Sunday, April 22, 2012

Wandering

The fun didn't stop after the wedding!  I got home that night, went straight to bed, got up at normal girl waking time on Saturday and immediately started preparing to host 28 people for lunch!  Mom wanted to feed all our visiting relatives but she lives half an hour away from Frederick.  I live about half a mile from the hotels where all of our out of town family was staying so it made sense for me to have them over vs. making them all drive out to my parents' house.  So technically she was the host and I just provided the location.

Anyway.

We made a quick Saturday morning breakfast.


 Then I spent the morning trying to address the issues in my house that I have ceased to see but that other people might notice, like dirty hand prints on the powder room door and boxes of picture frames sitting in corners.  I had Charlotte's leftover breakfast as a snack.


Then everyone started arriving while I was in the shower.  I thought people were coming at noon but Mom had told them 11:30.  Oops.


We ordered pizza from Papa Johns because the last time I looked into ordering pizza they had a whole wheat crust option.  When I called and asked for whole wheat crust though I was met with incredulity, because apparently they haven't offered whole wheat crusts for 3 years now.  EXCUSE ME for not ordering pizza all that often!


Yes, that is the Happy Birthday banner from  Charlotte's birthday 3 months ago in the background.  I guess I was not very successful at addressing the house issues I have ceased to notice.

I made my lunch on wedding leftovers.


Then these puppies rolled out.  My parents have an OBSCENE amount of cake leftover from the wedding.  Like 12 huge cakes obscene.


Most of these are STILL sitting on my counter or in my fridge, along with 2 whole pizzas.  Giant chocolate cake.  Chocolate mousse.  Tiramisu.  Red velvet cake.  Carrot cake.  Giant cookie platter.  And no, I haven't had one single bite of any of these desserts the entire weekend.  I think the sheer volume of dessert in my house is the key...I know that if I take even one bite my resolve will be gone and I can do SO MUCH damage with this much junk just sitting around waiting to be eaten, so I'm not starting.  Will is going to take them into work tomorrow where I'm sure they'll disappear quickly and finally be out of my life.  

Also my official Saturday morning weigh in revealed that I am a comfortable 3.4 pounds into my new decade!  That makes 16.7 pounds lost since I started this whole blogging my food thing in January, and it means I'm 3.6 pounds above the lowest weight I've ever achieved since having Emily.  

I had some of the rum punch I made though.  Mmmmmm.

Rum punch is nothing without nutmeg
I also had a chai tea latte.


 This guy would be happy to help me with my excess dessert problem.


We hung out for the rest of the afternoon.


Emily did a little paintball smashing while Will was trying out his newly fixed paintball gun.


Mommy did a little painting of her own.


Then I snacked a bit...




...and turned the girls over to Nancy while we headed downtown!

First stop was Voila tea shop.  It's one of those little shops right on Market St. that I've walked by a million times but never really noticed.  It's awesome inside though!

Lots of samples
Walls of tea
 I liked this place even better than Teavana, because they actually have samples of every tea in neat little magnetic tins so you can physically open them, see them and sniff them vs. standing there while a Teavana employee wafts you in the face with the lid of the tea tin.  They have SO MANY teas, plus it's a cute little local place, which is always better :-)

Speaking of cute little local places, our next stop was L.O.V.E (Lebherz Olive Oil & Vinegar Emporium).


 I can always use some more yummy vinegar.  And it turned out I needed more olive oil too but I didn't realize that until I got home so I only left with vinegar.  I got oregano, lavender and fig.

Yum.  My salads will be super-tasty.

After that, I took my parents and sister + brother-in-law next door to VOLT for some drinks before dinner.



My drink was delicious as usual, but kind of horrifying-looking.


It was a "Swizzle", which had tequilla, bitters, and falernum.  I still can't figure out what the blood-like stuff on top was.

I hope the bartender still has all his fingers

 Once we had our drinks we headed to Quynn's Attic, where we took over the top floor (the attic of the attic?) and had a yummy dinner.



I had a spiced sangria.


Will and I split the harissa-marinated shrimp appetizer,


and the bean soup.


The shrimp was delicious, but the soup was really disappointing!  Extremely vinegar-y.  We've had it there before and enjoyed it, so I don't know why it was so off tonight.

The sangria was good though, so I had another one.


My dinner (split in half with Will) was rockfish topped with crab and underneath was veggies instead of rice pilaf.


Will's dinner (split in half with me) was salmon salad.  


After dinner I had a
nerdy
tawny port.


It was so nice to not only get a chance to go out to dinner but also time to wander downtown a bit.  Will and I had been going in opposite directions for a couple days in a row, so it was felt like a date even though there were lots of other people around.

Once we got home Will had a cookie, so I followed suit.


Then it was sleepy time.  One of these days I'll feel caught up on sleep again!

My sister's wedding

After too little sleep we arose and started getting ready to put on a wedding!  The wild animals around my parents' house sensed it was a special occasion and came out to wish Krista good luck.

Note the wedding turkey by the bush and the wedding deer in the field
Wedding day...wooo!

I had some steel-cut oats with a banana, but my parents make oats with water and no milk.  Thus the reason oatmeal used to make me gag when I was a kid (same thing with tomato soup....water vs. milk makes SO much difference!).  I really need some milk in my oats, but I was so distracted I just scarfed this morning and my protein-less breakfast didn't last me very long.

 We arrived at Shade Trees and Evergreens at a little after 9 in the morning and except for a trip to go pick up Emily at preschool we didn't leave for over 13 hours.





I was feeling tired and woozy, but some food and caffeine helped.  I spent the morning feeling run-down and worried that I wouldn't be able to make it through the day, trying to accept that I am just getting older and that I'm going to feel like this on big demanding days, but once I got focused on other things I did just fine.

Sometime during the setup process this moth landed on Kathleen's hand, and since it matched Krista's color scheme it was christened the wedding moth and taken as a good omen.


I snacked on a hard-boiled egg during setup.


Then these guys because I was still hungry.

Boudoir photo of my snack 

The beautification process started mid-morning.


Once Emily was retrieved lunch was consumed out in the beautiful sunny day.  I brought a salad base with me and added some carbs and protein from the offerings my mom had brought for us.



Then things went from relaxed to rushing around.  Soon everyone was dressed and ready.




At one point Krista remembered that she wanted to do a picture like this and sent me out to get the groom and the photographer.


I found it hilarious that all Krista had to say to the women in the area was that she wanted a picture of she and Ryan on either side of a door, like on Pinterest, and they all said "Oh yeah, I've seen pictures like that before".  When I tried to explain what she wanted to the male photographer and Ryan, they had no idea what I wanted and it took about 3 tries before they got the idea!  

We managed to start right on time, and both girls made it all the way down the aisle!  It was a long way, and they ran out of flower petals pretty quickly and didn't exactly know what to do.  Emily decided to just continue down while waving and smiling at everybody.


Charlotte kind of straggled behind and eventually ended up getting all the way to her goal.  I was worried since Emily had left her behind that she'd be too scared to walk through the crowd with everyone watching her, but she did just fine!  When she got to the front she walked over to me and whispered "Mommy, my flowers are all gone!" and I had to assure her that was fine and she had done a good job.



Will snapped some shots of the ceremony in the few seconds before Charlotte got bored and went over to sit with him.





Will was such an amazing Daddy this weekend.  He always is, of course, but he spent A LOT of time with the girls while I was busy this weekend and he did picnics with them, took them downtown to see ducks and play at the toy store, and made sure he had interesting new toys and snacks all set up on their chairs in the front row to keep them distracted during the ceremony if necessary.  What a guy <3

It was a (mercifully) very short ceremony, and soon we were headed back up the aisle.



Again, the girls headed straight to the dance floor.


After pictures and introductions, it was time to eat!

My empty cup of shiraz with a cheese/veggie/fruit plate
Dinner plate (didn't quite eat all of this)
Chardonnay

I also had a cup of Asti, which was was PAINFULLY sweet, but it's Krista and Ryan's favorite and the bartenders didn't bring the rest of the normal person champagne so we toasted with what was available!

Charlotte ran out of steam pretty shortly after dinner, and poor Will had to leave to take her home :-(

He missed most of the fun and dancing, but he got one dance with Emily in before he left.



 Krista and Ryan, though they like REALLY sweet wine, do NOT like cake.  So they did a dessert buffet instead of a formal wedding cake, and just bought a bunch of desserts and cookies from Costco.  The only problem was that as soon as the caterers put the desserts out, the guests just descended and started eating.  They had to quickly tell everyone to sit down so they could do the ceremonial feeding of the cookies.







Note the already half-consumed tiramisu in the foreground
After that Emily and I danced pretty much every dance until the very end.  I had been worried that I'd run out of energy, but I even outlasted Emily.  She danced with more different people than I did though.










At one point the poor girl was so exhausted that she took a rest on my lap and then crawled back onto the dance floor to keep going.


When the party was over at 9:30 I deposited my sleepy little girl on the fainting couch in the bridal suite while I helped pack up.

She doesn't look sleepy at all
 We got everything cleaned up and carried to the cars and were pulling out at 10:21PM.  9 minutes before the deadline!

There were the usual little hiccups that every wedding has, but overall it was a wonderful day and everyone had a great time.  I will eventually have 4 brothers-in-law, and now I'm up to 3 :-)