Rehearsal

And I'm back!  Things have slowed down enough to allow me a couple uninterrupted minutes (or at least minutes that are as uninterrupted as they ever are when I'm at home) to mess with pictures and work on a post!  So without further ado, lets travel back in time to Thursday and pick up where I left off.

Thursday dawned, and I had a breakfast almost identical to the one I had the day before.

I spent the morning cleaning up and running errands.  The maids' arrival was perfectly timed (yay!) and at some point I had cheese or an egg or something.  I can't remember. 

Lunch was a salad on the go.

At 1 I put Charlotte down for her nap and left my Mother-in-Law in charge while Emily and I headed out to get our nails done.  This was Emily's first experience in a nail salon, and she did a great job!  It was probably the most patient I've ever seen her.

I got the shellac which I LOVE.  Within minutes it's hard as a rock and my nails still look perfect now, after all kinds of abuse over the last 3 days.

Mom got her 4th manicure ever.  She had one before her own wedding, one before my wedding, one before Kathleen's wedding and now one before Krista's wedding.  She's not a fan :-)

With our nails done and everything finally packed up, it was time to head to the rehearsal.  I grabbed some almonds on the way out the door.

The first thing the girls did, of course, was try out the dance floor.

Listening intently to instructions

Pretending to sprinkle flowers on the way down the aisle

The bride-to-be!

Then we headed back down to Frederick for the rehearsal dinner.  Despite having lived in Frederick since birth, I have never been to the Red Horse Inn before so I was psyched to be able to check out a place that is such a Frederick icon.  We weren't able to procure a babysitter for the occasion, so Will just met me for a girl pass-off and then had to miss the dinner to go take them home and put them to bed :-(  

Loved all the little horse-themed touches

One of the (many) drawbacks of having a broken camera is that it is almost completely impossible for me to hand it to someone and have them take a picture since it requires a lot of fiddling to focus it even when it's on auto-focus.  Heck, I use it constantly and I can't even get a shot that's in focus half the time.  I found a mirror with which to take a self-portrait though.

Dylan did a great job getting a family shot later though.  He's technologically inclined, so he just has a knack for those types of things.

Original Drays

I partook of a glass of Riesling.

And a pretty plain salad, but the roasted onions on top were really yummy and added a bit of interest.  For lack of an acceptable dressing, I ate my salad dry, which my Dad told me was "hardcore".

I went for the crab cakes, which were pretty yummy, but I could've done with a bit less extra stuff and a bit more crab.  It wasn't bad by any means, but that tends to be how I feel about almost all crab cakes.

A glass of Chardonnay was consumed with dinner.

After dinner the waitress paraded around with a Baked Alaska.

It looked lovely.

I had this mug of decaf coffee for dessert instead (minus all the cream and sugar).

The bride and groom presented the presents after dinner...Ghostbusters ties for the groomsmen,

and jewelry made by Krista for the bridesmaids!  She did an awesome job, although I didn't get any pictures specifically of the jewelry.

By then it was getting very late, so we left the Red Horse...

Bye

...and headed back to my parents' house where all the bridesmaids spent the night.

I had a snack before bed.

And then finally got to bed at 12:30AM!