Key West

So, Mike's company has their budget meeting in Key West every year, which is AWESOME! This year I got to go along for the ride and it was amazing. Mike and I had a whole 4 days to ourselves. It was a much needed vacation together. We laid on the beach, drank pina coladas and rode bikes around the island. It was paradise!

At Night we got to go out and enjoy the Key West night life at places such at Captain Tony's and Sloppy Joe's and one night we even got an amazing hamburger at a place called, Barking Dogs, I think.






One of the most interesting parts of the trip for me, was talking to some of the people who live there and finding out how they got there. I talked to one guy who was a car salesman in Atlanta for 30 years and then when everything in his life started going to crap, he picked up and moved to Key West with not much more than a crazy Elvis costume. He spent his first couple of years in Key West dressing up like a crazy Key West Elvis and making his living off of the tips he made walking around at night.
















Anyway, it was the best trip and I am counting down the days to next year!

Simon in the Tub

Knoxville City Meet Champions

The Farragut High School Swim Team WON CITY MEET! First PLACE! Out of 24 teams.

The kids rocked it during finals. Everyone swam faster. Best times all around!!!
KISL2008 - 1/25/2008 to 1/26/2008
K.I.S.L. 39th Annual City Meet
Saturday night Finals
Team Rankings - Through Event 24

Combined Team Scores
Place School Points
===================================================================
1 Farragut High School FHSSD 722
2 Bearden High School BEST 626
3 Webb School of Knoxville WEBB 570
4 Maryville High School MHS 337
5 Knoxville Catholic High School KCHS 306
6 Christian Academy of Knoxville CAK 288
7 Berean Christian High School BCHS 286
8 Sevier County High School SEV 233
9 Cleveland High School CRS 224.5
10 Karns High School KARNS 193
11 West High School KWEST 189.5
12 Oak Ridge High School ORHS 158
13 Jefferson County High School JCHS 115.5
14 Anderson County High School ACHS 92
15 Knoxville Central High School KCENT 69
16 Heritage High School HER 56.5
17 Lenoir City High School LCHS 33
18 Halls High School HALLK 27
19 McMinn County High School MCHS 23
20 South Doyle High School SDHS 20
21 Carter High School CAHS 18
22 Alcoa High School AHS 8
23 Cocke County High School CCHS 2
24 Meigs Co. High School MEIGS 1

Bearden went down!

208-152 Farragut dominates Bearden


That's right! The Farragut vs. Bearden meet was this past weekend and Bearden went down! We beat them by over 50 points. The kids swam great and several people achieved state cuts in different events. Go ADMIRALS!

New Years

I am getting behind on updating this blog, but still continuing to do it. So, it is possible that the Valentines day issue will come out in April or something but keep checking anyway.


So New Years: was the most fun ever. Mike helped produce the New Years Event on Market Square and as a result, i got hooked up with the MC JOB!!! It was great. My co host Ryan Spargo was hilarious.


We got to hang out in the "green room" all night. We got to go up on stage and throw beads to the audience and introduce all of the bands. I loved it.
Mike and I were covered in flair!

Christmas 2007

Christmas was great this year! Simon had so much fun with the wrapping paper, oh and the presents were ok too.

We had a TON of presents this year and dad got swallowed up by them.

Simon and Owen are cute cousins with matching chairs for Christmas.

Everyone got totally into the holiday spirit this year.

EVEN grandmommy!

Simon got a potato head santa!

And Mike's mom sent him a bunch of crazy orange stuff!!!

I am a spinner!

I started teaching spinning in December at the Westside Y and the Downtown Y and I LOVE IT! This picture is me at my first class.

Festivus

A tradition was started in the year 2006 when we celebrated our first Festivus among family and friends, at my house. This year there was more food than ever! We couldn't even begin to make a dent. We followed the traditional Festivus rules this year which included the unadorned Festivus pole, the airing of grievances, and the feats of strength.


In the feat of strength the head of the household must wrestle everyone til they lose. Mike wrestled Jim, Wes, Katy Mac, and he thumb wrestled Watkins. I wrestled Kate and Katy Mac. I think we both lost to Katy Mac.







The Festivus pole, is neither beautiful, nor festive. In Festivus' origin which I date back to Frank Costanza on Seinfeld, Frank finds tinsel distracting, thus the unadorned pole.

Happy BDAY CARRIE!

For my cousin Carrie's 25th birthday, her mom (my aunt) Lisa decided to throw her one HELL of a party! The theme was island tiki and the cake was bright pink with a flamingo! It was great. The whole family and all of Carrie's friends turned out for great food, great fun and great WINE!
You only turn 25 once!

Lisa and Carrie looked super sexy!


















Everyone came out in their Hawaiian finest!

Simon and Owen and Santa

We took Simon and Owen to get their picture made with Santa, and as you can see, they loved it!

Christmas Parade (year 4)

This year was Kate and my 4th annual appearance in the Christmas Parade. We started out by getting awesome matching outfits to go under our boxes. We also had some pretty jammin' hats that I got at Earth to Old City. Kate came over to my place, as usual and we got to work wrapping our boxes and sampling some fine whiskey that Kate brought. The wrapping paper and boxes looked better than ever. I went crazy this year and got wrapping paper with a print...WHOA! It wound up looking the best.


This year when we got down to the parade we scouted out the scene, as usual. We walked all the way to the end of the line where Santa was but we weren't really getting a good vibe from that end of the parade, plus Cotton Eyed Joes was asking us to carry their banner, and we were like, eh not so much.




We finally found a spot next to the Farragut High school marching band. We started out behind them but moved our way up to the front. We got between them, and the habitat for HUmanity float and eventually they both kep spacing away from us because each thought we were with the other. This worked out perfectly because then we had our own spot.

While we were marching along a man came up to Kate and we thought for sure he was coming to kick us out. We he wasn't. He was with the newspaper and wanted to know our names for the newspaper article! Kate told him our names and he wanted to know who we were with. She thought for a second and then spit out, "THE HUMANE SOCIETY?" To which he interpreted as habitat for humanity, probably because that is the float we were behind. Anyway, this was the best parade ever, and we are getting really good at this! News paper photo below

Best Legs Contest

About a week before Thanksgiving, Kate was driving down Kingston pike when she saw a sign on the marquis of the Palace saying that they were having a best legs contest.

Well, she called me right away and told me to enter, which of course, I did.


We invited many friends who came to support my cause and I dressed up in my sexy school girl outfit...








AND WON!!!

FIRST PLACE!!!!

AHHH! Hottes legs baby!!!

Simon November Update

Simon is the cutest he has ever been in his life, which is saying a lot because he was already quite cute. He is soooo close to walking this month. He can pretty much do it, but is still just choosing not to. He can cruise really fast. Also, he is eating everything, thank goodness! He loves spagetti, vegetables and most fruits. Put a cupcake in front of him, he's not interested, but give him a green bell pepper, he will eat it. What a weirdo!
My favorite think Simon is doing lately, is signing "more". The sign looks like he is clapping his hands but let me tell you he definitely knows what it means and if he really likes something he has eaten he will tell you "more! more! more!" It is great!
Simon isn't quite talking besides mama and dada.
His main skill is organization. He spends hours organizing blocks, shoes, etc.
This weekend he is getting his picture made with Santa and Owen in Chattanooga!

Happy Bday Kate!

This past weekend was Kate's official birthday weekend. A small gaggle of us went out for some thai food to start the celebration but the real party began when we met up with the whole flock at Charlie Peppers later on. The Miller Lite Crew came out to celebrate Kate's birthday too! They brought tons of crap and I got at least one of each, my favorites being my new Miller Lite hat and armband.









She got a lot of cool gifts like: an awesome tshirt and garden gnome doormat (that'd be me), a bunch of flamingo Christmas ornaments (Holly), a bunch of beer and wine (that'd be mom and Lisa), and a bunch of other cool stuff but I think her favorite had to be her cool new camera (Spencer).


We all went down to Chattanooga Saturday and the whole fam came over for Kate's bday and bbq. Dad got Kate a really great cake!

Cousins get to play

This past Saturday we headed down to Chatt-town for a little family bonding. Mom made a HUGE spread of food (that I did not stop eating all day, oh and the cornbread was my favorite). Dad had the game on the radio, since for some reason it wasn't on TV. Andy and Allison came and brought Owen and Kate drove down and eventually Spencer. Mike had to stay in Knoxville and work the shuttle train.

Kate and I also spent a good deal of time trying to teach Simon to walk, using wheat thins as bait. He can stand, he can cruise, and I am pretty sure that if he felt like it he could walk, he just chooses not to. Anyways, our little trick didn't work.

Boot Camp Month One, Over!

I officially survived my first month of Boot camp! That means, for exactly one month I dragged myself out of bed, drove 20 minutes across town and did a lot of exercise at 5:45 am. That's big-time, so obviously we needed to celebrate. We had a little graduation party at Tai restaurant.
My food came in a pineapple! How special is that?!

After my delicious pineapple dinner, and sharing 3 tequila shots with the boot camp girls, and a couple of glasses of wine, three of us hotties made out way out to Cotton Eyed Joes to start the real celebration. Cow roping and bull-riding were involved but mostly dancing for me. After a few long sweaty hours at the Joe, we headed out to go home. When we got outside we remembered that we actually didn't drive there, we took a cab, so we were temporarily stuck. Luckily we befriended a limo driver whose client was in the Joe, indefinitely. Through my powers of persuasion I convinced him to let us come play in this birthday girl's limo. Then I convinced him to let us drink her beer. Then, the four of us girls convinced him to drive us to waffle house.

It was a most excellent time!