Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler!!!!

Sadie and I hope everyone had a wonderful Mardi Gras! (She did not flash for these beads, although she did beg for the cookie I was holding over the camera...)

Krystle's Shower!

We had a bridal shower for Krystle at my house today! Susan and her mom did all of the work! I just cleaned the house and made the cake.

Susan and her mom came early to set up. I tried to put Sadie upstairs, but she was having none of that. She was making a terrible amount of noise, so I broke down and let her come downstairs. She was VERY well behaved!
The food was very good! Susan and her mom brought ham dip and crackers, pimiento cheese sandwiches, pecans, mints, punch, and heart shaped ice cubes. :) Tara brought a fruit tray and dip and a veggie tray and dip.

Sadie never left her post guarding the food. But she was very good. She didn't beg! (Well, she asked me a few questions regarding food, but other than that...)

The shower was fun! Stay tuned for more of Krystle's Wedding Adventures!

Susan, Krystle, Me, and Tara

Mail from Korea!! :)

On Saturday, (the same day I was hating Valentine's Day) I got some very special mail! Chalica's daughter Emma sent me a Valentine all the way from Korea! :) It made me very happy! AND it was a homemade Valentine, which made it extra special! Here it is:

And this is me playing with Emma before they moved to Korea...

She'll be a big girl when they come back. I hope she'll still play with me!!

Valentine's Day. Is. Stupid.

Before I get started on today's rant, let me say that I'm not just anti-Valentine's because I happened to be single this year. There have been plenty of V Days when I've been in some sort of relationship and I would rather have skipped the day. That being said...

This is the dumbest holiday ever. Seriously. First of all, who the heck is St. Valentine? Does anybody know? You Google the dude and you get a lot of sketchy information about a whole bunch of people named Valentine. Kinda sounds made up to me. And what was so special about all these Valentine cats anyway? I'm fun. Can we get a Stephanie's Day? Everybody could wear their pajamas and eat cake. It would be awesome!

Furthermore, why do we need a day that tells us we have to love somebody? If you love someone, shouldn't you tell them every day? Do we really need the people at Hallmark to remind us that we're supposed to say "I love you"?? Get a grip people. Commercialism.

Then there's so much pressure! If you're in a relationship, it becomes a big deal about what you're going to buy and what you're going to do and people get all stressed out. If you're not, then it's like, "well, what the heck am I supposed to do all day?" and you have to listen to all the happy people and their lovey dovey junk. Seriously, people. How much "I had a great Valentine's Day with the best partner ever" stuff are we supposed to listen to before we get sick? Or "my significant other wasn't home all day on Valentine's Day" or "my significant other didn't do anything for me for Valentine's Day". Really? Pull yourselves together and try to make it through.

I'm not going to fuss anymore. I'll just say what I did with my day and be done with it.

I made a birthday cake. I went shopping. I went with Jill, Chris, Beezer, and Scott to Luke's for dinner. Then we went to the Elk's Lodge for the Valentine's Dance. If you ask me, it was extraordinarily boring. The DJ was not the best I've ever seen/heard. When the musical highlights of the evening include "Dancing Queen" and "Funkytown", you know you're somewhere fun. Wow. But whatever. I had a pretty dress. :)


With Jilly.

With Jane.

Exalted Ruler O'Neill...

Next year, I think I'll hide under the bed until it's over. Best things about Valentine's Day: lots of pink and clearance candy.

Bring on St. Patrick's Day!!!! :)

Why I will NEVER eat at Fuel Pizza again...

What a hilarious night! I'll start this post by saying what a great time I had before I go into my rant. Get ready...it's coming. Seriously.

I went on a "date" with our youth minister's wife tonight. Erin and I met at Target (gotta get the contraband) and then moved on to the movies across the street. We got our tickets for the 7:40 showing of Confessions of a Shopaholic (where apparently Erin had an imaginary friend with her because the ticket worker said "one adult and..." like she saw somebody else there) and realized we had about 50 minutes before the movie actually started. We had a brilliant parking space, so we decided to just walk across to either Moe's or Fuel Pizza to grab a bite to eat. The line at Moe's was wicked long, so we chose Fuel Pizza. We chose POORLY! OMG, people. At 6:55, Erin ordered a slice of pepperoni pizza and a drink. (She was planning on popcorn at the movie...another story altogether.) At 6:57, Stephanie ordered 2 slices of cheese pizza and a drink. The receipt clearly states it...6:57. (bottom left corner)




About 5-7 minutes later, Erin's slice of pepperoni arrived. No food for Steppy. Ok, that's fine. They clearly can't carry food for two people at the same time. Except the food for Steppy didn't come any time soon. I tried to get Erin to eat her food while it was hot, but she was trying to wait until I had something to eat too. A few minutes later, a dude came out of the kitchen and asked if we were waiting on anything else. (Apparently I looked hungry!) I told him about my two slices of pizza and he said he'd be right back. So I waited. Fairly patiently at first. Now would be a good time to mention that we were sitting at a table where we could look through a big window into the kitchen and see the people making the pizzas and the pizzas coming out of the oven and the pizzas being sliced and put on plates, etc. So I waited. And waited. And waited. Pizzas were coming out of the oven left and right, being sliced and served. Still no food for Stephanie. The dude came back out of the kitchen and I actually said out loud, "DUDE! Pizza!" (Ok, I know that was incredibly rude and I really didn't mean for him to hear me.) He said it was coming out of the oven in a minute. Um...it had been like 20 minutes at this point and many many pizzas had come out of the oven. So I try to be patient and wait. Except more pizzas were coming out of the oven and none of them were cheese! So I took to making sad faces at the people in the kitchen through the window. Poor Erin had picked all the pepperoni off of her pizza and was working on picking the cheese off. She was making faces with me too.

Please keep in mind that our movie was starting at 7:40. It was 7:20. And there were no pizzas in the oven. I could see right into it. I was done at that point. So I went up to the front counter and said, "Dude (again, rude, I know, but I was HUNGRY! and going to be late!), I ordered 2 slices of cheese pizza at 6:57. It's the most basic of all pizzas. Am I gonna get that any time soon??" So Smartacus was all, "Yeah, I'll check on that for ya." SERIOUSLY??? Ugh. So I waited some more. And then I saw it. Finally. Could it be??? A cheese pizza making it's way out of the oven. My pizza finally arrived at 7:27. Geez, people.

And I burned my mouth. And then the pizza went all kamikaze on me and jumped in my lap. UGH.

SO...I ate as fast as I could and we left. NEVER TO RETURN.

We got to the movie theater and the lines for snacks were forever long. I went in to grab seats and Erin got in line for popcorn. About 10 minutes later, she appeared at the bottom of the stairs with no popcorn. Apparently the snack people were as slow as the pizza people because she said the lines never moved. Fail.

We watched the movie, mostly without incident. There were annoying children behind them. I resisted the (strong) urge to punch them in the head. At some point, somebody let a sheep in because we heard a definite "Baaa." Followed by loud laughter. The movie was pretty good. Not like the books, though.

After the movie, Erin wanted coffee since she didn't get her popcorn. I remembered the coffee shop downtown and we went there. Closed. Seriously? Then she mentioned Panera. Also closed. So we went to Dunkin Donuts. And had our coffee. And great conversation.

Despite the fact that apparently NOBODY wanted us to have a successful evening, I had a great time! I hope we do it again (sans drama) soon!

DOG SHOW!!!!!

It's our favorite Monday/Tuesday of the year! Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show Nights! :) Sadie and I LOVE to watch the dog show! (Well, ok, Sadie only watches until she falls asleep...but I LOVE it!!!) I was so happy last year when Uno the Beagle won! Sadie, of course, is rooting for the Cocker Spaniels! :)

Here she is, perched on the end of the recliner, watching the Hound group.

Chillin'

Saturday morning, Sadie and I were watching Eight Below. She loves dog movies. I was apparently too tired last night to go upstairs, so I dragged the air mattress out of the closet and inflated it and it was still in the floor. (I still, one year later, do not have a couch in my house. But hey, IKEA opens in 11 days!) At some point, Sadie decided she'd watch tv in comfort. I thought it was funny.

No Day But Today

RENT. IS. AMAZING.

After seeing my sadness over not getting to go see RENT while it was in Charlotte, when it seemed like everybody else I knew was going, my dear sweet cousin came through for me. Katie went with friends on Thursday night. I was playfully giving her a hard time on Friday and she said she had a coupon for tickets for Sunday night. SOOOO.....on Friday, she bought tickets for the two of us to go to the last Charlotte performance!!!!! I was about to burst out of my skin! I was SOOO excited! :)

RENT was the last activity of Stephanie's Weekendpalooza! Katie met me at my house and we headed out for Ovens Auditorium. We went to will call for our tickets and then ventured out to find food. We ended up in Sketchville, USA at a Wendy's. Needless to say, we did NOT get out of the car. We did the drive thru. We took our snacks back to our great parking space and ate in the car. Where we were safe. :)

The performance was AMAZING. Did I say that already? AMAZING!!!! Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp were on the tour playing Roger and Mark, the roles they originated on Broadway. They were AMAZING! That, in itself, was exciting enough for me. Mimi was played by the understudy, Karmine Alers, who was playing Mimi when RENT closed on Broadway last year. She, too, was AMAZING! In fact, the whole cast was AMAZING!

PHENOMENAL, even!


Everybody should see this show. It's so so so good! Actually, let me amend that statement. Everybody should NOT see this show. 10 year olds (like the one that sat in front of me) should NOT see this show. It's amazing, it's wonderful, it's beautiful. It is NOT child-appropriate. I have serious concerns about the parenting skills of a parent that would bring a child to see this show. If you're reading this and you don't know about RENT, perhaps you should Google it. Rea about the characters and the plots and the issues of the show. NOT child-appropriate material. Seriously.

If RENT is in a place near you, I highly suggest you see it. It's definitely worth it. I've been humming all day. :)

Stephanie's Weekendpalooza: Saturday

What a wonderful day! I woke up (a lot earlier than I would have liked) feeling very chipper because I was going to the CIRCUS! Colin's mom and dad got him tickets to the circus for his 7th birthday and they were kind enough to get one for me too! :) Thanks, guys!

Colin and I were so excited in the car on the way to Charlotte! We parked at the South Boulevard station and rode the light rail into Charlotte. It was my first time on the train!

We had to stand out in the FREEZING cold waiting to get into the arena. Seriously, folks. The arena is HUGE! Could they not have let us wait on the INSIDE? There were lots of little kids out there!

At 10:00, they let us in for the all-access pre-show. It was really cool. We got to go down on the floor and get really close to the acrobats. They had clown costumes for people to try on. My favorite part was the elephant (of course) that came out and painted a picture. You could enter to win the painting. Some other stupid person won. They obviously did not get the memo that the painting was meant for ME! Some pictures from preshow:

The circus show was wonderful! I thought it was really cool that the Ringmaster sang everything. That was fun! Basically, the theme of the show was that the main clown, Tom, kept stealing the Ringmaster's hat. So we had to keep getting the hat back. It was cute.

The elephant brought out the Stars and Stripes during the National Anthem.

The opening was a huge production!

After the opening, there were some very cute dogs doing tricks. The came the aerialists. Amazing!

And then horses. Little white horses. SO cute!

Then the crazy motorcycle people in the big steel ball. I still don't understand how they got 7 motorcycles and riders inside this thing.

The penguin people were funny. Then the tigers came out. They were so BIG and actually very pretty. (I'm not a tiger person, you know.)

Then there was a cute bit with the Ringmaster, Tom, and a little girl about not blowing bubbles at the circus that ended with the Ringmaster's hat floating away in a bubble.

More acrobats and aerialists. Then my most favorite part.

ELEPHANTS!!!!!!



We had the best time at the circus! :)