SPCA Dog Walk: Valentines Day Galore

Valentine's Day was very special for us this year - we decided to just enjoy ourselves with other activities other than spending a lot of money on dinner. We do this unintentionally all of the time anyways, so...

Plus it was Darin and my fourth anniversary. Yikes. Glad to be getting married because we get to start back at zero. I think we were both kind of scared with the whole four years thing. That's a long time... not thinking about it. Moving on.

****

In the morning:

So last year we took Jake, the monster, to the walk with our friends Tammie and Joe, and their dogs Skippy (a skipperke) and Chianti (an Italian greyhound). Joe's sister and brother-in-law came too (they're from Chicago and I can't remember their names for the life of me.)

Joe used to work with Darin and me over at my previous job. He's a great guy and a blast to talk to! It's also nice to share old work gossip with him... Tammie works at Disney's Animal Kingdom and invited us to join their "pack". It's all about fundraising for the SPCA - good cause and fun times.

This year, Russell and Maggie, and his daughter-in-law, Diana and Piper, came along too.

Initially, we started around the same area to get a "pack" pictures. While I tried not to let Jake attack other dogs or get into fights, other normal dogs got to meet some friends and sniff.

Maggie with giant Great Dane. Yowza!
Now Maggie is a BIG dog. Oh dear!



Jake with his gentle lead.



Lady (Jake's cousin) being the good sociable dog that she is.
Also searching for squirrels.



Ms. Maggie Moe.

We then walked together as a group and walked around Lake Eola, which was right near downtown Orlando. It's always a wonderful place to go. And it was a beautiful day to walk a dog or thousands of dogs, for the matter.

Lady vs. Black Swan.

Darin, Russell, Joe's Family

Skippy. I love him.

Russell and Diana, with Maggie (+ drool) and Piper



Me. Sporting the red sunglasses.
Don't worry, I got rid of those...



The buddies.

After the walk around the lake, we all just chatted and talked about nothing. Good times. For some reason, it just happened to be totally exhausting! I think that we do a lot of moving around and worrying about dogs, etc. and that just sucked the energy out of us. Even the dogs!

Ended up going for lunch with the dogs. They were so thirsty!

Sucking down water.

Fun morning - can't wait for next year! And our "pack" raised the most money by far! Go us!

***

That evening, Darin and I went to see the ever so exciting UCF vs. Tulsa basketball game! Darin graduated from UCF and I from Tulsa. (Go TU) And I thought it would be fun/silly to go to a game. And it was our first time in the new arena.

Turned out to be a fantastic game! And though Tulsa lost WTF, it was exciting and we cheered and ate popcorn. Better than watching tv or a movie, hands down. A great way to end the day.

And that's it! We'll remember this one! Love you D.

Housewarming and Smores

A couple of Saturdays ago, my coworker Brian invited a whole bunch of us over for a Housewarming Party and Wine Celebration.

Count us in!

We were also excited about going to test some wine that we had found to see if others liked it - we were wine searching for the wedding. We were not ashamed by this because we really weren't wine drinkers - though we've had a lot of wine in the past weeks so we might be drifting that way...

Brian and his wife, Amanda, life in College Park - which is a fantastic area here in Orlando with wonderful cute little houses that are old and have tons of character. They bought a house awhile ago (like 8 months maybe) and fixed it up completely. It was so cute and just done really well! Too bad I didn't take any pictures. Honestly!

Anyways, we got there and drank some wine. Oh, and they have a fire pit outside in their backyard so we had s'mores. So good. Made me want to do s'mores for our 'wedding cake' instead of strawberry shortcake. Drool.

Fire!



Inderpal, Luis, and Riyaz
(They are on my 'team' at work!)

Robert and Jamie.
(I work with Robert, but they're both from Oklahoma and we talk about random
Oklahoma stuff all the time - like Taco Bueno.)

Vaughn and Nancy
(Vaughn is a Senior Scientist. He also really likes red wine.)

Riyaz and his wife, Nidhi
(It's this the cutest picture!)



Gabby (in hat), Don (my boss), and Emily (my contact lens buddy)



Don was anti-pictures. He's kind of like that.

Oh beautiful fire, make my s'more golden brown.

Us. Darin's lips are chapped; thus, no normal smile.

Ahh HA!

That's it. And we found our red wine - Marques de Caceres Rioja Crianza - num num.

The Last Night Out - The Women are almost Gone

Last post about the terrific Bridal Shower/Bachlorette Party weekend.

On Monday night we took the last of them out for some good fish in the Cape. Darin and I live about 30 minutes from Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach. If you like fish, it's a great place to live... drool.

Took them to our favorite place there - Rustys. It was a perfect way to end a great week (if I don't say so myself.)

Took pictures of us each individually. Don't know why I didn't take any of us as a group... Thought they were cute so I decided to post about it!

They left the next day, and Darin was once again Man of the House.

Mom with coconut shrimp

Margie with fried shrimp

Dru with jerk chicken. She doesn't eat fish.

I got shrimp scampi. It was good. Very good.

Darin with grouper fingers

Sorry this was a kind of boring post, but wanted to show pictures for my mom so she would remember we live less than thirty minutes from fresh fish. And this would make her want to visit more. (Same with Margie, though she lives pretty close to fresh fish too - but she gets to see Jake too. So...) Maybe next time they'll bring along some men for Darin to bond with. :)

The Unforgettable Party

Saturday night (night of the Bridal Shower), we took advantage of everyone being in town to try and get me as drunk as possible. Super.

Got all dolled up in our cute outfits and met at Carrie's house for some penis cake and pigs in the blanket. Melissa (with help) crafted the penis cake out of left over Costco chocolate banana cream cake that we ate the night before.

Said penis cake.

We weren't sure whether it looked like a penis or scissors. Kind of hard to tell with the chocolate swirls everywhere. Tried our damnest to make key lime martinis - ended up drinking a lot of appletinis. Got friends Sarah and Becky to try them and they now are appletini girls!

LaShan, Del, and Kucku.
Key lime martini and a pig in the blanket.
Good combination.

LaShan and Dru. They bonded.



Opened more presents!
Seriously, how crazy was this? Can you see it?





Got dressed up (thanks Melissa!) and headed out.

Went downtown to Wall Street and Chillers. It was a crazy night. I had these dice they made me roll: Dance With/Tell a Joke To/etc a Bald/Tall/Cute Guy. So I did... after a couple of drinks.

The dice. Pink dice.

Rollin'



KC was just waiting to try herself...



At Latitudes...
Becky, Sarah, Kucku, Del, KC, Dru, and Carrie



What?!
Almost everyone - no LaShan.



The ladies:
Carrie, Sarah, Del, Diana, and Becky
(And I have no idea where we were.)

The cleavage picture we sent to Maggie.
It was entertaining.



My Bridesmaids (missing Julie):
Melissa, KC, and Dru



Carrie, Kucku, and Del
(with random guy)



Melissa, Carrie, LaShan, Kucku, Del, Sarah, and Becky
(with random guy)

I also was wearing this spinning pin. I think it was the thing that had "tell a joke" on it. I told some stupid ass jokes. Well, I don't think they're stupid, but I guess everyone else did...

Do NOT remember this.

Also had "give a dollar"

The spin...

And the dollar.
I was very proud.

After trying to escape the club and find Darin (he stopped by for a second and left very quickly), finding everyone else again, going dancing on Wall Street and seeing Angie, going to the Lodge - why why - I felt like I was doing pretty good. Guess the car didn't quite agree with me...

Post Puke Del.

And they were mean and took pictures of me throwing up (which I will not post because it's my blog). But Dru thought this was the best picture. I kind of look like death a little.

It was definitely a memorable experience (from what I actually remember), and I had a great time. We did everything I wanted to do - and I didn't have to drink any stupid shots or kiss any gross guys. Ick. Just fun times and dice. Can wait until all you single ladies who get married and have bachlorette parties... I can and will take LOTS of pictures. :)

Bridal Shower, Take Two

After I opened presents, some of the important ladies in Darin and my life were asked to participate in a fun Bridal Shower game. It was uber fun. Ha. And I wasn't the one being embarrassed.

Mom, Carol (Darin's mother), Margie (my 'second' Mom and KC's Mom), and Daryl (Courtney's Mom, Mike - Darin's best friend's Mom, Carries MIL, and Darin's 'second' Mom) were the brides.

Daryl's Group:
Kucku, Courtney, and Becky



Watching the Show
Janice, Cathy, Del, Maggie, and DJ

First there was my Mother. She was doing some sort of dance, the shag? I don't know. Nobody really knew...

Headband and all.

Then there was Carol. She was the most graceful of the bunch. And had real flowers. Also, if you look really hard you can see the spaghetti straps. Sigh.

Look at those gloves?!

Next was Margie. I personally liked her outfit the best - really because of the top criss-cross pattern. It was very classy.

Margie with her haute couture TP

And last, but NOT least, was Daryl. She kind of was having a hard time walking as she was in a walking cast and kept tripping on her dress hem. So she decided to just do a strip tease!

Only the top left!



Aren't they beautiful!
They all just looked so happy.

It was an excellent way to end a fantastic party. Thanks for the fun memories - and pictures to boot.