Wade's 33rd birthday

Since Wade's birthday was on a Friday this year we decided to take a day off work, pack up the kids, and head to the beach. We spent a long weekend out there relaxing and celebrating. When we arrived Thursday night, I set to work decorating the house to the hilt with birthday decorations and balloons (birthdays should be personal holidays in my world view, and as such, should be wildly celebrated).

Friday was Wade's day to pick the agenda so we walked to the pier for breakfast on the water, opened presents, had the best queso for lunch, made and ate carrotcake with cream cheese icing, then made homemade pizzas for dinner. It was a lazy food centric day and we had a great time. :) Saturday friends came over - first was Michelle for a hearty homemade breakfast, then the St. Pete friends for pool time and drinks in the afternoon. Sunday we lazed around, basked in the sun, played paddle ball at the beach, and enjoyed the pool some more before heading home.

The weekend went by too quickly as I had to pack to fly out on Monday for a week in DC. But, as I was standing in the security line at the Tampa Airport my boss called to tell me my two meetings were getting pushed back, so I canceled my trip and came home! It was actually a huge relief since we've had so much going on with the new house.

We're buying a house

No, no, we're for real this time. That house we looked at on Fourth of July weekend has turned out to be "the one". So right after we got back from NY we spent the afternoon in St Pete doing our inspections. Everything checked out, but she's an old house - built in 1926. Which normally freaks me out because I'm a hurricane nutter, but, we love the house anyway. She needs a little work, but then again, what house doesn't?

(After the information overload of our inspections we were finally able to make it over to Megan and Jimmy's for dinner. We finally met Wes, who is adorable and I had fun playing dancing basketball with Trey while he got to show me how good of a big brother he is. We had a wonderful time with them and it was a lovely way to unwind after such a hectic day.)

Now, because I am superstitious, I'm not posting any pictures yet or telling you much more about the house. I will tell you that we close on Aug. 5th (eek!) and once we have the keys in our hot little hands, I'll stop being secretive.

Fortunately we were able to get out of the other short sale house we were waiting to hear about (and as of this writing still hadn't made progress!), so no worries there. This whole process had been such a roller coaster and pretty mind numbing - so many new things to learn about and decide on and figure out... we'll be glad when that's over... and we transition into figuring out how to be official DIYers in our house. ;) Lord help us...

Woodstock

Yes, that's right, we headed to THE Woodstock, NY for Marilyn and Tyler's wedding the second week of July. (For the uninitiated, Marilyn and Tyler are friends from grad school and Marilyn is also an old roommate of mine) We flew Southwest, which we don't usually get to do (oh-ho, another benefit of moving to St. Pete!) - and we loved it. I fly enough for work that I am officially, as Wade sagely observed, that traveler that quickly and efficiently puts their stuff away, then promptly tunes out to the chaos around me (see earlier posts of examples of me losing my cool due to the general madness that is traveling). But the staff on Southwest on this flight were so funny, I actually didn't want to tune out and found myself really laughing. But hey, when a guy imitates Mickey Mouse to ask the kids on the intercom "Hey kids, this is Mickey Mouse, and you know what my favorite thing to do on a flight is?? SLEEP!" - well, you can't help but laugh and be extremely grateful.

After a delay on the tarmac, we finally made it to Albany, then drove 1.5hrs to Woodstock - everything was lush and green and beautiful along the way, so we didn't mind the drive. We were meeting friends for dinner (and were running late from the flight), but finally made it to the restaurant. A group of folks from Miami had dinner, then more people showed up so we could hang out with Marilyn and Tyler after their rehearsal dinner. It was great to see so many friends that are now scattered literally around the globe. However, the heat wave was definitely making an appearance and by the end of the evening we all were absolutely roasted. It was so hot that we gave up looking for glasses and just started drinking straight out of the water pitchers - oh, and it was delicious.

The next morning Wade and I slept in at our cute little B&B and ate the breakfast delivered to our door. I was also feeling a bit off (despite not drinking the night before) so we took it slow and went out to explore a bit and get some lunch. We made our way back to the B&B to get cleaned up and headed to the wedding site that was near by. The wedding and reception location were at this really neat place that looked over the Catskill mountains and it was beautiful. The wedding went off without a hitch, with the bride and groom looking stunning and totally in love.

Things transitioned into a lovely open-air reception and we all began consuming lots of cute little "painkiller" drinks (a tropical specialty to honor their current residence in the Virgin Islands)... they were little, had lots of ice to keep them cool in the sweltering heat, made with pineapple juice and nutmeg, and they were pure evil (as you will see below...).

The happy couple finally joined the crowd during their entrance song of... what has to be the BEST entrance I've ever seen... the Star Wards theme song!!! It was freakin' awesome. This was only topped by the fact that their cake figurines were a little Lego Han Solo and Leia, and their cake cutting music was the bar music in the Mos Eisley Cantina (for the extremely uninitiated - that's the scene in the original first movie where Luke and Obi-Wan meet Han and Chewie for the first time). It was great and true to their style and sense of humor. :)

The rest of the evening was filled with the kind of dancing that only graduate students can do - the let-your-hair-down(literally), do-things-you'll-regret-or-relish-in-the-morning, but you-don't-care-because-grad school-is-making-you-crazy kind of way. Hilarity ensued as evidenced by the pictures on our Picasa site. After dancing the night away we finally had to call it an evening. Up until this point I felt great, aware of my surroundings, and happy to be alive. When we got into the car I realized my body had other plans for me. I spent the evening sleeping upright on the couch because for some reason the room would not spot spinning around me... the darnedest thing since I was so sure I wasn't drunk. Then I threw up. And didn't stop for 24 hours....

The drive to the airport the next morning at 5:30am had me saying a prayer before I got in the car: "Dear Lord, please do not let me throw up in or on this rental car or along the highway." So I slept in the rental car in the fetal position the whole 1.5 hours back. We pulled into the rental return area and I was relieved. I got out of the car feeling grateful and when I stood up, something twisted in a bad way in my stomach... I could barely speak the words asking Wade for a plastic bag, and as he asked the rental agent for one, I promptly bent over and threw up in her trashcan. Yeah. I have never thrown up in public before (as my mom tells me, I've "always been a good puker") - normally I will always make it to a bathroom, no matter what, so this was a horrifying first for me. And humiliating, did I mention humiliating? So, I pulled myself together and we stumbled into the terminal to get our boarding passes.

We hurried through security as I was discovering that standing up was not a good look for me. We settled at our gate while I continued to feel utter sympathy for anyone having to travel while nauseous. Then, I caught a whiff of the food cart nearby and bolted for the bathroom - let's just say, that had I not already just thrown up, I would have really ticked off the folks at the Albany airport because I did not make it to the bathroom in quite enough time. I was starting to feel like the star of a really bad comedy movie that involves barf as the running joke. I headed back to the gate in time to board and proceeded to pray every minute of an almost 3 hour flight that I would not have to puke in an airplane lav. EEEW. Fortunately that didn't happen, but as a precaution I had Wade dig out all the airsick bags in the seats he could find while I kept myself together by sheer willpower alone (I'm pretty sure my cold sweats were creeping people out...).

So we landed in Tampa, and we had to cancel dinner with Megan and Jimmy because frankly, no one should have to be exposed to me when I'm like that... not even me. We headed home, and about 2 minutes before pulling into the driveway - I did another first - threw up in an airsick bag.

Soooo, the lesson here - weddings are wonderful, friends are always worth it, but rum drinks are deliciously evil.

Wow, it's July already??

I ushered in July with yet another trip to DC. It was nastily humid, sunny, and hot when I arrived, but it cooled off a touch by the end of the week to make it quite pleasant. I spent the week there going to meetings (wearing a suit in July should be considered cruel and unusual punishment) and trying to see as many friends as possible. I also did a little shopping for Wade's birthday and was able to go see Eclipse with Whitney for her birthday. We had a lovely little celebration dinner and movie for the occasion which made it feel like a Friday night since it was the last night of my trip.

I arrived home Friday evening to discover it had been raining all week, which it continued to do all weekend. We were camped out on Anna Maria for the long holiday weekend, but took advantage of a dreary day to go see another house in St Pete that had potential (still not a single word of progress on the current house we're waiting on). We were pleasantly surprised and really liked it. It needs a little work, but has a lot of potential. So we're in the process of putting on offer on it... we'll see what happens. This one is not a short sale, so that's good news!

We had a quiet weekend for Fourth of July. We listened to the rain on the skylights all weekend while we read on the couch with kitties snoozing in our laps. We did discover that lounging in the spa while it's raining it actually pretty nice so we did get to enjoy the pool a little bit! The rain was also merciful in that it stopped just long enough for us to see fireworks on the beach and light some sparklers in the driveway. We also experimented with making pina coladas from scratch (success!) since I was feeling tropical while watching Pirates of the Caribbean. It also made me want to find an excuse to throw a pirate party... perhaps a housewarming party idea?! :)

Last week Megan and Jimmy finally had their second baby, Wesley. We look forward to finally meeting him this week! For pictures, you can check out their blog (to the upper right on our blog list).

This weekend we head to NY for Marilyn's wedding, then the following weekend we're off to the beach for Wade's birthday, and I'm back in DC immediately after that. It seems July is going to fly by and it'll be August before we know it!