Busy Weekend!

Saturday was wedding day for friends from church!

Alyssa, Jesse and Sam waiting for the ceremony to begin:

Scott and Alix, the beautiful bride and groom:

Woohoo!

Sandy, Sam, Alyssa and Jesse at the cocktail hour at the Hotel Bethlehem:

My buddy David.  Double fisted drinker.  LOL.  

Awwww.....

Linda and Dave.  Linda is our organist at church :-)

Self explanatory:

Uh.  Yeah.  Sam was just a *bit* inebriated:

Not sure.  I think they might have been too :-)

Can't really remember what was going on here ;-)

I was just trying to be artistic.  I think I succeeded ;-)

Me and my *definitely* inebriated buddy, David:

David and Rose:

The bride is Jewish, couldn't have a reception without a Jewish wedding dance :-)

A gorgeous venue for a wedding reception, The Hotel Bethlehem

Yesterday was Mom's 80th birthday, since we had the wedding to go to, we took her to lunch today at That's Amore, one of our favorite Italian restaurants.  That's a bottle of Sangria from the winery I visited on Tuesday while I was in Lancaster:

And, then, today Alyssa decided to give up 10 inches of her locks to donate to Locks of Love :-) She didn't go in with definite plans to get it cut; she wanted to be sure that she still had some length left to work with once it was cut off.  She didn't want her hair to be too short.  Once they measured ten inches, she saw that what was remaining would be long enough for her liking.  So off it came!  She did this once before in January 2011 when she was in Pittsburgh for her student teaching ;-)

 I think it looks GREAT!!!!!  I love it!!!!!!

Birthday Events

Alyssa had no car on Monday or Tuesday since we were waiting for her oil pan to be delivered.  She took my car on Monday and I stayed home.  I really didn't want to be stuck at home on Tuesday which was my birthday.  Sooo, I drove her to work and left right from there and headed to Lancaster for the day.  Since I was leaving Allentown around 7:50 am, I actually arrived at Shady Maple around 9:30 am.  They have a birthday deal that you can get your meal for free, but you must buy one meal at the regular price.  Since I was by myself, that wasn't gonna work out so well ;-)  When I went to the register, I asked if there was anything they did if one was by themselves.  They actually then charge you the child's price.  So I got my breakfast for $4.99!  Worked for me!

I did a little shopping in their gift shop downstairs:

Very typical in that area:

I stopped at the Mount Hope Wine Gallery and tasted a few different wines.  I held myself back and only bought a couple of bottles ;-)

My gifts from Alyssa!  So many that I needed to use the panoramic setting on my phone to get it all in one pic!

Well, this threw me off:

We had a VBS meeting Thursday evening and when I walked in to our meeting area, this was sitting there.  I was stumped as to who did it, til Alyssa gave me a little hint that it was her BFF Samantha.  So sweet of her....thanks Sam!!

And then, tonight, we went to the Newburg Inn for my birthday dinner.  We hadn't been there in eons and I pass the restaurant on at least a weekly basis when going to Wegman's to do my grocery shopping.  They've always had delicious prime rib and my mouth was watering for some good prime rib ;-)  They didn't disappoint!

Prim and proper Adam sipping his espresso martini (catch that pinky):

That then possessed Alyssa to order a creamy chocolate martini:

Last Weekend

Alyssa and Sam took their Sunday School class on a retreat this past weekend to a camp in Highland Park, NY called Koinonia.  This was the second year they went.  Some of the kids were there last year and had such a good time, that even though they weren't in 7th or 8th grade they still wanted to go again :-)  As you can see, there were almost as many adults as there were kiddos!

There was a little incident, however. On Saturday, Alyssa's car bottomed out on one of the dirt roads they were driving on.  She hit a rock and it put a gash in her oil pan.  Fortunately, one of the guys had extended coverage with his AAA plan, so the car could be towed home at no charge.  I had to drive up there, however, on Sunday to help bring kids home since Alyssa had 3 kids in her car and all the other cars were full.  Kurt has since ordered a new pan and had the new one in place by Tuesday night :-)

This was my weekend :-)  I went to Rachel's bridal shower.  It was loads of fun!

Everyone was asked to bring their favorite recipe.  I struggled with which of my favorite recipes to bring.  I finally decided on this:

How cute:

Surprise!

One of the activities was to get a group together and dress someone up in a 'wedding dress' using toilet paper :-)

Kim was the person at our table that had the pleasure of being all dolled up.  She's getting married later this year, so it only seemed appropriate!

Here's the group!  Bethany won (she's pictured above, too).  She's the little one!

These were the two gifts I won:

Here's the bride and groom to be:

Everyone got 3 beaded necklaces when they arrived.  Every time someone caught you saying Rachel's name, you had to give up one of your necklaces.  Til the shower was over, pretty much everyone had given Bethany their necklaces.  Here she is with about 40 of them :-)  I kept mine to give to another little girl I know ;-)