Crazy Spaghetti!!

3 weeks ago we celebrated Jeremie's birthday by inviting some friends over for our 2nd Annual Crazy Spaghetti Dinner to celebrate! We had a really great time last year and I decided that it will become a yearly tradition.

When everyone came in.. this is what the table looked like:


Most in attendance knew what was underneath the beautiful sheets covering the tables as they had been in attendance last year. (Yes, that is He-Man sheet on the end and the weird animal sheet that my mother has had for much longer than she has had me!!!) But we had 3 newbies this year so they had no idea that this was awaiting them when the sheets were removed!!





The evening started with a Quiz of Jeremie that had several, extremely difficult questions about Jeremie. It was much harder this year because, as Jeremie put it, I have been killing myself in law school for the past year so I want to spread the pain to those around me!

Then everyone picked a number that matched a place around the table. The person with the highest score won the ability to switch positions with another person once the table was revealed.

For the second year in a row my friend Laura got the highest score!

While her placing gave her this great photo op she decided she didn't want to eat spaghetti with a meat tenderizer so she elected to switch places!!!

It's pretty much just my family that reads this so most of you are very familiar with crazy spaghetti, but for those of you who aren't.. the pictures say it all. You are forced to eat and drink with things that you would never normally eat and drink with!!

My brother Donald's birthday is April 1st so every year for his birthday we would have a dinner like this. Our family loved it and I have very fond memories of these dinners from my childhood! I was thrilled that I was able to include the dog dish (actually made to hold saltine crackers!!) that Sister Cummard made for my mother years ago!!

It is so much fun to leave adulthood at the door and just play around like kids making a mess while spending time with amazing friends!!









The only thing that REALLY sucks about crazy spaghetti is the DISHES!!



Took me about an hour and a half to get through them all, but it was well worth it!! We had such an amazing time and I can't wait to do it all again next year!!

The Great Flood of '10

One week ago today I was minding my own business updating my blog with lots of love pictures from my trip to Chicago (to appease those that only like pictures... AMY). I got up to go to the bathroom and notices a spill in my hallway.



I thought this was odd because I know I didn't spill any water there and if Jeremie did he would have cleaned it up. I stepped closer to investigate and this is what happened...



Water gushed out from underneath the flooring. It was then that I noticed another section of the floor was starting to actually warp...



CRAP!!!!!! At this point I hastily concluded my blog post (those of you who have read it know what I am talking about) and went in to wake Jeremie up.

Me: Um.... I think you need to wake up. There is water leaking through the floor and, um, I think it's kind of a major problem.

Jeremie: What do you mean???

We both stared bewildered at the growing problem for about 5 minutes (literally) and Jeremie finally said, "I don't even know what to do!"

Well.. we called the insurance first to make sure that we didn't get screwed on some technicality. It was a Sunday on Memorial Day weekend so, of course, we were only able to talk to a call center. The guy from the call center was VERY unhelpful and kept making excuses saying that they had some phone lines down so he wasn't able to connect us to the claims department and that we would need to CALL BACK LATER!!!!! Can you believe that??!! This was after explaining that we had a leak that was warping our floor and COMING UP THROUGH THE SEAMS IN OUR FLOORING!!!! To top it all off, this moron, after not being able to do anything for us, had the audacity to end the call with, "I HOPE EVERYTHING WORKS OUT FOR YOU TODAY." UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!! It was one of those comments that made me want to call this turd's mother and tell her that she failed, ya know?

Anyhoo... a plumber came over and said there was nothing he could do at that point and that we had to get a restoration company to come in and rip our house apart and dry everything out. Once that happened the plumber would be back on Tuesday to diagnose the problem.









The picture of Jeremie cracks me up because it illustrates the situation perfectly. We just want to turn our back on the whole situation and pretend it never happened!!

Good news though... the insurance adjuster came out and the insurance is going to accept our claim!! Now we just have to deal with estimates and contractors and work and stuff.

Fortunately, the lead is gradual so at this point we are still able to turn on our water when needed to shower and so on so it could be A LOT worse!!!