"A bachelorette party is a bachelor party...gone wild!" - Unknown

I fully intended on posting more about the bachelorette party by now and posting some pics, but we have been snowed in and I have been taking full advantage of the bonus time with the family. I will have to share the pics from the party later.

The party was a blast. I hope our bachelorette feels she went out with a bang, because I sure believe she did. According to her she was hurting for days, and I definitely felt bad for her. It was so much fun though to see her tear up the town and especially the dance floor. She was a woman on a mission!

The day started at 2:00pm with the couples shower. You can tell that this couple is dearly loved and for very good reason. They truly are fantastic. They played some funny games which had everyone laughing. After the shower, I followed my girl Julie and her hubs out to her loft to visit for a little while before heading back to the Bachelorette’s house for dinner/pre-drinks/getting ready for the night. I brought my own dinner (a cheeseburger and a salad), along with some snacks to share with everyone (a cheese ball, homemade crackers, cookies and brownies). I am posting an entire blog about this later, as it really incurred some interesting dialogue throughout the entire evening and apparently some awkwardness (although this was all unbeknownst to me until later).

The limo bus picked us up around 10:00pm and we headed out to the bars. We started down on Main St. in old town St. Charles at a pretty nasty bar, but it was still fun and many of us had frequented it often in our younger days. The whole point of the evening was to hit up all of our bachelorette’s favorite spots from her younger single days. This is where my video from the previous post took place. One of our bridesmaids found the guy on the dance floor, stole his hat and started mimicking his moves. I missed the funnier parts, but caught what I could. Everyone in the crowd was laughing so hard... it was hilarious! The funniest part was how serious this guy was, he was definitely not laughing. The was serious business to him.

Our second attempt failed after the doorman told us he couldn’t serve our bachelorette because she was too intoxicated. Her response “Are you fucking serious?!” She repeated this several times and kept yelling at him as we pulled her away. The guy was definitely an ass and clearly our bachelorette was not drunk (okay maybe a little). We then headed to the next bar which had much better music (awesome guy playing the guitar and singing some great songs) and was much less smoky. After some initial confusement about the whereabouts of our bachelorette’s sister (they found her wandering down the street, pissed off that we had left her), we found her safe and sound and returned to the festivities. We headed to the next bar and found our way onto the 5’x 5’ dance floor and really broke it down with the live band playing some awesome 60’s and 70’s tunes. After a few songs, though, the regulars revolted (as Julie put it) and wedged their way back onto the dance floor, not so politely pushing us out of their way. We felt maybe we had overstayed our welcome and decided to leave (somewhat) gracefully.

After we left the bar, we called our bus driver to take us to our next destination. He was having a hard time finding us and we kept seeing him drive away in the wrong direction or down the wrong street. Next thing we knew we saw a cops cherry lights turned on and our bus pulling over. Apparently, our bus side swiped the cop car. Really. I am not sure how he did it, but he sure did. In his defence, he was trying to navigate cobblestone streets, filled with cars and drunk pedestrians, and also trying to keep in eye out for us. It didn’t take long though, and we were up and moving once again. We were headed downtown to our bachelorette’s favorite bar to end the evening.

We had quite a drive to get there though and made good use of our time with lots of dancing and drinks on the bus. We got stuck in some traffic and our driver got off the highway and headed down the service road. As we pulled up to all the lights, we saw (literally) about 30 cop cars sitting on the highway. As we drove past it all some of the girls started screaming and yelling and shouting “Don’t look, there’s dead bodies on the ground!” I was already looking, and really trying hard to see what was going on. I didn’t see any dead bodies on the ground, and after watching the news the whole next day, I don’t think they did either. Apparently, there had been some kind of high speed chase which did end in a shooting, but there wouldn’t have been dead bodies laying on the side of the road. Whew. After a pit stop at the gas station for supplies and water (thank god) we headed to our final destination.

The last bar was my favorite (aside from the blazing fireplace threatening to singe my hair and eyebrows (also not a good component for extreme dancing). We entered with our bachelorette falling flat on her ass at the entrance to the bar. We were initially afraid we weren’t going to be allowed to enter, but one of the girl’s assured the doorman that she was just “really excited” and he welcomed us in. We danced for a couple of hours (I think? My reference of time here is really skewed) and I seriously had a blast. I had made the (in my opinion) very wise decision to stick to my captain morgan and refrain from drinking anything else. Past incidents have led me to believe that the outcome of the evening will always be better and the morning much more tolerable. I’m so glad I did, because although quite tipsy at the end, I wasn’t feeling too terrible. I was also on a really tight budget and had brought a bottle with me on the bus and was just drinking from that (Thank you to my dear friend Julie for offering me a couple of drinks at the bars, you are such a sweetie!)

We arrived back at our bachelorette’s house around 3:00 am. After some snacking, water guzzling and some recapping of the evening’s events, I finally crawled into bed around 5:00am. I couldn’t believe that by 8:00am everyone was already up and moving around, making it impossible for me to sleep any longer. I finally rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth, washed my face and started gathering my things. I was thanking myself over and over again for bringing my coffee cup pre-filled with instant coffee and all the fixings to go with it. It was a huge help.

Sunday was a wash. Without much sleep and too many drinks, I wasn’t able to get much done. It took till Monday to recover completely and get back into the swing of things. Then came a big snow storm (or atleast that’s what the weatherman told us, it ended up not being that horribly bad... they even called in the national guard!) All of the authorities begged everyone to stay home. I was so grateful for the day off Tuesday to have the extra time to spend with the munchkin and to get some cleaning done around the house in preparation for our Superbowl party.

Stay tuned for some pics of Saturday night and my food blog follow-up....

Ladies Night and a Play Date

As often as possible (which is hardly enough), I try to plan a ladies night and get all the girls together for some foot loose and fancy free good times. Ladies nights can often get pretty wild and crazy. Although maybe a wee bit more under control then usual, this one was really no exception. Fortunately for me, (unfortunately for you) there are no pictures of me on the dance floor or towards the end of the evening after I had somehow morphed into an extremely hot mess.

We met up at a restaurant called R.T. Weilers. There are cute pictures of dogs everywhere. I had a steak topped with onions and mushrooms with a side of steamed broccoli. Yum. It was my mom, my sister Amy, my friends Gina and Barb, and myself. Gina was such a trouper. She was 33 weeks preggo and looking as adorable as ever. You can't even tell she is pregnant in this picture. Which amazes me, considering I was such a whale.

Me and Gina

Barb and Me

My Sister Amy and My Mom

After we were done eating, Toni and her sister Cheryl arrived, along with my gal Jessica.

Jess and Toni

And here is the last pic I had for the evening. My other sister Erin, met up with us at another bar. From left to right: Jess, me, my sister Erin, my sister Amy, and Barb.

After the restaurant, we went to a few different bars. It was sweltering hot outside and it wasn't much cooler inside. As the night went on, we all became more and more sweaty and disheveled. Luckily, we didn't seem to notice. Although, we probably should have. I had so much fun though. It was great to get out and just let loose. I finally got my dancing fix in, and plenty of it! I probably drank a little more then I should have, but that isn't hard to do when you don't drink very often. I love getting out on the town with both of my sisters. This rarely happens now that we all have kids. The next day was a little rough, but well worth it indeed.

My sister Amy's husband has left to work out of town for 60-90 days. He will be so far away and working so much, that he won't even be able to return for visits. I feel so terrible for them. Their daughter is often seen in my blog and she is only 6 weeks younger then the munchkin. I can't imagine Joe having to leave us for so long. It would be so hard. They had to re-figure their daycare situation for their little one and now she will be coming to our house on Thursday evenings. Yay! Yesterday was our first day.

Look at that cheesy smile. Isn't she just adorable?

Here she was caught playing with the door hinges.

The munchkin puked on all three of us,
so here they are stripped down to their little bloomers.

Trying to climb up on me...

The munch lookin like a frog.

Shortly after this last picture. Things seemed to go down hill from there. Joe had left to go to school and both babies started to get tired and crabby. They are both teething and you can definitely tell. It wasn't anything I couldn't handle, but I felt bad that I couldn't give either of them the one on one attention they wanted. How do mammas with twins do it? All in all, it was so much fun having her over, they are starting to play together really well. I'm kinda excited we will have a scheduled play date with her every week!

The munchkin went to sleep really well last night, but around 11:00pm, she woke up screaming. Her incoming top front tooth was hurting her so bad! Plus her bottom two front teeth are still coming in as well. I gave her some teething gel, but it didn't seem to help at all. I sent Joe to the store to get some infant ibuprofen and she screamed the entire time he was gone. She started to settle down about an hour after we gave her some. Luckily she seemed to sleep pretty good through the rest of the night and is feeling much better today. Poor baby. My sister suggested the teething tabs, so I am going to pick some of those up this afternoon.

This teething stuff is a bitch.

I made pizza the other night, using flax seed meal for the crust. It was so good! I am going to post some pictures and the recipe later.

Oh, and I also wanted to add this little picture that our sitter emailed me the other day of the munchkin and her son playing together. So cute!