My Birthday Party ... A Photographic Autobiography

So I was at my party on Saturday and I decided it would be a good idea for me to take a picture of all of the guests. But I wanted to be in the picture, too. So, obviously the only thing to do was to take those pictures where you hold the camera out and hope for the best. The evening started out with a picture I took of me and my favorite man. Yep - that's Marty ... the guy who somehow puts up with me every day! Love him so much.

And now, I'll introduce you to my friends. I'll even tell you how I know them (since you didn't ask). Actually these first two were not taken by me so I'm cheating a little. Here we have my college roommate, Bonnie, who drove up from Austin for the party.

And here is Shelly, one of my employees.

This is Shawn ("Hot Moms"). Shawn is a friend of a guy that Marty knows. He came to our last party wearing an "I heart Hot Moms" t-shirt and toting a beer bong. It's always a party when Hot Moms is invited.

This is Todd and Leslie. Leslie brings their daughter to The Little Gym and she's just the cutest little thing. I love having her in class. And Leslie is cool, too. And it was nice getting to know Todd.

This is Ken (one of Marty's friends) and Jimmy (brings his daughter to The Little Gym).

We already met these ladies but I like this picture. That's Leslie and Bonnie Jean (my old roommate).

This is Melissa and Jim. They are our neighbors (2 houses down). Their kids are really good friends with ours.

This is Michael (Bonnie's husband) and my other college roommate, Mindy.

Mike (Marty's friend) and Kirk (my employee Shelly's dad). Kirk was so much fun!

This is Jason. He owns the gym next to mine. Such a great guy.

This is Jay. He is my old roommate Mindy's husband. He has also become pretty good friends with Marty.

JT (his kids come to the gym and we have become good friends with him and his wife) and "Romo." I really can't remember Romo's real name. But we all decided he looked like Tony Romo so that was his name all night. He was a friend of somebody that came. Can't remember. Nice guy.

Callie (Jason's wife - owns the gym next to ours) and Anna (JT's wife - kids come to our gym).

Cindy (high school friend), David (Cindy's boyfriend) and Stacy (Jimmy's wife - daughter is in my class at The Little Gym).

Claire (a good friend of mine - she used to teach my son Nick and her son and Nick are best friends) and Tricia (Claire's friend). They came late because they had to go to the Kathy Griffin show.

Here is a picture of everyone taken pretty early in the evening. Thanks to Kirk for the picture ... even though it took him F O R E V E R to take the picture!!

And here are just some random pictures taken later in the evening. Here is the birthday girl. Hot Moms brought the pimp hat ... go figure!

Here's another picture of me and Cindy. We were good friends in high school and it's so nice getting to know her again!

And, always a proponent of physical fitness ... we decided to end the evening with a pogo stick competition! I mean, what else would you do at 2am? There are many other pictures of the party that will NOT be posted on this blog. If you wanna see them, you'll have to email me or come over and I'll show you them all. But my kids read this! Gotta be a good role model. LOL!

Music? Hmmm... lemme think on this. Oh - it has to be Roger Miller's King of the Road. If you were at the party, you know why I chose this song. (Thank you Jimmy for the free entertainment!)

Taco!

I have been accused of not having "real" dogs because the two we have are so small. Well, it seems that we may have another non-real dog. This little dog has been hanging around for a few days. It's so hot outside so I have been giving it food and water. And yesterday when we got home, he had made himself a nice place in the shade by our front porch. The kids named him Taco. And somehow, last night, he ended up in our back yard. He sure is sweet. Kinda ugly but a good boy. So Marty and I are trying to figure out whether to keep him or take him to the pound. You know what the kids want. Lauren has already come in this morning telling me that Taco "completes our family." Where does she get this stuff? Anyway, for now, we are a 3 dog family. I will let you know how it goes. Here are some pics of the new mutt.

Wish me luck in our decision. How about a little music to put you in the Taco mood? Taco: Puttin'on the Ritz.

Proof that getting older doesn't mean you grow up!

Well ... I turned 38 today. Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes through email, phone calls, texts, Facebook, PM's and in person. It was a great day. I got to hang out with Marty, the kids and my mom. However ... I was sooo tired. We had a big birthday party last night and somehow I ended up staying up until 5:00 this morning. Then I got up at 7:30. It was not good. I slept most of this afternoon. But the party was a blast. I got to see a bunch of people I hadn't seen in a while including both of my college roommates. I'll post some party pics soon. But for now, I'm just going to show you some pictures of me and Marty. Aren't we cute? You get the before and after pictures. What a difference a few hours makes!

We had so much fun. I'll tell you all about the party when I'm not so tired! Here's some music for ya. Flo Rida: Birthday. "I don't want no cake on my birthday. I want my cake every day!"

Disneyland Day 1 (sort of...)

So we woke up on our third day in California and everyone was sooo excited about going to Disneyland (including me and Marty). I would say that I was almost giddy! All of the kids put on the Mickey Mouse shirts that Grammy gave them and we were off. We learned quickly the value of HOV lanes in California. We parked the car in the Timon lot (I bet Nick could still tell you which section we were in), took the tram and headed to Disneyland (or so we thought ... you'll have to keep reading to see what I'm talking about)! Check out the picture of the kids at the front gate. They were so excited! Watch out Magic Kingdom ... here come the Englands!!!

We quickly ran into a bunch of characters. (Too bad we hadn't yet bought the kids their autograph books because the characters were EVERYWHERE!) First we all posed with Goofy. We lucked out on that one because he was headed on a break. And then there were Pluto, Donald Duck and Snow White. (I think ... I don't know my princesses very well - she's the one with the Dwarfs, right? Just kidding.)

We didn't really have a game plan at this point and we saw the Tower of Terror so we headed over there to check it out. The line was short so we went in and were on the ride in no time. Very cool with the whole Twilight Zone theme and stuff. But perhaps I should have read up on the rides at Disneyland! This ride scared the $hi+ out of me and poor Austin! They strapped us in this elevator and there you are, minding your own business, when all of the sudden it's pitch black and you're free-falling 13 stories! Looking back, it wasn't that bad. But when you're not expecting it, it's freaky!

By this time we were all getting hot and thirsty so we took a water break and went on the bakery tour and sampled some bread. Very exciting. The kids were not impressed (except Nick who will do very well if he ever goes to prison because his favorite meal is bread and water). Anyway, here are the kids "patiently" waiting for us to take them to some rides.

At this point, Lauren decided she wanted to ride a roller coaster. She's a thrill ride freak! The bigger and faster, the better. But on the way to the roller coasters, we saw a cute little 3-D show about A Bug's Life called It's Tough to Be a Bug. It was in a nice, air-conditioned theater and everyone was excited about watching the show ... except Lauren! She was in no way amused. But we stuck the 3-D bug glasses on her anyway and told her to get over it. That's one pissed off bug!

Well, maybe Lauren was right. The show was pretty boring. But, fortunately, it didn't last very long. So we headed to where all of the big rides were. But for some reason, we decided to go on Toy Story Mania really quickly. That was our biggest mistake of the day. The line seemed relatively short. But then it went on ... and on ... and on! After an hour, and many tears (I won't mention names here), we were on the ride. Kind of fun. It was a 3-D ride and you got to shoot at targets but NOT worth an hour of my life. And to top it off, Marty and Austin's car was broken so they couldn't shoot. Well, we talked to the ride guy (highly educated college graduate, no doubt). Anyway, Nick and Austin got to go on the ride again without waiting in line. And while they rode, the rest of us went in the gift shop which was "conveniently located" at the end of the ride. Funny how they make you walk through gift shops to exit all of the major rides. Anyway, we bought all of the kids an autograph book because we thought we would see tons of characters.

And it was FINALLY time to ride a roller coaster. Marty had gotten us a fast pass for California Screamin' while we were waiting in line for Toy Story. It's a pretty cool little roller coaster which goes upside down through Mickey's silhouette. Here's a picture

Nick and Austin aren't quite as into roller coasters and waited while the other 4 of us went. And then since we has 6 fast passes and had only used 4, Lauren and Mackenzie went again. Then we found a little bit smaller roller coaster that the kids all went on while Marty and I took a break. It was called the Mulholland Madness and all of the kids loved it.

It was at about this time that we decided to get a real game plan together because we wanted to see everything. I mean we hadn't even seen the Magic Kingdom yet and day 1 was winding down. At about this time, Marty and I both had an epiphany! Um ... how do I say this without sounding like a total idiot? Oh man ... there is no way to say it without sounding stupid. So I'm just gonna say it.

WE WERE NOT IN DISNEYLAND!!!!!!

Apparently when we rode the tram in from the parking lot, we should have taken a right into Disneyland and instead we took a left into Disney's California Adventure Park. You would think we would have had a clue when we saw the big C A L I F O R N I A letters as we were entering the park. (Scroll back to the first picture of this post and you will see.) We were planning on going to this park but we didn't realize it was right next to Disneyland. And we were going to go on the second day. Oh well ... no harm done. We were already there so we decided to stay a little longer before heading to the real Disneyland.

Lauren was excited when we ran into Minnie Mouse. Of course I had the camera on the wrong setting but I fixed it for the rest of the kids. They were all excited to get their first autograph.

Then, while Marty was getting us a fast pass for Soarin' Over California (which was TOTALLY cool!!!!), we ran into Chip and Dale. I was a little confused though ... I've never seen a Chip N Dale that looked like this before ... and they didn't even dance. ;-)

And then, apparently, we saw Goofy again and had to stop and get his autograph, too.

And Marty found some neat picture spots. This one is a cool backdrop. It looks like the end of the world to me. Reminds me of The Truman Show when Jim Carrey sails into the ocean and runs into a wall right before he figures out what's going on. "How will it end?" (Sorry, sidetracked. Love that movie!)

And then the kids posed with Wall-e.

We went to Soarin' Over California right before we left the California Adventure Park. It may have been my favorite ride of both days. So cool! It's like a ride and a movie. You feel like you are really flying over California. And when you fly over the forest, you can even smell the pines. So it was a ride that involved a lot of your senses and it was just totally cool.

I know that we DID make it to Disneyland on our first day but I don't have one single picture. LOL!!! So there you have it, Day 1 of Disneyland ... sort of. We were going to stay for fireworks but Lauren was starting to run a fever and Marty and I ended up carrying her for most of the last hour or so. And we headed home ... hoping poor Lauren would make a miraculous recovery by the time we woke up and headed back for our real Disneyland adventure. Here's me and Lauren on the tram on the way to the car. Minnie made things a little better.

Day 2 coming soon. For now, I have some music for you. It's the song we played the kids before we left the hotel on our way to Disneyland. Dada: Disneyland. (I realize this song really has nothing to do with actually going to Disneyland ... but the kids didn't know that!)