Birthdays

This past weekend, we celebrated a couple of birthdays.

First, on Friday night, Matt invited over the data prep team from one of his clients for a party... kind of a "end-of-a-long-project" party. We had lots of food and drinks. It was our co-worker's birthday, so we made banana splits! We didn't have any birthday candles, so we improvised.

Yep, those are tealights!: )


Afterwards, there was some really loud karaoke at our place. I may have been involved in that! : ) Matt has a video on his iPhone of the girls singing... I need to find a way to delete that... or post it here, to always remind me that drinking a lot and belting out the Divinyls at the top of my lungs is a bad idea!

On Saturday night, we met up with Dana and BJ and some of their friends to celebrate Dana's birthday. We went to Mayan Palace up by Diversey and Halsted. Lots of food and drinks again.

Maybe it was the margaritas, but we thought this birthday flan looked like something familiar... plus, it jiggled... that's all I'm going to say!

You're wasting your time

I think it's interesting how companies target people for certain emails.

When I was planning our wedding and signed up on TheKnot.com and all those wedding-y websites, I would get all sorts of SPAM from random companies regarding wedding favors, photographers, etc. Which is not that crazy... seems pretty reasonable.

However, today, I got an email from HuntingClub.com asking if I loved hunting and wanted to be a hunting equipment tester. Huh? I opened the email to see pictures of gun cleaner and hunting gloves that I could test. I'm thinking to myself - how could I possibly have been on this email list? Then, I see it was from when I voted for a friend's baby in a cutest baby photo contest. Really?!? I get the correlation between weddings and photographers, but babies and hunting equipment. Someone at that company needs some marketing tips!

Wings

This past weekend Matt and I drove down to Rochester to visit with my parents and talk wedding stuff with Erin and Ross. They had their engagement photos and the food tasting on Saturday. We also went to the florist to discuss all things related to the wedding flowers.

After all that, the guys deserved a break, so we went to Wings, etc. Towers of beer and lots of wings = Matt was in heaven! I've never seen Matt eat so many wings at one sitting!

Matt's perfect meal!


Matt hiding behind his beer again! The boy was a mess - wing sauce everywhere!


They have a Wall of Flame where if you eat 16 of their hottest wings (boneless or regular) without taking a drink, you get your picture on the wall. No one in our group attempted this. But, Matt did ask if they would bring a little bit of the sauce out, so they could taste it to see how hot it really was.

He dipped a wing in the sauce and took a bite. It started off good, but apparently the sauce has a slow build... and then his mouth was on fire. Ross tried some, too.

He and Ross developed a plan of attack for if they ever decided to do the challenge. They both decided 16 would be hard to do, but you'd have to go with the boneless option. Otherwise, the sauce would get all over your lips and ruin it. It's good to have a plan! : )

Random stuff on a Thursday

Just a few unrelated items...

* We lost in the second round of volleyball playoffs last night. We were short-handed the first game because Brian got stuck in a meeting and we just couldn't get it together. Disappointing! We drowned our sorrows at Four Shadows with a couple of beers afterwards. Next league starts in a few weeks!

* Matt and I (well, mostly me right now) have been looking into going to Greece this August. The pictures look amazing! We're hoping to spend a few days in Athens and then do a little island hopping (Santorini, Mykonos, Naxos???). Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

* Don't you just love it when you get a package in the mail with like four bright red FRAGILE stickers on it and half the box is bashed in like it was drop-kicked across the parking lot? Awesome.

* Our office is finishing off National Nutrition Month with another "healthy snack day" today. This time they've brought in a ton of kiwi for us all. I love kiwi! : )

* Four months from yesterday... Erin and Ross will be getting married! Time is going by super fast!

Old reliable

Old reliable (aka my new car) was in the shop again yesterday. When it started making a strange noise while turning right, we decided to get it checked out. We aren't taking any chances after that NYE fiasco. Turns out there was a bolt that didn't want to stay tight. They would tighten it, drive the car around the block and it would loosen back up. They had to get a new bolt. I don't know if this means the original one was the wrong size or just defective, but whatever... it's fixed now. But, I'm starting to think it was Take Your Kid to Work Day at the assembly the day my car was put together... hopefully, there aren't any more surprises.

I'm sure I just jinxed myself.

Weekend fun

Friday night, I went out to dinner with Hany and Theresa to Quartino. We had lots of yummy Italian food and wine... two of my favorite things! It was great to catch up!

On Saturday, I spent the day organizing the house and relaxing. Matt worked most of the day and then we hung out on the couch watching basketball for the rest of the night.

Sunday, Matt worked for most of the day again. I ran some errands and worked on my scrapbooks. I have the honeymoon one mostly done, now I need to start on the wedding. I made a trip to Michael's and spent about an hour there trying to decide what scrapbook materials to get. I'm sure I will be making another trip once I realize what I forgot!

On Sunday night, I bowled the best game of my life! I don't know how it happened, but I kept getting strikes... then, of course, I psyched myself out and left a frame open. But, I ended up with a 248!



And, in other bowling news, Ross had an awesome game at the same time I was... so we both celebrated with shots (courtesy of Erin). He ended up with a 193, which may be one of the best games of his life, too! Overall, a pretty good night of bowling! : )

Cheers!


Down the hatch!


Oh, and our old bowling teammate, Brandon (aka "Jesus") surprised us with a visit to the bowling alley last night. He moved to Denver a few months back, but is in town for business. Maybe he's our good luck charm!

Trip to Peru

Peru, Indiana... that is.

This past weekend, Matt and I went to his hometown of Peru, Indiana. The main purpose for the trip was Scott and Cory's wedding. (Scott played golf with Matt and worked at the golf course.)

We got into town on Friday night and met up with Ryan's parents at the school gym. They play volleyball with a bunch of friends on Friday nights there. I jumped in and played for about a half hour with them. Matt supervised. : )

Afterwards, we went to a friend of Ryan's parents' house for dinner and to celebrate Ryan's aunt's 60th birthday.

On Saturday, we drove through town and Matt showed me the house he grew up in.


On Saturday night, we drove to the middle of nowhere for Scott and Cory's wedding. I forgot how dark it gets driving out in the boonies!

This is the best picture I got of them getting married


A pic of Scott and Matt


The only pic Matt allowed us to get together... I took it myself.


On Sunday, we stopped off at the hospital on our way out of town to visit Bob. He went into the hospital late Friday night, so he missed Scott and Cory's wedding. He had something called diverticulitis. Apparently, it's very painful, but he seemed to be doing well.

Then, we drove back to Chicago in very dreary, rainy, crappy weather. Hello, spring!