Finally Facin' my Waterloo

So I went home this past weekend to see the fam and what not. I totally expected it to be the mostly boring venture it usually is (no offense momma and pop) - but seriously. Typically, I got home for a couple days and it just happens to be the days that EVERYONE is busy. Including my fam which is the primary reason I go home to begin with. 

This time, I knew for certain that I had a barbecue on Sunday with my entire family to look forward to, and dinner with my friend Jen on Saturday, but that was about it. So I brought home my laptop and a book, thinking I would have to occupy a lot of my time alone.

I could not have been more wrong.

It was probably the craziest three days EVER.

I understand that this is not the most exciting/interesting blog post ever, so I'll understand if you don't want to read on. However, there will be about a million people mentioned, so if you spent any time at all with me last weekend, you may want to continue so I can make you feel famous (or at least appreciated).

Also, it was rather hilarious - my Papa Bear told me he wanted me to add him as a follower on my blog. I told him he'd have to join the blog thing and he said oh.. never mind. I just wanted you to know I follow it. hahaha!

(I should probably mention the title: every time I come home, when I'm about a mile or so from my house, I play "Waterloo" by ABBA and cry a little. I'm kinda weird that way. It's also pretty appropriate considering I haven't gone there in a good long while.)

So on Friday, I woke up at a blisteringly early 10:30am so that I could get ready for work at 12:30... It seems a little ridiculous to get ready for two hours, but I really have to start leaving at noon - it takes at least 10 minutes for me to get out the door and 20 to navigate through Cape. I worked until 3, and then came home and took (or rather BSed my way through) my Islamic Civilizations Exam. After that, I headed home to try to make it back for free dinner - expecting that to be the only thing I did that evening.

How wrong indeed.

After dinner, I texted my dearest Panda to see what she was up to, or if she was even still in town as I had heard earlier that she was going camping. Fortunately for me, she decided not to camp for girly reasons and instead invited me to go karaoke-ing with her and "some people". Of course, being me, I couldn't turn down karaoke so I went. We ended up meeting  Alycia Jones (hereafter referred to as "Lisha", a name she earned from me for being awesome), her friend Rian and Rian's Mississippian man-friend, Adam. It was a great time of singing, dancing, watching drunk people fall all over themselves, trying not to let them fall all over us, and getting creeped on. Lisha was accidentally nice to the guy that kept buying them drinks and somehow ended up getting roped into slow dancing with him. Twice. The first time was all normal and she came back to the table proclaiming the creepy guy's normalcy. HA! Now we know what a good judge of character Lisha is. During their second dance, as she tried to make her escape, creepy guy went in for a smooch - knowing full well that she has a boyfriend. She dodged and he ended up slurping her neck and telling her that he would give her his phone number so that they could meet up at the fair later this week and that he would pay for her to get into the demo derby... How classic Monroe County is THAT?! Hot date idea #1: Demo Derby Night - Way to get in Girl's Pants: buy her way in. HAHA!

So at any rate, she came back over to our table saying "We need to leave", proceeded to tell us the story - in the middle of which creepy guy Dean came over and gave Lisha his number - and then an old, drunk, fat guy tried to touch me, so we were out of there. 

I got home around 2:30am - the absolute latest I have EVER been out. Yes, I'm lame, I understand. But even when I'm here (my apartment) I don't stay out. I think the latest was the night I was at Sam's until midnight.

Saturday I woke myself up around 11:00 and decided mom and I needed to go see HP7.5. I knew there was a showing at Ronnie's around 1:30, so we got ready, got lunch and headed over. Turns out I was wrong, but there was a 3D showing at 1:45, so we went ahead and did that. It was pretty hilarious to listen to me and Mutter being totally freaked out by things flying very realistically at our faces.

I took mom home and then headed back to South County to meet Jen, her boyfriend Nick and her sister Krissy for dinner at TGIFriday's. We got to catch up and all went extremely well. Her boyfriend (who I've been hearing about for 2 years) is totally approved by me - he's hilariously ADD - and her sister's a total sweetheart. It's funny, but Jen and I rarely get to see each other but still somehow stay extremely close. It seems like the time between visits is nothing when we finally get back together... that's how it should be with friends :) OH! Here's a picture of me and Jen:

It seems like I'd gone awhile with no pictures... and who wants to read that, really?

Anyway, after I left Jen, I got a call from the Panda saying that the karaoke crew was going to get together again. So, I met Panda at my house, changed clothes and left - leaving my phone at home like a genius.

We met up with the crew + Rian's boyfriend and then called Lisha and Panda's friend Will. We started out in Burkesville, got hungry, went to Red Bud Pizza Hut and then to a bar called "the Office" in Red Bud, from whence came the following great pictures:

Yes, tis was a great night. I actually managed to stay out even later than Friday night, arriving home at 3:30am. Good gravy. But I woke my sleepy pants up at 11:00 again the next day, to lay around and watch Ugly Betty until 1:00. Then it was lunch time and time to get ready for the family Barbecue celebrating Jenny's homecoming.

I always look forward to these events. I'm not sure how many of you know this, but I have the BEST family in the entire world. I'm really sorry if you thought yours was so great, but nothing compares to the Buettner clan. We are as tightly knit as it's possible to be. There was some surprised excitement over my blonde-ness... the words being "We never know what to expect from you!!!" shouted at me by my Gramma as I approached. Then the star (Nolan) arrived and I gave him his Gymboree box of goodies and it was time to cuddle!! 

Then came the heated game of croquet. Every time my family gets together, we have to compete in some fashion - usually it involves pictionary or charades or some Cranium game, but we've been known to croquet before. The players consisted of myself, Gram, Tante, Jenny, Dan and Eric. When we started, and Gram stepped up to take her first shot her words were "Oh, I haven't played this game in years!". 

Oh BS Gram. She ended up taking an immediate lead that she held on to for an atrociously long time. Dan finally took the initiative of being in last place to head on over to thwart Gram's lead. After a few rounds of that, and Jenny and I getting past the first hoop, he decided to make a come-back and headed over to us. 

The thing about the Buettners and croquet - we don't really play to get through the hoops, we play for the rule that when you hit someone else's ball, you get to knock them across the field however you please. So Dan decided that I needed to take his place in the attempt to thwart Gram, obviously forgetting that I'm terrible at croquet and miss anything I aim at.

Well, it ended up with just about everyone focusing on stopping Gram from winning using siege tactics and totally not seeing Eric coming up from behind for the win. After that, we all just kind of gave up. 

Then we had dinner, which was obviously wonderful ending in what I now know as "Marry Me Trifle" and Gram's Peach Pie and Hilary Clinton's birthday cake. 

When I was getting ready to leave, the Black Eyed Peas song "I Gotta Feelin'" came on. Jenny was holding Nolan and Tante and I were sitting together on the wall when she looked at me and whispered, "We should dance... you know, at the fast part". So we did. When they started singing, or rather shouting "Tonight's the night! Let's live it up!", we jumped up and danced around Nolan which resulted in the picture to the left. He found us pretty entertaining until Tante started walking around him with spirit fingers.

After that, I took my leave. 

Not much interesting happened until this morning at 6am when I was woken up by a blaring, horrible noise blasting through my apartment. Apparently there was a fire somewhere in the building - at least that's what I've gathered from the noise/flashing light that appeared in my apartment. When I went out to see what the hell that was all about and find out if I had to leave the building - which I learned in Kindergarten is what you should do when fire alarms go off - no one was around. So I resisted my instinct to leave and listened more to my desire to go back to bed. Considering I'm not a smoldering pile of ash right now, I think I made the right decision.

Also, I made my own homemade meatballs today. All the recipes I've read included three different kinds of meat and a whole lot of work, so I just made up my own using just ground beef and they turned out amazing and were incredibly easy! So I will share my recipe with you, especially since spaghetti and meatballs is pretty much the best dish ever:

1 lb ground beef

1 packet of onion soup mix

1 egg

some italian seasoning

a little milk

crackers... I think you're supposed to use breadcrumbs, but seriously, who keeps those around!? I just beat up come crackers until they BECAME breadcrumbs.

Mix it all together and bake at 350 for half an hour. They're really good, I promise or I swear I would never share them with you.

Holy garbage this post is long....

I understand that this is a really weird post - just a commemoration of my weekend, really. So let's say that the meatball recipe is your reward for getting to the end. Along with my love for reading my silly blog :)

Much Love!