Good news, More good news, Regular news, and Lance Larsen.

Hey y'all!

First off, I want to apologize for the sheer amount of photos in this post. :) And not nearly all of them made the final cut.

I have a few things to tell y'all, so be prepared for lots of news!

First, and most importantly: Shane and I are back together!! For those of you have followed me from my previous blog, you know I was engaged, and for reasons I'm still not comfortable disclosing, we split up.

Well. THAT was a bad idea. I love him more than life, and I am so incredibly happy to be back with him. We aren't engaged again, but we will be someday. I love him so much, and it's hard to keep all the gushiness to myself. :)

Second, which is directly related to number one, I am moving to North Carolina. It's a temporary thing, until I start school next fall (like 2012), and Shane gets out of the military. I'm finishing up the summer here in Florida, due to my commitment to the summer camp, and away I go!

Third, I received my SAT scores!! I was soooo nervous. I did VERY well in Reading, and I'm ok with my essay score. But I'm not pleased with my Math score at all. (well. I'm pleased that I did that well having studied zero amount of time, and having been out of school for 8 years.... but still. I can do better.) SO I'll be taking that again. But now I'll be sure to study, and I know I'll be far more comfortable now knowing what to expect. :)

Now. On to the photos. Please excuse my greasy hair in all of them. Today was a pool day, and I saw no reason to wash my hair the night before getting into a swimming pool. The fact that it had been 4 days since I actually washed it is irrelevant.

My good friend Lance is a professional chef (and new blogger. Go. Check. Him. Out. He's pretty flippin hysterical.) and invited me to dinner last night. Of course I was hesitant. I mean, who wants to drive 45 minutes after a long day of corralling children to eat gourmet food?

Oh right. Anyone.

So after cajoling me into showing up at his house to do absolutely nothing but have deliciousness made for me, I changed clothes (nope, no shower for this girl. My friends are SO lucky.) and hopped on over, jamming to the new Rise Against cd the whole 45 minutes. Love. Them. So. Much.

Here are the rest of the players in the dinner party extravagance.
Mikey Fox. Seriously amazing dude. In the top 5 of best men ever on the face of the planet. Love him. So. much.

Laura Lee. Co-blogger with Lance. Super pretty mom.

Cool girl Jenn whom I actually don't really know, but liked anyways.

And Lance's mom and stepdad. Unpictured. Sorry.

Dinner started off with (sorry have to revert back to Facebook, since it's too educated and wordy for me to remember. Did I say I scored well on Reading?! 250 is pretty good, right?!) roasted red pepper bruschetta with blueberry balsamic reduction and goat cheese. Delicious. So delicious. I'm now uber feeling Sophia's love for bell peppers. I just wanted more and more.

So while Lancey-Pants was cooking up the main dish, I decided to help with prep work and peel some garlic. Until he pulled out two bowls and said he wanted to try a trick he saw on tv. He then put the unpeeled garlic in one bowl, covered the with the other and "Shake, Shake, Shake Senora". Worked like a charm.

Um. hello. I must try this.

Shaking so hard I thought I was going pull a muscle. If you go by the picture, it appears I did...

The unveiling.

I was unsuccessful..

The bowls were then passed around for everyone to try, and I kept stealing them back, determined to not let Lance...ahem.. the garlic win. I ended up jumping up and down and making a racket probably heard in Thailand, but I succeeded.

BTW. It takes much less effort to just peel the garlic by hand...

Then Lance unveiled the main course.....pan seared pork medallions with wilted spinach and a bacon corn and red potatoe hash topped with blue berry demi. No I have no idea what that means, and yes I just copy-pasted. I think it translates into 'Tastebuds in Love'. But that may not be a direct translation.

We settled down around the dinner table, pretending to be a group of people who love each other. Then Lance and I started flinging insults, everyone ganged up on Mikey, and the conversation soon turned to 40 year olds getting to various 'bases'.

Nothing but class with us, folks.

Dessert was ..... keylime pie with a shortbread crust and blueberry compost. It was supposed to be blueberry whipped cream, but Lance IDon'tKnowHowToCook Larsen whipped a little too much and made some blueberry butter. Seriously. Where do I find these incapable people?!

I suggested Redi-Whip, but it was shot down. Emphatically. With glares. And threats on my life. Geeze. So-rrrr-eeee.

Afterwards, while everyone else was cleaning up, Mikey and I did what any gracious guest does. We lit things on fire in the kitchen while everyone worked around us. Our manners are seriously legit. :)
It was an amazing time with mind-blowing food, and wonderful company. I know I was only invited because I promised to link up on my blog, so can all 4 of my readers please go check out Lance and Laura's blog? Maybe they'll invite me back someday... Haha. :)

Peace out y'all. I'm off to do sleep so I can function like a proper human being at Wild Adventures tomorrow. I might even wash my hair. It's only been 5 days....

-Katy

Dinner Parties, Adventures, and Fathers...

Oh hi. How are y'all!?

I'm doing pretty well. Yesterday I went to a friend's for a dinner party. Let me just say Megan is the bomb.com when it comes to cooking some yum spaghetti!! I was super tempted to eat my entire weight in it. I didn't, though. I made room for the delicious stuffed mushrooms and bruscetta. (or however it is spelled/pronounced.)

If there is any one random fact to learn about Ms. Katy (A.K.A. myself) it's that I live to dress up in a dress and heels. I'm not kidding. In Hawaii I used to make my friends go out to dinner JUST to dress up. I love it so much. I have more dresses than a department store. Haha.

It was a really good time, and I asked (demanded?!) Megan to do it again really soon. :) After dinner was the obligatory photo shoot. Not all pictures made it on the blog. There were a lot... Haha.

I even made Mikey (from the yoga adventure post?!) take a prom picture with me. :) I love these, haha. Mikey was sort-of used as a photo prop all night long. Poor boy. Who want to take pictures with pretty girls all night. He leads a difficult life, I tell ya.

Afterwards we headed back to Ellie's. The baby was at Nana's for the evening, so Ellie and i decided to go on midnight (or 2 AM...) adventure. But first I had to open Ellie's beer for her. I have serious talents. Sorry for any dentists out there!! :)

When we were in high school (and pretty much up until Ellie gave to birth to my godbaby.... children really put a damper on late night woods adventures....) we always went on adventures in the middle of the night. Whether to a haunted plantation out here in Jacksonville, or ghost hunting in St. Augustine, or a trip to Poet's Beach (a beach littered with sun bleached HUGE driftwood trees), or an Indian preserve in a swamp. Literally there is a pond named Gator Pond on the reserve. And yes, we've been there at night. Adventurous we are. Intelligent... that's not as guaranteed.

Well we were in a fun mood last night, and decided to go. The rest of our friends remembered they are grown ups and opted to stay and play XBOX. Haha. Lame.

Let me explain something about summer in Jacksonville. We call it "spider season". Because in the woods (all of them!) huge (and I mean as big as your fist huge!) banana spiders make these huge elaborate webs all throughout the woods. They cross trails, hang above you, etc. It's terrifying. So we set out hoping that maybe due to all the smoke lately, the spiders would not have been out and web building.

Wrong. After passing the trail head 4 times (the road is PITCH BLACK and there are no signs or indicators, you just have to go by memory. We were trying to go to Poet's Beach BTW.) we finally got there, loaded up our flashlights, and mace. Hey. We were two girls roaming the woods in the middle of nowhere at 2:30 in the morning. We're not the most cautious, but we're not total idiots! We got 10 steps into the trail before we ran right into one. Spanned the whole trail. Whoops. So much for adventure. Haha. So we took some fun pictures. Haha.

The road we are on is Hecksher Dr, and it is our favorite road ever. Also known as A1A. We want twin side by side houses on the water off of A1A someday. It's a special road to us. :)

Then we headed back to go to sleep. Yeah right. After more hanging out and Facebook picture updating. Haha. I'll just say it was daylight before I fell asleep. About 5 minutes later Mom calls. (Ok. Maybe 3 hours. But it sure felt like 5 minutes!) Gotta make lunch reservations for Dad's dinner. Ironically on.... Heckscher Dr!!! Haha. There is this seafood place out there that gets fresh seafood every day and it used to be the bomb.com. It used to be this little whole in wall joint that had super cheap, super delicious food that I loved because it was right on the river, and kind of unknown.

Now it feels like it's gone mainstream, the food is overpriced, and while still fresh, not nearly as good as it used to be. It's also cleaner. I'm a firm believer that legit seafood joints must be 'on the verge of being condemned' looking. But maybe I'm the anti-seafood snob. Who knows.

Um, and what would this blog be without a random photo of yours truly?! Like my mask?! I sure do. :)
Other than that, just working at camp and dealing with some stuff in KatyWorld. Nope. Don't want to talk about it. :)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Father's Day. :-)