Gotta love junk mail

I've had my name misspelled before, but usually it's not my last name. This is a first.

Class of 1988 - Reunited

Well, it's been 20 years since I graduated from Auburn High School. Hard to believe. But reuniting with old classmates and picking up with my BFFs was way more fun than I anticipated. I found out that quite a few of us actually live near each other and have been barely crossing paths for the last eight years.

We started the weekend off at Auburn Sky Bar, a ceiling-less beer joint and one of the most popular hangouts for Auburn's sorority and fraternity kids. (Yeah, I said it . . . kids.) One of our classmate's daughter actually showed up with her friends, reminding us all just how old we really were. It was cute, though . . they actually look more like sisters than mother and daughter. We all got there considerably early for a Friday night (7:00 pm), so we pretty much had the place to ourselves until about 11:00 pm. (Another indication that we're getting old.)

On Saturday, after a tour of our old highschool (which I incidentally slept through), we joined up again at a semi-private pool and spent the afternoon with our kids. Good times! And that night, we got all dollled up for the dinner/dance event at the Auburn Hotel and Conference Center. Tony was a trooper and tolerated my giggling and reminiscing with a ton of people he didn't know. So after about five hours of that, I just didn't have the heart to drag him to the after party. I'm sure it rocked.

Here are a few of the pictures I took at the main event. Enjoy! Now that we're all back in touch, and most of us still have family in Auburn, visiting my parents will take on a whole new flavor.

Well I'm Moving On Up

To the east side . . I finally got a piece of the PI-IIIIIIII-IIIE.

Okay, not really . . . I'm just excited that I was able to get a new "double-wide" cube at work. In March, I will celebrate five years with the company - one of the longest lasting employees to date. So, it's not really because I'm special or anything. . . I've just been here forever.

But I don't care. I'll take it. I even furnished it with some great finds from Goodwill. I'm loving my double-wide. Very Jeff Foxworthy, I know.

I don't care. I'm digging it.

Maya's Rock Band Birthday Party

Maya turned eight last week and has been begging to have a Rock Band sleepover. All I could think of was having a household of shrieking, giggling eight year olds, and I wasn't sure that's how I really wanted to spend my Friday night. But I thought about it, and realized that I, in fact, would love to have a Rock Band birthday party, too. (My birthday is in August, so I may have to just throw a party for myelf.) So her request really wasn't unreasonable, and I sucked it up and threw myself into the preparations. I made her some invitations and bought accessories for each of the girls.

They each got to adorn themselves with hairpieces, glitter hairspray, glitter wrist bands, and shimmery kid makeup. It was actually pretty fun. Especially when I got to play paparazzi during their photo shoot.

They spent the night jamming (loud as they could), eating pizza, cake and candy, watching movies and having girl talk. They actually camped out in the theater, so in all honesty, we barely heard them at all. They had a ball! In the morning, I made pancakes, bacon and smoothies, and Nadia was thrilled to join them and eat with the big girls. It was like she suddenly had 6 older sisters.

Happy Birthday, Maya!!

Update: Click here to see the pictures. And here's the final scrapbook page.

Seafood Fest

Last weekend, our neighborhood had an awesome Seafood Fest in the cul-de-sac. Each family chipped in, and we made steamed lobsters and grilled shrimp for the adults and burgers and dogs for the kids. The weather was perfect (no humidity, sunny and mid-70s) and the drinks were yummy!!

The only damper in the day was the moment that Maya announced that my camera had "stopped working." I'd let her use it to take pictures of the event, and after a bit of prodding, I managed to get her to admit that she'd accidentally dropped it a few times. At least I managed to retrieve her pictures before declaring it a total loss. All-in-all, she did a pretty decent job playing photographer, and now I have an excuse to get the digital SLR camera I really wanted. Nice.

Check out her pics here.

The Jungle Book (2008)

It's no secret that naturally curly hair runs in my family. And being a working mom (and having to deal with two little ones in the morning), it's often easier to just opt for braids, at least part of the time. Nadia hates having her hair done every morning, and it saves us both a lot of headaches (no pun intended).

However, when I finally take the braids out, it's pretty funny . . . and reminiscent of Mowgli from one of my favorite Disney movies.

Yep, I'm almost 38 ...

I know this because my idea of a fun weekend is hanging out in some lady's basement with a bunch of other 30-something women, drinking wine and margaritas and scrapbooking for 48 hours. I know most people wouldn't understand this, so I'm not going to try and explain the lure. But trust me when I say that it's nice to be able to:

• Stay up as late as you want (without worrying about having to play 'Mommy' in the morning).
• Do what you want to do (in peace) for two whole evenings.
• Not have to think about how to document the configuration of XML files or the uninstallation and migration of new software products.

At least for those glorious few hours, I did nothing but consume chocolate and baked brie and use the other (creative) side of my brain for a change.

Feel free to check out more pages here: Favorite scrapbook pages.