Traci's Real Bachelorette Party

Traci's shower and bachelorette party were this weekend.  We had lots and lots of fun just getting together and reminiscing about old college memories and getting excited about Traci's upcoming wedding. 

Here are the girls holding our inflatable penii (that's the plural version of penis, right?). 

Mandy is trying to open a bottle of champagne which no one drank.

We ate some tasty engagement rings.  So cute!

I tried my first non-alcoholic beer.  It was okay.  It wasn't beer, that's for sure. 

Traci got lots of fine sexy gifts.  Plus she had to wear the penis necklace which we caught her absentmindedly playing with all night.

I got her this nightie.  (Meee-ooow!)

Amanda got her a few choice things.  Some whip cream...

Some Hershey's syrup....

More chocolate sauce and WET ONES! How thoughtful! It is very messy making homemade sundaes. ;)

She also got her a naughty toy in a box.  We don't need to go into detail on that one.  But did you know you can buy those at Target? I'm not kidding.  Check out the pharmacy section near the razors.  No joke!

I had to take a picture of this gift.  It was one of two that Holly's dad wrapped.  Not only does he love Dale Earnhardt, but he also loves professional gift wrapping.  He's really good at it too.  Very artistic.  I wish I would have gotten a better picture.  It was perfectly wrapped with only a couple pieces of tape.  It could have been a Grand Champion 4-H project!  Amazing!

After we opened gifts, we played Pin the P___ on the Man.  Those yellow things are our P_____s.  Look at cute little Mattie asleep on the couch.  It was a long night for her. :)

And poor poor Mattie... guess where we put all of our P____s after we were done with them?  Poor pup! :)

Future Blackhawks Right Here

Friday night Andrew and I went ice skating. Yes, ice skating... in June. Weird right? But Andrew's friend joined a local hockey league and told Andrew he should join too. Andrew had never skated before so he decided to give it a try at Open Skate on Friday night.

Look at the look on his face. I guess he's really not sure what to think about it. He really improved in just an hour of skating. I was impressed. He started out skating mostly by the wall like this.

But then he let go of his "training wheels" and it looked a little more like this.





As you can kind of see in the video, ice skating is fairly popular in South Bend even in June. I think once Andrew feels a little more comfortable on skates, he'll probably join the league. Maybe I can join next year!

Work in Progress

They started the wood floors this week!!!









It's going to look so awesome! I can't wait.






Look what else they're working on... We're finally getting the giant hole in our ceiling fixed! Hooray!!

Exciting times in the Thornburg household!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Painter Paints Domer Country Black and Gold

Tonight Andrew, Andrew's dad Tom, and I went to the Purdue Alumni Association dinner.  It was at the Morris Park Country Club.  This place is extremely nice.  In fact, Andrew checked the website and there are no prices for membership on the website. You just have to "apply".  Yiiiiikkkeeesss.

Anyway the food was amazing.  The guest speaker was even better.  The St. Joe Valley Purdue Alumni Association was able to get Coach Matt Painter to speak at tonight's function.

He was a fantastic speaker.  He had all kinds of great stories.  Let's see if I can recall a couple...

Painter talked about one of the former players who came to the dinner tonight. These players grew up in the South Bend area, went to Purdue and came back to the area afterward.  One of the players in attendance, Jaraan Cornell, went to Clay High School.  Painter was telling us that when he does Walk-Throughs during practice, no one is allowed to talk or mess around in any way.  No noise.  No one dribbling a basketball or anything distracting.  Until one day, a guy walks in and starts shooting hoops during their Walk-Throughs.  Painter doesn't even acknowledge that the guy is totally distracting the team. One of the players finally says, "Who is that guy that's shooting hoops and why is he allowed to do that during our Walk-Throughs?"  Painter says, "That's Jaraan Cornell and if you score 1700 points for Purdue, I'll let you do whatever the hell you want, too."

Painter said that he sat down with one of the players, Matt Kiefer. Kiefer told him, "Coach, I can't play when Coach Keady yells at me."  Painter said, "Matt, did you have a TV down in Evansville?"
"Yeah."
"Did you watch the Purdue games on that TV?"
"Yeah."
"And what did Coach Keady do during those games?"
"He yelled."
"So what did you think would happen when you got here?"

During the Q&A session at the end of his speech, someone asked Painter what he thought about the NCAA violations not following coaches when they switch from job to job.  Painter said, "Well you know it's funny.  I just read this article the other day where Jerry Tarkanian once said, 'The NCAA was so mad at Kentucky that they put Cleveland State on probation for two more years.'"

The dinner and banquet were excellent.  There was a live auction where they had people bid for basketballs signed by Matt Painter.  They also had a silent auction. It made me wish I brought more cash.  There was some great stuff on the tables.  Tom decided to bid on the Purdue bib. 

He WON with a bid only a dollar over the original price! SWEET! All the money goes toward scholarships for local students going to Purdue so money well spent.

The only problem was being that it was a local dinner, many people that I work with in my office were at the dinner.  I haven't informed any of these people that I am expecting. They announced all the Silent Auction winners and said, "The winner of the BABY BIB is TOM THORNBURG."  One of the guys comes up to me after the event and says, "So... I heard you won a bid item."  Whoopsie! Haha!


And now... finallly.... the great reveal.... the BEST part of going to the Alumni dinner.....

They were able to get a picture with Matt Painter!! How cool is that??????? Is he tall or what?
I practically forced them to stick around and stand in line to get a picture with him.  They thought he would have to race out of there.  But it took about 5 minutes and they were shaking his hand! I'm so glad we got this picture. Very exciting!

Who Loves Cute Baby Videos?

Sunday night after the race, we got to see Wyatt for a little bit. He scoots and pushes and crawls! It's so funny. I had to turn down the sound quite a bit because my voice was so annoying. Better learn to watch that! :)

The Hottest Race in the History of the Indy 500

Seriously, Mother Nature??? You had to go and get all super stinkin' hot the day I'm going to outside baking in the sun next to diamond-grinded asphalt while 30-some tons of metal race by spewing gas fumes?? Really???

They took a moment to announce that the temperature had hit a high so that it really truly was the hottest race in the history of the Indy 500.  You have got to be kidding me!

Actually it wasn't too bad.  We had coolers full of ice and we used that to cool ourselves off.  Plus I used any excuse to go to the bathroom.  Oh you have to go to the bathroom? I'll go too.  Oh you have to go now too? I'll go again.  Anything to spend a few more moments in the shade.  WOW.  HOT!  But I survived. 

So on to the pictures...

Every year we go to the Keele's residence for the race pre-party.  There is food, fun, and an annual beer pong tournament.

Here is our annual bracket on the chalkboard.  Katie and I played together.  I have to say that I'm really really bad when playing sober.  Not that I'm any good after drinking but I was especially bad this night.  Katie really held it together for us.  It came down to 1 cup per team.  But they won out and we went on with our lives.

Andrew and Travis made it through a few rounds (they were the 08 Champions, by the way).  But they were knocked out by some college kids.  Imagine that!  Then they said that there should be a rule that at least 3 cups should be added if you are still in college.  I laughed and said, "You guys are old."  HAHA!

The game is set up on the ping pong table and we had two games going at once.  I love how Andrew is the only person looking in this picture.

The next day we load up our vehicles and head down to Speedway for the race. On the way, we stop by Kroger to pick our lunches.  We decided to run in for a few things and saw this in the aisle.

Suncare... you've got your dark tanning oils, your tanning sprays... and oh yeah, Mustard.

Then we park at a friend's house in Speedway and do a little tailgating before we walk to the track.

We have quite a large group.  But this tradition is 20 years in the making.  The second generation is now filling in the tradition of going to the race year after year.  It's really a cool thing. 

This is a picture of all the gals at the race.  We're not so sweaty just yet.  This was when we first got there. 

Katie and I, before we got too hot.

This is Travis's dad Kevin holding up his homemade sign until we got Jack Nicholson's attention.  We waited until the music died down and then we screamed, "JAAAACCCKKK!"  He finally turned to our side and looked and waved!

SWEET!! Jack Nicholson was there to wave the green flag, which he was having a really good time doing.

See the guy in the yellow shirt? He looks to be the same age or possibly older than Jack.  Well HE climbed the ladder up there.  Did Jack Nicholson climb the ladder??

Hell no! He's Jack Nicholson.  He's going to have a machine lift him up there and bring him down again.  But hey, good for him, right?

Here's Kevin and Joe wearing the official gloves, wearing headphones hooked into Race Control, and holding the yellow flags.  They are serious!

Every year as another tradition we draw names of drivers for $5.  Andrew drew Mike Conway and I drew Davey Hamilton.  Davey Hamilton was the first one to wreck and go out of the race so I got my $5 back.  Mike Conway... well you'll see what happens a little later. 

The race was fairly exciting. The ending could have been a really exciting finish because the front runners barely had enough gas to finish but Mike Conway got in a horrible wreck at the end of the race so they finished on a yellow flag.   Sad face.  But wow, I cannot believe he survived that wreck with only a broken leg.  Watch the replays at the link.  You can see people running for their lives when the car hits the fence and shatters into a million pieces.  Crazy!

The really sad thing is Mike Conway lead the race for several laps at the end.

So on to the winner...

Dario Franchitti won the race.  This is his crew sprinting toward the finish line.

Here is Ashley Judd sprinting toward the finish line to see her husband with no shoes on!!! What is wrong with this woman?? Oh yeah, she's thinking, "Yay, NO MORE MOVIES!!"

This is Dario, Ashley, and the team owner doing their victory lap.

Here's our victory toast.

Here's Jack Nicholson getting the hell out of town as soon as the race was over.

The next few pictures are some of the "sights" you can see at the Indy 500.   

This guy came straight from a wedding and forgot to change his shoes and socks. 

This man had the skinniest hips I've ever seen.

This man craftily put the tower and tiny race cars on the top of his hat. 

Don't forget the matching shoes!

You can see many many people eating a giant turkey leg at the race.  Mmmmm hot turkey leg on the hottest day of the year.  Gross.

Andrew spotted Summer Santa and had a nice conversation. 

Did we spot any celebrities besides Jack Nicholson??

Well I hoped I did.  But when I was able to see this picture on the computer screen I realized this is not Kim Kardashian.  I really hoped it was.  It fooled me.  But she was wearing jeans and a Quick Trim racing jersey that day.  (Side note: Much to the dismay of one of the people in our group, the Quick Trim product is not for bikini area grooming.  But that struck me as extremely funny.)  But darn, I really want to see a Kardashian!

Other traditions in our Indy 500 adventures---

The random phone shot:
For some reason, in 2008 I made Andrew pose with some random phone we found near the bathrooms.

So when we came across the same phone, I made him do it again in 2010.

Only this time, the security guards came up and said, "Are you using that phone?"  Andrew said, "No."  They said, "Good, because we need to use it."   Estoy embarrassada! (Haha! Spanish joke!)

I started looking through my old Indy 500 pictures and I have a lot of repeats, or year to year traditions besides the phone pictures.  I won't bore you with those.

The new tradition now is who is going to be pregnant each year.  Katie was pregnant last year and it was my turn this year.  Who's next?

But besides the extreme heat, we cannot ask for a better way to celebrate our anniversary year after year. 

Anniversary Dinner with the Thornburgs

So what did we end up doing for our anniversary?

We decided to go to the mall and out to eat.  We ate at this new place in Granger called Uptown Kitchen.
 

The food was amazing. 

 As you can tell, we devoured our meals.  Andrew got the New York Strip Steak and I got the Double Cut Pork Chop. 

The desserts were even better. 

We try to follow the anniversary gift list each year.  The four year anniversary gift was fruit or flowers.  So we killed two birds with one stone and got a fruit flavored raspberry triple layer cake with flowers on it.  PERFECT! :)

We held back from going to this restaurant for a long time because as you can see in the first picture, the logo has an egg in it.  So of course we think this place only serves breakfast and we're never up and at 'em early enough to go to breakfast on the weekends (I can hear you all groaning, JUST WAIT! I know, I know).  But then we finally saw an ad in our Michiana magazine and realized they serve breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Well, well, well, we just had to try it.  We were very impressed. 

Now we just need to get up early enough to try their breakfast!