Jen & Jesse Sittin' in a Tree: Shower re-cap, and other bits...

It’s been a special level of busy at work these past couple of weeks, so I apologize for the lack of posts as of late. As we all know, work must come first, though…the wedding and the private life and the fun have to be set aside when things get as busy as they have been in the professional world!

Thank goodness it hasn’t been all work work work, though…for example, yesterday we went and bowled for charity in the morning and I got back to my desk at about 1 after bowling 2 games with my other 5 teammates. It was nice to get out and do something fun for charity! (My teammates and I have been practicing over the course of the last month, too. We went for extra-long lunches twice in order to prepare for today. So that hasn’t been all that terrible, either.)

Of course, things were a bit more stepped up over the last couple of weeks at work due to my vacation days I took last week. I went to California for a wedding shower that my sister threw for me, and I took last Friday and this past Monday off for travel. Saturday, the day of the shower, was perfect, and we had such a nice time! I was hoping to be able to see a lot of family and old friends that I don’t get to see very often, and the party did not disappoint in that respect. In fact, it didn’t disappoint in any respect! The food was great, the aforementioned weather was lovely, and everyone seemed to have as good a time as I had, which always makes things even nicer than one could hope.

We did have an odd occurrence during one point of the shower, though. See, we were on a lower level of patio seating at a restaurant on this little lake in Mission Viejo. We were at the one end of the patio, and were pretty well backed into a corner. The buffet was set up in that corner, and then the tables were along the railing looking over the water. Very pretty, well-situated, comfortable for everyone, etc…

Well, after we had all gotten our food and even been back for seconds, we settled in to take some pictures and chit-chat and that sort of thing before I opened presents. While we hung out, a few of us (if not all of us) noticed that one of the waiters from the restaurant was at our buffet, getting a plate of food…presumably for himself, but who knows. He finished filling up, we all kind of laughed, and then went back to chit chat.

After a few minutes, the chocolate covered strawberries my sister had ordered for dessert arrived, and we went to town on them. Yum! Then a waiter came to get orders for coffee, and we continued on with our chatting. (We did a LOT of chatting!)

Pretty soon after the strawberries had arrived, another “gentleman” showed up to our buffet. This guy was wearing a normal brown shirt, though, so I wasn’t sure who he was, exactly. Then a waiter arrived with the tray of coffee, he set them down on a table next to the present table, and then he went to the buffet to fill a plate. Note: he did NOT distribute the coffees to the guests who had ordered them…he just left them on the tray on a side table. For some unknown reason. (He must have been really, really hungry, I s’pose.)

This pretty well pissed me off. I was angry, and while my sister was a bit confused by the actions of the waiters as well, she just wanted to let the whole thing go for the time being and follow up with management later. In the meantime, these two guys were filling up plate after plate of our food, and then passing the full plates to the next level of the terrace to other waiting employees of the restaurant who wanted free food from our buffet.

Well, I couldn’t just SIT there like that! I decided to cheer myself up by taking a picture of the two food-stealers.

And then our best friend (and one of my “chicks of honor”) jumped up and got in the picture as well, to help express our feelings about the randomness of the act.

(That's my cousin Denise taking note of the random food-stealing as well, along with my sister-in-law Rebecca.) As you can see, it’s not like the buffet was far from where our tables were at, or anything. So we thought the whole deal was very strange, to say the least.

Eventually, they stopped coming to our buffet to eat our food, and we wound up taking home a lot of leftovers (although I think we all wished there had been more leftover tamales/sweet corn cakes, which I’m pretty sure the absconders had taken a good deal of. Jerks.), which we ate for the rest of the weekend. It was great!

It was sooo, so nice to see old friends of my mom and dad’s (who are now friends with my step mom and still my dad, of course!) whom I haven’t seen since dad’s wedding. And my aunts that I never get to see, and my step aunts, and my cousins, and step sister once removed. One of Jesse’s aunts was there as well, and it was awesome to be able to spend some time with her like that before the wedding. She’s a hoot! Unfortunately, other local family and friends of his family were unable to make it, but maybe we’ll be able to see some of them at the wedding! You never know…(There are more photos of the shower at the end of this post, by the way...)

So for now, the pre-wedding parties are over. At this point, I’m finalizing plans with the caterers, the florist, and the invitations. I need to put together a vendor list for my coordinator (and also just to help me keep my sanity, if possible…), and after we know who and how many will be coming to the wedding, I’ll order table names and have the table “assignments” printed out. I hate that I have to wait until the last minute to get those things done, but it is what it is!

Tomorrow I’ll be going to the salon for a second hair trial, since the first one didn’t turn out as I’d have liked it to. I’ve got more pictures of examples, and a more defined idea of what I’d like my hair to look like, though, so hopefully that’ll help. If not, I’m afraid I’ll have to have a 3rd trial at a totally different salon. Which would be fine, I’m sure. It’s not like there are hard feelings in the world of hair-do’s, and I’m sure the girl I’m attempting to have it done by wouldn’t care much if I went someplace else. She’s a cool chick.

Alrighty, off to get some end of the week work done! (13 weeks to go! I have to try to keep my mind off of it, seriously…)

Here are some more pictures from the shower, though. This is of my twin, our best friend, and me. We like to laugh...

And these are two of my aunts on Dad's side, Yvonne and Ginny. Ginny is my godmother, and Yvonne is my twin's. (I think. We have a few aunts and uncles, so I might be off on that...) They are a couple of the sweetest people you could ever know, and I miss hanging out and seeing them on holidays at this point in my life. *sigh!* That kind of comes with the territory of choosing to live 1500 miles from your family, though, I guess!
Aunt Yvonne was married to my dad's brother, Bob. They were what we call (and I suppose lots of people call, really) "Irish twins" so it was beyond sad when Bob died 4 years ago from complications of a bout of pneumonia. He had something called Pulmonary Fibrosis, though, and was unable to recover like most healthy people might be able to do. I miss him. Yvonne won't be able to make it to the wedding, I learned, since she is going to be on a cruise at that point. It sounded like it will be a LOT of fun though, and I was just so grateful to have some time to chat and catch up at the shower like we did!