Long Time, No Talk

Well he-llo there! I'm beginning to wonder if this blogging thing is for me. It's been what, THREE MONTHS since my last post!? I think that says it all....

As I'm sitting here listening to a very loud episode of Entourage reverberating up from the man pit (the guys are having an Entourage marathon), I figured what better time to redeem myself from my lack of posting?

Let's see, what have we been up to? Nate's parents visited at the end of May and we did many fun things! We went to the wineries one Saturday afternoon and just happened to see the blessing of the vines. Did you know they did that? I didn't. There was quite the crowd that followed the priest out to the vineyard to watch.



We all went to the Cardinals game one evening - and sat in the 16th row! Let me tell you, the game is a totally different animal from that close. LOVED it!

While Nate was playing golf with the guys, his parents and I visited the MO Botanical Gardens one day. It was absolutely beautiful weather and many of the flowers were in bloom. We had a nice lunch and then strolled the gardens.


These were the coolest purple flowers. I'm going to have to hunt for some of these next season.


This is part of the Chihuly glass exhibit that was showcased at the gardens for a long time...and it's now a permanent part of the garden.


Over Father's Day weekend, we were able to travel to Sacramento to see Nate's sister, brother-in-law and the kids. We had lots of fun playing outside and swimming in the pool.

My most recent adventure was traveling to Springfield for my friend Anne's bachelorette party. She's getting married on August 1st. We made jewelry during the afternoon and went out to a local piano bar that night. Definitely a good time!

I hope you enjoyed the clif notes version of our last couple of months. Maybe I'll be back again soon to tell you about my girls weekend in AZ, the Haslag family tradition of panas making, and then continue documenting our honeymoon adventure.

Fingers crossed!

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Bach Party

My girls threw me a fantastic bachelorette party about 2 1/2 weeks ago. We had quite the group...a mix of my high school and college friends...and I think everyone got along just great. We definitely made the most of our day together and had the best time!

We started off in the early afternoon with painting pottery. Let me just say, by the end of it we were all convinced that they should warn you not to pick too big a piece of pottery the first time, as you may get in a bit over your head! There were several of us rushing to finish as our time was up...



I also felt like my idea was good in concept, but I was pretty much convinced that my piece of pottery was going to come out looking like a 5 year old did it. I chose a nice platter that was divided into four sections. Becky has picked them up and is giving them out this weekend, so time will tell if it's a piece I will actually use....or one I will stash in the back of the cabinet, never to see the light of day again!







From the pottery place, where we had yummy margaritas and snacks, we headed back to our hotel rooms in downtown St. Louis. We grabbed our "happy hour" drinks from the hotel with our drink tickets, some more snacks, and then headed back to our rooms, where I opened gifts. I got several nice pieces of lingerie, some "sexy bride" underwear, as well as a cool, sparkly Cardinals hat. Thanks girls!







After the gift opening, we got all spruced up for a night on the town!



I was given a lovely veil to wear, as well as a "suck for a buck" lei.



Once we were all prettied up, we headed down to the lobby where the security guard offered to take our picture.



From there, we headed to The Landing for some dinner and dancing. We all had lovely penis straws during dinner, so there was no doubt what we were out for that evening!



See them on the table there? I was also sporting a light up diamond ring, which is what I'm showing off in the above picture.

Here I am with my maids (Becky was running a half marathon the next day, so she only joined us for the pottery)...



After dinner we headed out to the bars. The girls had a game called "That Guy" which was basically a deck of cards, each with a different guy you had to hunt down in the bar. A couple of examples... "A guy from the band" and "Get a guy to show you his underwear" and on and on. We broke into two teams and tried to see who could finish first. It was a lot of fun. And we have photo evidence of our successes...











As the night wore on, I began raking in the money on the "suck for a buck" scheme...totaling $68 by the end of the night.



There was lots of dancing and lots of fun... And how often do you see a guy dressed in a kilt?





We closed down the bars at 2 AM...or maybe 3 AM....I don't know! We all headed back to our hotel rooms, changed into our PJ's, I guzzled about 3 bottles of water, and then shortly ended up like this...



Thanks for the great party girls!

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