Open House!

As I mentioned in my last post, I have a lot of fun things coming up in the upcoming weeks. One of those things was the Smith Bros. Meats Open House last weekend. For those of you who are unfamiliar, my family owns a meat market, and for the past several years, they've been holding a customer appreciation event every Mother's Day weekend (in conjunction with a few other local businesses). They do free food samples, grill demonstrations, in-store specials, you name it. The event is always a huge success, rain or shine, and this year was no different. Last year, L and I went back to Colby and just helped out randomly. This year, I actually got a phone call to ensure that we were coming, so I knew we must be important. ;) His sister T ended up coming back with us this year too, so that was a lot of fun. While she wasn't originally scheduled to work the event, they sure used her!

When talking about the Open House with my coworkers before I went home for the weekend, I literally said, "There is one thing I don't want to do this weekend: park cars." Unfortunately for me, I talked to my mom on the phone that evening and was informed that that was in fact my job. What?!?! I've never really done it before, but I remember being asked to take over for a few minutes last year, and that was enough to warrant me swearing it off forever, ha. (After experiencing it this year, I will continue to swear it off;). I tried really hard to get out of it, but sadly, I had no luck. It was cold and windy, and we had TONS of people coming in and out all day long. Directing traffic in a lot that isn't really meant for a ton of cars is not an easy feat, let me tell ya. For me, the main thing that sucked about it was simply that people forgot about us. Several hours into the event, I had to call like 5 people until someone (L) answered their phone to see if they'd be willing to bring my mom and I something quick to eat while we stood out there. It also was sad because the event was held more indoors this time due to the cold, which meant all the other workers were in a completely different spot from us. Kinda lonely. :-/ Anywayyyyyy. This took way more of a whiny tone than I meant it too, ha! I guess it should be considered a good problem that we had to park people in the field next to the shop, in a parking lot across from the dealership, etc. Just not a good problem for me and mom. :P

Once we finished that up, we walked over by where everything was happening to take part in some of the action. Was nice to get a teeny peek of everything before it shut down at 2:00pm. By that point, mom was stiff as a board, so she went home. The rest of us hung out a bit, and then me, L, and T went back to my parent's for awhile before heading back to the post-event party. Saturday evening ended up being quite lowkey for us, and then on Sunday (Mother's Day), we did a nice breakfast with most of the fam. Yum! T had to head back to Madison that afternoon because she worked on Monday, but L and I had Monday off, so that was great. We drove down to LAX so I could get my hair done, had sushi at L's favorite sushi place (mom came down and met us for lunch), and then headed back to Madison. We ran into some standstill traffic which sucked, and then we almost forgot that we had to go pick up L's car from T's house before going back to his place. Once we got to T's, we ended up staying there for a few hours chatting, and by the time we got back to L's, it was almost 10:30. Ick! We went to bed not soon after, and then back to work it was. Story of our lives... I cannot WAIT for the day when I can wake up next to him on a weekday knowing that I don't ever have to drive an hour and a half back to work again. A girl can dream, right...? Anyway, that's kind of a recap of how last weekend went. Had a LONG week at work this week, and now I'm relishing this free weekend in MKE. Next weekend will be the Brewers extravaganza (I bought a new shirt for it, stay tuned to see pics), and then the week after that, we leave for FL. Ahhhh! So much to do, so little time. ;) So yeah... Enjoy a few pics from the Open House. I apologize that most of them are of me and L. I intended to take more of the food but wasn't by the grills at all, so that didn't happen. Pics from the next few weeks will probably be a bit more exciting, so stay tuned! :)

 Aww. :)

 The one and only food photo I got at the Open House. Raw chicken, yum! ;)

 Sporting my winter-esque gear after the Open House!

 L took a liking to baby Meg! I think a baby looks good on him. ;)

 Couldn't resist a photo considering my dad and L dressed so similar on Mother's Day, ha!

 Happy Mother's Day, mama! :)

 Homer opening his gifts from me!

 T stealing my camera for a selfie!

Mud Bar (above) and VFW (below)!

Me post-haircut!