Like most Halloweens, I wore my costume to work today over my work clothing and it got a great response!  It was super fun and it didn't even look weird that I had regular clothes on underneath it.  I left work a little early though to try to get home before the trick-or-treaters started. When I got home, there were already about 6 cars parked outside my neighborhood and there were a few people wandering around.

The party last night was SO awesome!  We had friends from college, rock climbing, my sorority sisters, Piper employees, Harris employees and friends of friends.  The food and decorations turned out great and I'm pretty sure everyone had a great time!  Here's a few of my favorite pics, thanks to a few of our friends who took pictures (we of course took no pics at the party).  I'll try to write more details later but for now it's time for bed and then to start another crazy week!

Tomorrow (saturday) is our 5th Annual Spooktacular Halloween Party...yay!!!  Here are a few pictures as a sneak peak.  Some are new and some are old but here's a little taste of what's to come.

I just realized I didn't post any updates about Red Dress Gala (RDG) which was last Friday.  Ryan and I went to the philanthropy event hosted by Alpha Phi to raise money for women's heart health and cardiac care organizations.  The tickets were $35 each which isn't too bad considering it included a full dinner.  The event was held at the Hilton Rialto

Last week at work was very busy – we had a lot of drawings we had to complete and release and they were very big drawings (assemblies and installation drawings have a lot more detail and require a lot more work/attention than basic fabricated parts).

Aside from work, Ryan wanted to get the back deck fixed up a bit before we have a big party with lots of people over.  His goal was to stabilize the deck and railing, pressure wash the deck and then repaint or restain the railing.  The first night I worked late so he started pressure washing the stair rail.  Tuesday night and Wednesday night, I pressure washed a few sections of the railing while he worked on fixing it.  Ryan did a great job stabilizing the stairs and railing – they are much sturdier now.  Granted – he almost broke his nose!  He was hamming a cement block beneath the base of the stairs and he lost his footing, slipped and smashed his forehead into one of the stair boards.  If he would have been any lower it would have smashed the bridge of his nose.

Thursday night Ryan was going to pressure wash the backside of the railing (I couldn’t reach) so I went and ran some errands.  Unfortunately, Ryan didn’t see that I called to tell him that I was going to run errands so he was just waiting for me instead of pressure washing.  I did pick up a few goodies.  I got candy for our trick or treaters, a trophy for the best costume prize and a few other small decorations. 

I know I said it last week - I can't believe it has been a whole week since I last blogged!  Ok where were we...I think I last blogged about a week ago on Saturday morning.  Well, I drove up to Orlando for an Alpha Phi Alumnae Founder's Day lunch.  I've been very active in Alpha Phi lately and it's partly because multiple facets are busy at the same time.

I am involved in Alpha Phi in a few different ways.  The one that keeps me busiest is as a volunteer Advisor for the Florida Tech chapter.  I help support one specific department and provide guidance on how to improve.  Secondly, the Florida Tech chapter sometimes hosts events and things for their alumnae (like me) so I try to go to those when I can to reconnect with other girls I went to school with and meet some other women who were there long before me.  Lastly, each major city or area has an alumnae chapter of women who meet occasionally to socialize, raise money for philanthropy and support the collegiate chapters.  There isn’t a chapter in Palm Bay but there is one in Orlando that recently formed.  I have been wanting to meet up with them but, as you know, I have been very busy and haven’t been able to get up there.  But finally they scheduled a founder’s day luncheon I could go to. 

I keep waiting for my weeks to get less busy but maybe it just isn't going to happen, LOL.  This week went pretty well but there wasn't much time for relaxing (or blogging).  On Monday, I set up a dinner to try to introduce one of my friends in Alpha Phi (Maddie) to one of my other awesome friends (Liz).  Plus I wanted to use my new pizza stone Liz got me.  Unfortunately Liz couldn't make it but Maddie and I still had fun making a pizza.  I ended up buying dough from Publix because I wasn't feeling too adventurous but we still rolled out the dough, added sauce, toppings and cheese; and then baked it on the stone.  It actually came out quite tasty and was super fun - I think we may make our own pizzas all the time now :)

Gwen and Beth were so kind as to take pictures at my bridal shower and she just sent me the pictures :)  Everyone was so kind and generous and my bridesmaids threw me a great shower and bachelorette - sorry no bachelorette party photos!

This weekend I did quite a bit of sewing and I got some of the house cleaned up, laundry done and worked on my wedding invitations.  I wouldn't say I'm all caught up on everything but I certainly feel MUCH better now!  First, I finished stitching the quilt top for Alpha Phi Red Dress Gala.  Then I loaded it onto the quilt top and did all the quilting.  And guess what?  Not a single thread breakage from my quilting machine!  I'm really happy about it but also still concerned that I never found out the root cause of the problem.  I'm sure it will wait to break until I've got a big deadline coming up, LOL.

The past week (since I last posted) has been absolutely CRAZY!  Fortunately not in a very bad way, just a little nuts.  It started with work:

Work
Right now I manage a small group of people making product improvements on existing aircraft.  It's my first time being in charge of other people and boy is it a challenge sometimes.  Last week it really hit me hard as I was dealing with two very difficult situations.  I had one designer that didn't double check his design and when they built up the plane it had major interferences with other nearby parts and caused us to have to rip out the parts and issue a TON of difficult rework instructions to the shop.  To make matters worse, the rest of the airplane was ready to move to the next area of the factory and they were just waiting on us.  So in our status meetings, when the President and CEO asks why the plane hasn't gone out the door yet...oh ya...that was our fault :(

Then at the same time I also had a significant amount of work due that was assigned to another designer.  That designer does good work and is very thorough...but so thorough that everything ends up taking WAY longer than it should and is very difficult to get anything done on time.  So I had one project that was causing the entire manufacturing plant to come to a halt and another project that gets high management visibility but wasn't getting done on time.  It was certainly a learning experience figuring out how to work with these people effectively and get positive results without becoming a real witch.