Spontaneity At Its Finest

I was supposed to have prepared pork tenderloin for dinner. It never happened. I guess you could say it all started on Friday after the ballroom dance lesson...Cory, Lauren and I agreed that we were going for a little run on Sunday. Well, we did, and it wasn't long before it turned into an evening at the Hanf's with all of the Serino ladies. My belly hurts. We ate too much. We laughed even more.



Sierra says, "I'm making lasagna. Mom and Autumn are coming and you should come too."

"Let me talk to Mike," I said.

"Sure." Mike said.

Lauren, Cory and I go for our run. I have to mention that Lauren ran quite a bit farther than us. We cheated. It was the head wind. We figured we'd get as much of a workout going for a shorter distance with that incredible head wind. Unfortunately we neglected to tell Lauren. Sorry, Lauren.

When we had all arrived back at Cory and Sierra's, Lauren was all about the lasagna dinner as well. She and I left to go home, tidy ourselves up and gather up some food to contribute to the feast. And feast we did. There was a lovely assortment of fresh veggies with dip, chips with a Buffalo bleu cheese dip, lasagna, salad, garlic bread and apple pie. The teamwork was truly impressive.
We ate until we were stuffed, then the entertainment began. It turned into "Look What I Can Do" night very quickly. Mike can bend his hand all the way back to his arm. Autumn can do a toad neck type thing that makes you want to pee your pants. Sierra can bend her fingers at the 1st (or is it 3rd?) knuckle. Briar can turn her eyelids inside out.






I tried to get a nice, relatively serious picture of the Serino ladies, but didn't have much luck.

The Latest Adventure

The Ladies went on another adventure. This time...A BALLROOM DANCE LESSON!!! We managed to convince our husbands to join us in a ballroom dance lesson! I still can't believe we did it, and holy cow, that was fun!

We knew that we would have to start the evening off with a bite to eat and a refreshing beverage, and Lauren suggested we hit R.F. Macdougall's (not sure if the spelling is right on that one). The food there was quite tasty, but we did have to wait quite a while for it. It didn't matter though, because we still managed to get to our lesson on time.

We headed to the Amos and Julia Ward Theater in Jay where the lesson was to be held. We walked in at exactly 7:00 only to discover that the instructor had not yet arrived. You can only imagine the look of relief on the men's faces when they heard that!


Their expressions didn't last long though, because only moments later our dance instructor Ray arrived armed with soft leather shoes and a boom box. Oh yeah, bring it!

I managed to get the gentlemen together for a nice shot...


Oh yeah, look at them appearing so confident. They were ready to take on the world! Well, Ray kicked things off with the Rhumba. We all practiced the step in a line for a short while before we attempted it with our partners.




The laughter quickly ensued! I'm telling you right now...get a group of friends together and go try it.



It didn't take us long before we were switching partners every so often....




At some point, the Hanfs decided they had had enough, and did the slide. It wasn't long after we discovered they were gone that we realized we had worked up a powerful thirst. Hard to imagine, but our muscles were actually feeling it. We headed to 20 and found the Hanfs already quenching their thirst.




It was a very fun evening, and The Ladies highly recommend trying it for yourselves.

Oktoberfest

Attending Oktoberfest has been a tradition in my little family for at least five years now. Not one to break tradition, we again headed to Whiteface for this year's festivities. Unfortunately, my true partner in crime, Mike, could not be there with us as he had to work (no day off since August 23rd). I was quite sad, but managed to have a good time anyway because The Ladies were there!

Ri and I hit Oktoberfest in time to have a yummy lunch. Ri opted to stay "all American" and enjoyed a fresh batch of chicken fingers with fries. I went with the whole German theme and enjoyed a pork sandwich with gravy and a side of braised red cabbage. As always, it was absolutely delicious! We sat under the large tent and watched to dancers stomp their feet. We even joined in on the "ticky tacky ticky tacky oy oy oy" shout with gusto.

Lauren, who always works Oktoberfest because she is a Whiteface Mountain goddess, stopped by for a visit. She hung out for a bit before she was called back to duty, but then returned to have her lunch with us. She opted for the grilled chicken with German potato salad. She said it was quite tasty as well.

Shortly thereafter, the Hanfs joined the party. It didn't take the kids long to pilfer all of our small bills so they could win some prizes and take off on their own.


We didn't mind, because we were more into just hanging out, drinking beer and enjoying the lively scenery.


While doing this, we happened to notice our boys' former baseball coach and his son. Chuck didn't hesitate to join us and send his son off with the others. What fun and laughs. We had never really spent much social time with Chuck, and were pleasantly surprised to discover how funny he can be! Of course the beer helps with anyone's sense of humor. Although I took his picture, he wasn't real keen on the idea of it being on the Internet, so I'll respect his wishes. Oh well, maybe next time.

We didn't hesitate in having our pictures posted though, and we took our turns posing with the pink frog prize that appeared out of nowhere. We later discovered that River had won it.



Unfortunately duty called, and I was forced to leave the festivities to spend time with some other Ladies of the Adirondacks of a more goat-like nature. I was especially disappointed to leave when I discovered "yummy belly boy" (the guy with the great abs in a previous post) just arriving at Oktoberfest as I was leaving. I gave him a quick hug and continued on my way. Boo hiss!

Oh well. It was worth it, because my husband surprised me by showing up at the farm with a king can of Bud Light to enjoy together as the goats were milked. He helped me with the goat exchanging and it made it so much more pleasant. A simple thing, but very sweet indeed. Once finished at the farm, we headed home so I could quickly change before heading to Sierra's for a little chow and more fun.



Lauren and Gar showed up a little later with the always fashionable Lauren sporting her red, fleece, bunny pajama bottoms!

The Overnighter

What a fabulous weekend this was!!! It all started out Friday with a hot date with my husband. After what seems like a year at least, we finally had a sitter come when we didn't have any obligations. Finally the opportunity to go out just for us. We headed for Plattsburgh and had some spectacular food at Anthony's Bistro. A great place to go when you want to raise the bar a little bit.

Last night was a completely different scenario. It was an overnight girls' night out in Burlington. Fun? Hell yes! Lauren picked me up at my house, then we headed to Sierra's before our lovely trip across the lake. We checked in to our hotel which was, to our entertainment, full of Shriners! Picture a hotel lobby with the infamous continental breakfast dining area with about 100 people in their 60's swilling beer. Now those people are seasoned! They were all so friendly! I have to admit that it would have been easy to imagine that they were all there in anticipation of our arrival. I mean the metal drivable camel that was in the parking lot, the Shriner party hats with the tassels and all of that bright red was more than I could have asked for.

Once we laughed our way across the lobby, we hit our room. Nice job with the reservation, Mike. It was a great room with a lovely spot to make martinis.



We enjoyed some snacks and a beverage before we headed out to try to find some new duds for our night out. We weren't very successful, but had quite a bit of fun in the process.



We enjoyed some silly shopping for a bit before we headed to the Burlington ferry dock to meet Briar. She had to work, and couldn't make it over when we were, so she did the walk-on thing. We quickly headed back to the hotel to get ourselves ready to hit the town. So many decisions. Clothes were being traded, make-up lessons were given...definitely girl stuff. Briar had the very tough decision of which shoes to wear, as you can see below.



Once we could officially declare ourselves beautiful, we made the decision of where to eat. We settled on American Flatbread. We arrived at our destination only to discover that there was a one hour and forty-five minute wait. No way! We needed food sooner than that. We walked out the door and were extremely lucky to find this place two doors down....



The place was absolutely awesome. We would all recommend it highly. Not only was the food incredible, it was really inexpensive too. Chicken Satay for $8. I didn't think of taking a picture of my plate before I had started to chow, but I think you get the idea.




With our hunger satiated, we were able to make a decision about where to go next. It didn't take us long to decide on Red Square. We got our drinks and headed outside to listen to a great blues band. It was getting chilly out, so we thought we'd head in to see what the scene was like in there. We ended up having perfect timing and managed to score one of the power booths at the back bar. It was prime people watching to be sure.





Briar even narrowly escaped a wardrobe malfunction!



It was a great place to enjoy each other's company, have a few laughs and check out the latest fashions in Burlington. Definitely different from those in our neck of the woods. We enjoyed ourselves so much there, that we never went anywhere else.



As we left Red Square, we decided that a snack was in order. What's that? You want to stop and get gravy fries from Nectar's? I'm in! Unfortunately I was not under the guidance of Lauren at that time, and ordered way too many fries. We brought them back to the hotel room and did our best to put a dent in them.



With our bellies full once again, we were ready for some serious sleep. We got a few hours in, and met in the lobby the next morning for our free breakfast. We spent the morning shopping more, then finished up our adventure at Three Tomatoes for lunch. We would recommend this place as well (no pictures though).

There's another thing that we would recommend...spending an overnight in Burlington with a few ladies.

A Wild Night Out

Ironwood played at 20 Main last night, and let me tell you, it was an evening to remember. Unfortunately all of the Ladies couldn't make it, but the two of us who were there more than made up for the absence of the other two.

Let me start out by saying that the evening started out spectacularly! You see Sierra had lost a bet. We had a PTO meeting this week, and before we went we thought we'd make it a little more interesting by seeing who could make the most motions at the meeting. The loser had to bring the winner a dirty martini before the gig. Guess what? I won, which means that my evening started out with a fantastic beverage. That beverage led to others of course, thereby reducing our inhibitions, which leads me to my next and most important event of the evening...

The scenery in the place was amazing! Here's what I'm talking about....

























Need I say more? The previous pictures commemorate the best part of the evening, but that wasn't all the fun that we had. Sierra acted as the band's photographer, and she was able to grab a few interesting shots that you might find entertaining.







It was a great night, and I'll be reliving the memories in my head for several more days at the very least.








OK, so she did get one of all of us....