scene. We are in one of the bars/lounges on the cruise ship. I guess that's what you call it. All I know was that they were doing karaoke and there was a bar at the back of the room. Anyway, there was a bunch of us and we thought it might be fun to go in and check it out. Well, we sat through some pretty bad attempts with the exception of this beautiful black girl from Atlanta who brought down the house singing Aretha Franklin's "R-E-S-P-E-C-T." She was the crowd favorite for sure. But she must have thought she had peaked and didn't sing another note the rest of the night. So we were all sitting there discussing the pitiful state of the performers when my husband says, "well, Ben, (the groom) let's just go up there and show em how it's done." Excuse me? Since when do you sing karaoke? for a crowd of 200 people? And just for the record, he had not had a drop of alcohol. I thought, this is going to be good. The song selection became top secret and with the addition of one of Ben's buddies, they were quite the trio. Pretty soon, they called their names and these three unlikely performers took the stage. Big stage; bright lights; huge room; lots of people; tough crowd. They had decided to channel their country roots and for some unknown reason, settled on Alabama's "Mountain Music," circa 1982. Honestly, at first, I thought, they had made a mistake. This particular crowd didn't look like they were country music fans, much less fans of the mullet-men from Ft. Payne. But when they started singing, well D was the only one singing, the crowd went crazy. Keep in mind, these fellas are about 30 years old, cute as can be and surprisingly, full of some serious dance moves. Honestly, D could have been singing the phone book backwards with a beat and these boys would have brought down the house. Nothing against my husband's singing because he kept that together by himself but those boys shook it, moved it and rocked it. We were crying we were laughing so hard. It was classic and not a single one of us had a phone or camera to record it for posterity. So D is now denying it ever happened and if it did, that it will never happen again, at least not on dry land.

Our first port was Key West which I loved. Maybe it was because I had a "Cheeseburger in Paradise" at Jimmy Buffett's original Margaritaville for lunch. And you know I am all about what I eat. So when they sat that big ole cheeseburger and those giant fresh onion rings in front of me, I thought that I might have reached some completion of all my food goals. Don't worry, I will set more. But it was amazing and let's just say that Margaritaville lived way up to it's name!

Oh, I've got to tell you this. While we were sitting at the table waiting on our food, I get a text from E. So thinking it might be important, after all, she knows we were on vacation, I look at it immediately. It says something like this: "Mom, Steven Tyler and Carrie Underwood sang "Walk this Way" last night on the CMA Awards! It's awesome! You have got to watch it" Well, see there. It was important. The girl knows me. I don't know if I've told you this but I'm pretty much infatuated with Steven Tyler right now. See he and I go way back to 1975 when I had just turned 16; my new Camaro had an 8 track tape player; and Aerosmith was one of my favorite bands (along with the Doobie Brothers, the BeeGees, Chicago and REO Speedwagon - don't judge me). Well, to be honest, I hadn't given Steven much thought until he popped up on AI this season and oh, the old feelings started coming back. Don't worry, if you don't understand the attraction. I'm not sure I do either. Everyone in my house thinks I'm crazy. I think I'm just a girl revisiting her 16 year old self.

The next stop was Ochos Rios, Jamaica. This is a story all in it's self. Short story: Climbed a rushing, cold waterfall; took a serene ride on a chair lift through the rain forest; and then rode a bob sled down a mountain. Oh heavenly day.

The next stop was Grand Cayman. Our family had visited in 2004 after E graduated from high school and loved it. So since we had seen most of the island, we just did a little shopping and decided to turn the tables on the island. We would take it in from the cruise ship. We parked our rears on the balcony outside our room and enjoyed the view of the island and the water from up there. It was pretty much heavenly.

All in all, this first leg of our trip was fabulous. But there's more . . .