Lake Season 2010 Has Begun, Ballet Recital, and Let the Party Begin!

First, a couple of randoms:

Mr. Smith and I had lunch together the other day and ran into Walgreen's to grab a couple of things. Inside, he made the comment that he felt like he was walking through his portfolio because...

he designed all these shirts

Later on we had happy hour with friend, Rob! Here is he and Tommy being silly:

salud!

And I mentioned last blog post that I enjoyed riding my bike downtown to get our CSA, remember? I bet you thought I wasn't serious when I said I enjoyed it immensely and would be biking more often, didn't you? WRONG. I liked it so much that I....

talked mr. smith into biking with me too! here we are by krutch park on our way back home. he had fun too! we're bikers from now on!

Speaking of the CSA...

isn't this pretty? we hadn't eaten our cooking greens from last week, and i just found out you can eat beet tops! i piled all the greens in one pot to cook as a side for our supper the other night. kale, chard, collards and beet greens! um... in case you're wondering... mr. smith and i didn't think the copious amount of greens thing through before chowing down. won't be doing that again anytime soon....

Next: oh boy oh boy oh boy! The lake is my most favorite thing in the whole wide world! See?

mr. smith, me and ki love lakin' it!

beth and brandon parks were our hosts - thanks, yo! we had F-U-N but that's par for the course when the parks are involved!

we were in charge of bringing the chicken. chicken, check!

here is our set up. nice.

they even have a sea-doo! mr. smith takes me for a ride!

I had a good time, but had to leave early. Because the boat ride out was 40 minutes, I had been asked to drop my car off at a nearby marina and...

was given escort to my car by sea-doo by mrs. beth parks. it was very cool in like a james bond or lara croft sorta way. well. on the ride over, beth and i talked about how we like to both be taken tubing and ride sea-doos in a gentle, grandma-esque way. none of this horsing around for us, thankyouverymuch.

Only one minor casualty that day:

my favorite water bottle melted in the hot car. DANGIT.

I had to leave early to go to a ballet recital! Allow me to show you the participants:

that's right. every ballerina this side of the mississippi. i saw dance. at least twice. over a three and a half hour period. ahem.

No worries though:

yea yea yea!!! surrounded by friends! there was enough pithy conversation and comments to keep me entertained for 3.5 hours.

And how can you resist the epitome of CUTE?

bootie smiles pretty for the camera, june ignores my pleas to look up, and iris acts the fool. i love it.

And here I am with the two ballerinas:

i wanted to wear my tutu but rachel wouldn't let me

We had a cookout last night to welcome the Ohs back home to Knoxville for a quick visit. I... ahem. Neglected to get a photo of Isabel. But here is Tommy and Jonny!

aaaayyy! glad you guys came over!!

The Callises were there too! And I promised to take their pictures and blog about them but got tied up in my hostess duties and neglected to take their photo. I'M SORRY!! Shout out, Karen, Marcus and E! Happy to see your smiling faces!

Actually, me getting bogged down with hostess duties is totally a lie.

i made kristina do the french fries. she's good at it, yo! i asked her in a 'but you're SO much better at changing dirty diapers than i am!' way.

NEXT. It's official. I'm late 30s. I turn 36 on Friday. I kept referring to my birthday as '35 the sequel' until Philippa at work reminded me that the sequel is never as good as the original. So I'm OWNING 36!!! I'm all about celebrating the birthday as looooong as possible and am in fact a little surprised I haven't started before now, but today my work peeps had a party for me!

i was so excited i was the first one to arrive. and when i said i was going to go ahead and start eating so everyone would fee comfortable about eating when they got there, someone said, 'we were waiting?' my work peeps are AWESOME.

To top it off, my co-worker and friend, Ms. Debbie Thomas, got up this morning early to make me this:

german chocolate upside down cake

I don't know how I get so lucky! I have everything I need and tons of stuff just thrown in for fun! Thank you, 5th floor peeps, and big THANK YOU to Debbie for my birthday cake! HUGS ALL AROUND!