Weddings are so much fun!

This past Sunday Chris and Julie got married. It was a wonderful day and all of the festivities leading up to the day were nice as well.

The bride was not a bridezilla thankfully and the groom was patient while maintaining his own viewpoints and individuality (whose child is he? hard to tell really).

The families couldn't be happier about the union and despite a few of those hitches that happen to every bride and groom to be (some fighting, some making up, the usual) the whole event came together without a hitch.

Special thanks and recognition for the success of the day and the beauty of the tables and decorations to both Kim (mother of the bride) and Shannon (aunt of the bride). The weather was beautiful (thank you God), the bride was beautiful (although an hour late), the groom and his men looked completely handsome. All in all it was a smashing success.

I did learn that this wedding day flew by like my own wedding day did. I was a bit surprised by that because I was expecting the day to go a bit slower since it wasn't actually MY day. All of the fun, festivities and great food (thank you Seth) just flew by! There is plenty of photographic evidence of me enjoying myself thanks to the millions of digital cameras out there...

The End of an Era

Today I worked (as usual, though I do have tomorrow off - YEAH!!) and while I worked, a part of my hometown died. My husband is fortunate (?) to not be employed (per se) at this time so he was in town to see the travesty occur. The removal of the town spire. Now I'm not typically nostalgic and I'm also not typically so attached to something like a town building, however, I am very angry that the people of my town would opt to let this beautiful old landmark fall to pieces while putting millions (literally) into a library ADDITION! that's right, not a NEW library, not even an improvement on our historic, beautiful old stone library which still stands in its entirety but an ugly addition to the library which isn't even open full time! It is so sad for me to see the heart of this little town be taken down due to what comes down to neglect. I spent much of my childhood in that building for one thing or another (great girl scout productions on that big stage) and the last time I walked through it, it was in such a state of disrepair that there were puddles in the main hall! HOW do we make these decisions for ourselves and future generations? How can we let our apathy change the face of our small towns so they become virtually unrecognizable. This isn't the case of a neighborhood changing, this is a case of a town giving up and not caring about its soul. Jason and i joked that if we had the money we would buy the place, fix the place and do it all for nothing more than the naming rights (of course it would become the Jason and Michelle Petraitis Memorial Town Hall) but alas, we don't have the cash so  the old girl falls apart. My childhood loses a notch, my heart is saddened a bit more today.

Sweet Vacation...

So this past week was family vacation. We all packed up the least we thought we could live with for a week and headed down to invade my parent's house in Florida.

It was so very nice of my parents to accept four adults and a baby into their home for an entire week. It can be a lot having one house guest never mind five of them!

Florida delivered everything we could have wanted!

Sunshine every day, a wonderful Sunday Service right down the street, family, relaxing, fun, plenty of time in the book store and the wal-mart (regrettably). As you can see, the baby did fine on the boat ~ here he's doing his best pirate impression!

We learned the baby is not a fan of water and it took a full week of auntie Nikki coaxing him gently for him to get used to the pool at all. Let's not discuss how he tried to stop the tide at the ocean! This week he learned several new words: on the list were Meme, Pepe, house, and 'no no no no no no' all in one quick, syncronous plea! Despite his fervent fear of the water, Florida is full of it so we continued to help him through his worst moments and he survived quite neatly as it would happen. He also spent quite a bit of time hunting down 'vroom vrooms' and was seen about town in big boats, small boats, mall motorcycles, antique cars, rental cars, one plastic green four-wheeler and a not so thrilling ride on a helicopter that lasted about 1.5 seconds.

We ate like kings and queens thanks to Mom and Dad's German butcher who knows nothing of the term small or moderation. We had spare ribs that looked like they came from 7,000 pound pigs! We also made sure we had plenty of our own junk food to last the week! I'm sure right now everyone (except the baby who didn't change his eating to accomodate a vacation) are all in food detox!

In addition to fun in the pool and fun on the boat and fun at Auntie and Uncle's house, we also (Jason and I) stole away for our anniversary and had a very nice dinner and movie date. Our overall rating of this vacation was that while we really have enjoyed our many previous vacations that are filled with plans and outings and parks and rides, this vacation had its own special allure, being a week of actually relaxing and just enjoying family and a few rousing games of Scrabble.

As for travelling with baby, that was actually a real success! He did very well on the first few flights with a little wiggling and a bit of drama. The final leg of the flight home was a nightmare for the first ten minutes but no one blames him. When you're 18 months old and being dragged here and there and asked to climb this, ride in that, hit that ball (putt putt), walk over here, ride over there, he really did an amazing job of adjusting and putting up with what must have seemed like a load of adult craziness! We did eventually wear him out (see photo below) and he did have to take a nap or two, but he didn't waste too much time sleeping - that is for sure!

All in all, an A+ of a time and we look forward to doing it all again some day hopefully soon!

9-11

On this solomn 8th anniversary of 9-11 I want to take a minute to recognize all of the fallen from that terrible event as well as the thousands of individuals who had to 'survive' 9-11 and the tragic, terrible loss of a friend or loved one.

Tragedy unites and thankfully in the United States we are very good about coming together and girding each other up during the worst of times. All things happen for a reason and in due time we will come to know the many purposes of that day. In the mean time I offer my solace and prayer to those families who live in the wake of that awful day.

Like many I am touched by the loss while not being immediately affected by personal loss but I still cry to think about the loss of life and the terrible events of that day. I am also lifted up by the reaction that people had and are still having in showing an outpouring of love and support to everyone who was personally touched that awful day.

9-11 will forever be a day of infamy for our country but it did not make us weaker. Terrorism is not going to win, it is not going to take our faith. In fact, quite the opposite. If you listen closely, you will hear so many miraculous stories born out of that day that you can't help but be uplifted and just ignore whatever terrible purpose instigated those events.

Terrorists want us to live in fear and time and time again America proves she refuses to be dragged down, she refuses to live in the pit of despair. It is NO coincidence that this country was founded on Christian principals and will continue to live those principals despite any effort to make us anthing other than what we are.

We are America. We are proud. We are brave. We love God.

Anything short of that, anything that tries to tear that appart will be met with brute force and we will not back down. We will not succumb. We have the greatest Father a nation can have and we know we are protected by Him.

Tastefully Simple! (and it's TRUE)

So this week I have undertaken a new adventure. This is one of those illustrious roads mentioned in my favorite poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.

This road is the road of independent consultant-ship. I've actually taken this very road before with a different company - some of you may remember my days with Pampered Chef. True to my nature my first and second attempts at this sort of thing revolve around FOOD!

It's no mystery that I love food. It's sinful how weak I am with food. This company though is food made easy for people who don't have an easy time with food.

Offering a variety (but not too huge a variety so as to overwhelm) of different spice mixtures, food preparations and oils, preserves and the like which help people who have a hard time being naturally 'food creative' climb to the top of the culinary heap!

Not only does the company produce and sell great seasonings and the like but they have tons of suggestions on cards and online that help you use them in many different ways!

I am looking forward to my first show in just over a week. I'm starting (of course) with family and friends. A big thank you to eveyrone who is opening up their home and time to me to help me launch this endeavor.

If I don't succeed, that's okay too because this company is not at all expensive to get started with. Right now there's a special consultant start up fee of only $99! that includes everything you need to get started! TONS of food, samples for parties, dishes, cups, spoons and the like for the tasting parties... it's so easy ANYONE could do it!

I do hope that I am successful at this endeavor because, after all, who couldn't use some extra cash these days?! At any rate, it's a good company that I can be proud to associate myself with so I'm all in and excited to get started!

Please feel free to visit my personal Tastefully Simple Website at:

www.tastefullysimple.com/web/mpetraitis

You can place orders, look around, take receipes or sign up to have a party! Also, feel free to call me if you have any questions or interest in having a party of your own!

Fun with family

So this past weekend I spent in PA with Jason and my brother and his family and we had a wonderful time! It was Jacob's christening and the weeekend was amazing weather-wise and we had a fabulous time!

The drive down was right on target Saturday morning and we arrived, got Jay a hair cut and went right to Fran's house. The boys booked a tee time and the girls plotted some serious shopping!

The boys scores were 94 & 136 (I won't give away who won).

The girls scored much good stuff at the outlets including some groovy new bags from French Connection (quote from Kim upon seeing the bag: It looks like Chubaka threw up all over that thing!). Sid and Fran were not all too impressed by the bags but that's okay, to each her own as they say!

Saturday evening we had a wonderful dinner with Thea, Sid, Fran, Mark, Liz and Jake. It was just beautiful. We ate out on the porch and listened to the locusts talk to each other in their own magical language. We watched as Petey and Trudi tried to avoid Ted the wonder cat. A good time was had by all!

Sunday morning was great, we went to church around ten. There were two kids being baptized. The church was beautiful, the ceremony was very special and the boys did very well despite the dunking (not real dunking, just sprinkling really).

After the ceremony we went back to Fran's for a fabulous brunch (thank you Fran for all that great cooking!) and we hung out for a little while after (clean up, packing, etc.). We hit the road around 2PM and OF COURSE traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike was at a standstill. Things didn't really get better until after the George Washington Bridge in NY! UGH. Ugly drive. And it wasn't really that fun being in the car either (to be honest and frank) not one of our more friendly marriage encounters.

Everyone survived the trip and we got home around 9PM and pretty much just flopped out!

The weekend was a SMASHING success and despite having a stinking standard on the GW, I survived and was made better by the entire experience!

A HUGE thank you to Fran for putting us up in her lovely home, we always enjoy visiting there and are so grateful for your loving kindness!

Friends

A topic so popular it became a hit TV show for several years - FRIENDS.

This morning on my drive into work I got to thinking pretty in depth about my friends. I have many friends and they span as far back as elementary school. My friends are as various and unique as can be and I wonder if they were all put into one room together what they might think of each other.

I have male friends and female friends, old friends and new friends, family friends, unrelated friends, religious friends and secular friends, tall ones, short ones, skinny ones and chubby ones and (at the risk of sounding too much like Dr. Seuss) they're all very special to me.

So this particular blog is a THANK YOU to all of my friends! Each of you has touched me in one way or another over the years. You've been through marriages, divorce, heartache, heartbreak (literally), pain, love, anxiety, stress, joy, growth, loss, gain and the rest of it.

Some years ago I created a family 'yearbook' for Christmas and gave a copy to everyone in my family and my favorite part of that book was that I sent out questionnaires to everyone and asked them all to say something nice about each member of the family. The purpose of this was to let everyone know the things that people might not regularly say to each other but really did mean. It was a very enlightening experience and I hope that it was meaningful to everyone who received it.

While I am not going to write something to each of my individual friends in this blog (because that would be more like writing a book than a blog) I do intend to let all of my friends know why they are special to me and if I fail at that, shame on me!