Due to power outages and road closures, school was on a two-hour delay—and of course I had my eye appointment followup right about when Owen would need to be getting on the bus. So I called on my neighbor to get him to the bus stop. She said I might as well drop Katie off, too… Okay, twist my arm. 🙂
Her older son was actually staying home so she had four kids to walk to the bus stop. She sent me these pics of the walk home. Jackson is 6 and in first grade.
Then we ran into a familiar face—Nancy (used to work with Gramma)!
I knew a friend had moved to Florida but I couldn’t remember exactly where so I was planning to text and ask her. Well, Tom and I were out running errands when she texted me saying “Are you in Fort Walton Beach?” Why yes, I said (I had posted our whereabouts on Facebook). She lives two towns over. So we made plans for her to come pick up me and Katie for lunch!
We came home and I told Katie I had a surprise for her…she was going to get to see her friend Monti. It took her a moment to remember, but she did. This is her, excited, on the way down to meet them.
The two were fast friends in the back seat and jibber jabbered the whole way to the restaurant. They both ordered Mickey Mouse pancakes.
And then things went south when Monti decided she was done letting Katie share her sunglasses. I gave Katie my phone since it wasn’t her fault her friend was being a poop. But that caused even more upset because she thought she should get her mom’s phone and that was denied.
Katie did end up sharing the phone with her and there was happiness for a few minutes…and then Monti got upset about the equality of the sharing so the phone got taken away.
But we were still happy!! It was so great catching up with Melissa!
Tonight we combined our Saturday Night Dinner with our first Cards Against Humanity game night!
The game-winning combo. Phil won, beating Tom by one card! What a fun night…
Friends invited us over for dinner tonight along with four other families we’re close to (for a total of 10 adults and 13 kids). There was lots of good food, wine, and stories (and all the kids get along) and it was all so much fun that one friend suggested we do this once a month at different houses (they’re also helping me get my friend fixes in before we leave this summer). So, we all decided then and there to do every third Friday…but we needed a fun name. They were suggesting tame things like FUN FRIDAYS or FUN FRIENDS FRIDAYS but I just went straight for F%@# IT FRIDAYS and they all loved it. (It also kind of fit our mood for the upcoming inauguration.)
I do not want to leave these people. 🙁
The kids are always so excited to go because we refuse to take them (they know why but they’re still kids so don’t really understand)…
With the birthday boy.
In probably the most unexpected detail ever in the history of this blog…I did not take ONE. SINGLE. PICTURE. ALL. NIGHT. 😯
So, we were the surprise guests for this party. Meaning, obviously, no one knew we were coming (except the host and one other friend). We’ve had surprise guests at other Tivo events before and it’s always fun, so when it worked out that we could do it for this party (due to our White House tour) we were excited. And it was cool—we’re so glad to have surprised our old (and new) crazy ax murderer internet friends and spent the evening with them!
This was taken by Jay, who I haven’t seen in real life…
…since 2009.
You know you’re old when you have two glasses of sangria and think it’s got to be getting close to midnight…and it’s not even 9! There was lots of good food and games, and we all managed to make it to midnight (waiting for the ball to drop, below), but the party broke up shortly thereafter. I really knew I was old when I wasn’t drunk heading back to the hotel. 😆
I slept in until 10 (!) the next morning, and then it was off to brunch with friends before the wave of goodbyes (again, I did not take one single picture).
After a long crazy day I decided it was time for this:
I also happened to be missing a friend of mine in the neighborhood so I texted her and told her I was on my way to her house and I wanted her to come out for a brief Pokémon walk with me. She met me on the street, decided she wanted some margarita, too (yes, I had brought it with me), so we stopped back our house and got her a cup…and since it was cold and we needed to hold our phones for Pokémon, this was her life hack: wear your coat backwards so you can put your drink (with straw!) in the hood! BRILLIANT!
We ended up walking a bit farther than we’d planned…and my phone died because of the cold…but it was a good night (and this is what the end of it looked like). Good times.
Me and Heather, the hostess with the mostess.
The White Elephant gift of the salmon plank has a long and sordid history. It should end sometime in 2019 or maybe slightly before.
The whole group!
We made salt dough ornaments at our friends house the other day and went back tonight to paint some of them.
Photos from the mom…
Cutting and counting thousands of box tops for the school—grunt work at its finest but we love Halley. ❤️ #pleasetrimyourboxtops
And the pic we couldn’t post on Facebook… 🍷
Our friends invited us to the Fort Belvoir Officer’s Club for Brunch with Santa! It was a bit of a disorganized hot mess in my opinion, but the kids got to see Santa and the food was pretty good. The best part was the company!
I missed out on art night since I was in Michigan, so Tom had photo duty!! I had been looking forward to more ceramic ornaments, but this year they decided to do paintings!
Sitting with friends!
Owen’s on the left, Tom’s/Katie’s on the right.
And a photo from Heather:
And the finished projects:
What a small world! I posted on Facebook that I was in Ann Arbor at the hospital and my college roommate, Marina, saw it, posted, and long story short, stopped by to catch up! We haven’t seen each other in 20 years (aside from posts on Facebook)!! And I had forgotten…she’s actually a nurse at the main hospital!! What are the odds?!
Here’s us waaaaay back then, at the end of our freshman year (1992):
I’m always a little anxious about flying—not the actual flying but the timing of things and getting through security and getting to the right place, etc. So I just really looked at my flight info so I could find my gate on the map (yes I’m that person) and I find out that I’m leaving from (apparently) THE MOST FUCKED UP GATE IN THE KNOWN WORLD: DCA 35X. Google it. Or read some of these FourSquare comments:
Down an escalator at which point there’s no room to sit and then hopefully you hear your announcement for your plane and then you are SHUTTLED out to one of the many commuter planes where hopefully there’s no weather happening because you’ll be outside.
Seriously?
My Facebook friends tried to assure me I’d be okay (though they admitted it was confusing) and I kept my fingers crossed and told myself I was an intelligent 43yo and I could surely manage an airport gate. 🙂
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. 🙂
P.S. I’m flying to Michigan because my dad is having an aortic valve replacement. It’s nothing we’re seriously worried about (it was planned and not an emergency procedure) but it is surgery so I want/need to be there.
I didn’t take any pictures during the first play date, but today we had another…YES, a second play date. 🙂
And this is my ever-goofy boy. His smile just KILLS me. 🙂
We haven’t made it to every month, but we made it to SER this month with our Tivo friends!
This is a friend of Katie’s who is in first grade. She’s a young first grader but still.
We had one of our Saturday Night Dinners for our Thanksgiving this year. We thought we’d keep it simple—we’d do a turkey, mashed potatoes, instant stuffing, fresh bread, and mulled cider; one couple was bringing a sweet potato casserole; and one couple was bringing dessert. Easy, right? Well holy hell it was still a lot of work. Last minute stuff, really, and not hard, but still craziness. Especially at the last minute when I realized I had completely forgotten to start the gravy! (At least I already had the stock ready so it didn’t take long at all.)
My very first use of a selfie stick!
OMG. 😯
Finally wearing one of the necklaces Marcia bought me for my birthday!
Lunch with friends beforehand at Succotash in National Harbor. It was DELICIOUS and we highly recommend it. (We had fried green tomatoes; pimento cheese fundido; bacon mac and cheese; collards, kimchi, and country ham; Belle’s punch and a gochujang infused bloody mary.)
My super fancy home manicure (yeah, it’s just glitter polish):
Us, before:
Before & After
And this is what it takes to get ready for the ball. :p
A few fun pics trying to get THE PERFECT shot:
And the best shot:
And my favorite fun shot:
So as we were starting to get dressed, Tom had a uniform snafu—he realized he forgot a major piece. The exchange was closest (about 45 minutes round trip)…but they were out. Home was next closest (about an hour round trip) but that wasn’t appealing, either. A few furious texts found a buddy who lived somewhat close that had extras and could bring them to him…but that took almost an hour as well! So, while he was downstairs waiting for the delivery, I was finishing getting ready and hanging out with our friends in their room and then we came back to our room to wait for Tom. Our friend Tom was having a FIT because Tom’s uniform wasn’t even prepped to start dressing…so he got everything ready for him.
Waiting longingly for his buddy:
The group shot without Tom:
It was getting to be time to be seated for dinner (we’d already missed the entire cocktail hour) so Karen and I headed down while Tom waited for Tom. They made it with a few minutes to spare.
After the ceremony was over, we booked it out to the photo line while it was still short:
Random shots of us:
And the official photo which was emailed to us before we even left the event:
We actually had other friends at the table (plus her parents!), but we somehow managed to go the entire night without taking a big group photo OR a photo of us with them! So, here’s one I snagged off Facebook (that I actually took on her phone):
And lastly, to give you an idea of the scope of the event, here’s the seating chart: 288 tables of 10.
Overall, it was a fun evening, but unfortunately, it was once again a big ol’ waste of money—we should NOT have spent the night again. Last year we had decided it had been a mistake because we didn’t NEED to spend the night—we didn’t drink enough to need to stay and we were tired and wanting to head out by 10 so we could have easily just came home. But this year we thought we’d all stay (all three couples) and have this epic night…but we were all petering out come 10:00 so we all just went our separate ways LOL. We could have actually been home by 11 and saved the $350 we spent on the room and sitter! Lesson REALLY learned. 🙂
Our two Pokemon: Squirtle and Pikachu!
Our yard and porch! This was the first year we’ve left the lights on and just left treats out for kids to grab. I kind of miss carving a pumpkin, but honestly it’s a lot of work and I don’t miss the stress about needing to get it done. Plus, I have this light-up pumpkin that I can use.
Starting at our neighbor’s house…
We weren’t planning on going with them, but she was ready when we got to their house, so we all went together!
Maddie, a neighbor friend.
Then, on another street, we ran into more friends, so our group grew!
Trick or treating hours were from 6:30-8 and we used every last minute! We were walking back into our yard at 8:00!
The kids got entirely too much candy…and were super excited!
Since the Marine Corps marathon is this weekend our normal hunting spots were closed…so we headed to Old Town Alexandria!
Fighting a gym! We kept getting errors so we just moved on.
A birch!
Success fighting another gym!
This was a Japanese maple—so absolutely gorgeous I had to get a picture! (We saw about 15 different photographers and families out this morning!)
These two were best buddies all day.
These bullet points are great.
Relaxing with a delicious lunch at TJ Stone’s Pub in Alexandria.
Friends (the Brownes) invited us to a costume party and we hadn’t been to one in ages—and I’ve never been this thin—so I eagerly bought myself an awesome costume! I mean, I figured why not?!
So, you saw the sneak peek:
And Tom had a few costume options from previous years…but I had seen a friend do Cousin Eddie (from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) and thought it was brilliant…so I picked up the pieces for that. And of course we had the two Pokémon kidlets.
On our way…
Ta da! Thankfully we had an unseasonably warm day and we were actually comfortable in these.
Who wore it better?! 🙂 The consensus was Tom, though Randy showed more nipple. 😀
I loved all our costumes but I really want to have a theme one year. We briefly tossed around being Team Rocket or Ash and Misty from Pókemon but the costumes were too expensive for what they were and I didn’t feel like creating them myself. Maybe next year will be the themed year.
Our themed hosts:
Even Squirtles need to eat.
And Pikachus need to potty. 🙂
I really lit up well in the black light…but I don’t think it even looks like me.
The kids had a blast—we barely saw them the whole time. They were playing in the yard and going on a treasure hunt with 20 other kids.
Black light paint!
The funny thing was that we were all thinking it was like 9-9:30 (it was dark and we were tired) and we looked at the time…and it was only like 6:45! Are we old or what? 🙂
Once the sun went down it quickly got chilly so they started a fire and we hung out there for a bit but then we called it a night and were home by 7:30. ARE WE OLD OR WHAT?! 🙂
Our neighborhood has a decent fall festival so I took the kids down today while Tom continued working on the new landscaping!
Katie’s first time bobbing for apples. Or, more accurately, attempting to grab a stem with her teeth. 🙂
The costume contest! Our friend Kayleigh won!
