Wednesday, July 08, 2009

4th of July

So as per usual, we headed to southern Michigan to our friends' lakehouse for the long 4th of July tradition. I think this was the 4th year they did the gathering, and are pros at it by now. 30 people came, it was crazy. My sorority sister Amy invites our group of girls and her husband Tom invites his group of guys (who we hung out with a lot in college). His parents clear out of their 5 bedroom lakehouse and let us have the run of the place. Tom's dad built the house, and was a shop teacher for a long time - I think he spent a long time designing it, because it is basically THE perfect place for a gathering.

Mike and I were the first ones there (party MVPs yo!) and so got to see everyone as they trickled in.
I was super excited to see my girls! Me, with Em and Jenn. Jenn lives in South Carolina so we don't see her much. I was so glad she could make it!
Of course, good times were had by all.

I took this photo of our friend Danny on the way to the Willows (bar on the lake we go to with boats). I think he looks very cool here.
In the past when we got to the Willows, we took up a ton of room on the deck. Since there were 30 of us, we had to take both boats and one car to get there. Thus to make sure we had enough space/tables on the deck, we got there when it opened. At 11:00 AM. Naturally. We kept the waitresses busy getting us big beers.
Amy got a baby beer. "Someone has to drive you people home!" she said.
While we were only there about an hour and a half, I'm pretty sure we scared off most of the locals. Here, one of the guys shows off his Jorts as Jenn showcases them and we all laugh. Loudly.
Emily brought a packet of patriotic temporary tattoos (in the past we bought them out of the vending machine in the bathroom, but at 50 cents a pop that gets expensivo!) and we all set about to apply them. Once that was done and our beers were gone, we moved the tables back to get ready to leave. I looked over and another friend was running his hand along a pole. I knew what he was thinking, and rushed to get my camera. And WAS NOT disappointed. Pretty impressive.
As is tradition, we got a group pic by the boats before taking off and leaving the place to talk about us all day long (when I went to the bathroom earlier I heard the waitresses regaling each other with the story of us coming in "and then I looked outside and it was like, FULL!").
On the way back to the lakehouse, Jenn busted a move to Single Ladies by Beyonce
And entertained us all
Back home, Amy takes charge and starts on dinner. She had the meals all down, they were so well-organized, which was MAJORLY impressive for having 30 people there. Dinner was brats one night, hamburgers another, a huge crock of sloppy joe the third. And lunch was cold cut sandwiches with pasta salad, cole slaw, chips, chex mix and the like. There were always snacks out and yummy sweets to munch on. Again, I was majorly impressed. And I think I gained like three pounds.
The last night, Top Gun was on. One of the guys goes by the nickname Goose, so I called him when we got to the scene where Goose was dying. He and another guy re-enacted the scene as it played, which was hilarious.
Good times! I love that we can get together and laugh and catch up. I miss my friends, but if living far away from some of them means we can have times like this when we see each other, it's something I can live with in life.

Thanks for throwing the party, Amy and Tom!!

2 comments:

Mich said...

I love the picture of the whole crew by the boats. Looks like you had a lot of fun!

Bayjb said...

Oh my gosh that looks like a lot of fun! That beer looks awesome. Great pour!