Happy Labor Day!

I know Labor day was almost a week ago...but I kept forgetting to post this.  So here it is anyways :)

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend – ours was really fun and really exhausting.  On Thursday, I left work early and drove back to my house where I had to finish packing for the weekend as quickly as possible and change into something cute for a wedding rehearsal.  I rode up to Orlando to the Dubsdread Country Club with Ashley & Matt for our friend Michelle’s wedding rehearsal.  The traffic was kind of bad so we made it just in time.  The rehearsal went smoothly and then we all enjoyed a nice dinner together.  After dinner, a bunch of us went out on the town for some drinks.  There were numerous Alpha Phi sisters there for the wedding so we were out causing trouble, as usual.

Ashley and I stayed with Michelle in her hotel room that night.  I was exhausted and passed out pretty quickly but I think Ashley and Michelle stayed up and chatted for a while.  Friday morning, we gathered all the bridesmaids, the flower girl and the mother of the groom and headed out to brunch/lunch and then to the salon.  I felt kind of bad for the people working at the salon and people trying to go to their regular appointments because we pretty much took over the entire place.  We all hung out in the lobby as we got our hair done-up one at a time.  A couple girls also got manicures or pedicures or makeup done.  When we were finally done, a limo came and picked us all up around 4:30.  Here’s me and Ashley enjoying some champagne in the limo (there's some weird reflections on our faces though from the limo ceiling)

The limo dropped us off at the Dubsdread Country Club where all of our dresses were waiting for us.  We finished getting ready and took a few pictures.  The photographer was taking some photos of the bride and bridesmaids on the golf course when all of the sudden a golf ball whizzed right over our heads and bounced off the pavement behind us.  The golfer didn’t even yell “fore” and then was a jerk when he came over and wanted us to go find his ball for him.  Yikes!  But eventually the wedding finally got started and everything went smoothly.  Michelle looked so pretty!  All of the wedding party looked pretty sharp, if I may say so myself, heehee.  The wedding colors were black and white with a touch of hot pink and it came out really classy looking.  All of the décor was simple yet elegant and everyone had a great time at the reception!

After the reception, a few of the girls went out for some more drinks but Ryan and I just went to sleep since we were tired and we knew Saturday was going to be busy.  Ryan left bright and early Saturday morning to drive back to our house (about 90mins), take the dog to the boarding place and get the boat.  I stayed in Orlando to hang out with Ashley & Matt until he got back but he said he would be back at noon and he hadn’t even left by noon yet.  Ashley ended up dropping me off at Beth’s house to hang out until Ryan got there because her and Matt had plans for the afternoon.  Beth said she didn’t have plans when I called her to see if I could come over, but shortly after I got there, she was getting ready to take Gwen to the airport and then drive down to the Keys.  I decided to ride with her and try to meet up with Ryan somewhere on the way.  Poor Gwen was so hungover that she could barely make it five minutes without throwing up, yuck!  I was a little worried that she might not be able to make it on the plane to get back but I guess it worked out ok in the end (I was going to call her to make sure but she lost her phone so I didn’t know how to get in touch with  her).  On the way to drop Gwen off, we stopped at a restaurant where our friend was hanging out to pick up some nausea meds for Gwen.  I decided to stay at this restaurant with Rachel, Nikki & Janelle until Ryan could pick me up.  So Beth and Gwen went on their way and I got some caramel gelato with the girls – it was delicious!  Finally Ryan picked me up around 2:30pm and we headed on towards Homosassa, FL.

By the time we got to Homosassa, it was too late to try to put the boats in the water so we just checked into the hotel, got some dinner and got groceries/snacks for the next day.  Sunday we got up bright and early to make sure we could get a parking spot at one of the boat ramps.  There were 8 of us (plus two dogs) that met in Homosassa for scalloping.  Al, Doreen, Ryan & I were on our boat and Charley, Mary, Pete & Vicki (and one of the dogs) were on Charley’s boat.  We got both boats in the water around 8am and headed out to the bay to look for scallops.

When we got out there, there weren’t very many other boats on the water so we weren’t really sure if we went to the right spot (since we had never been scalloping before).  But we threw out the anchor, put on our snorkel gear and jumped in.  It wasn’t long before we saw some flippers up in the air as someone dove down to get one – they came back up holding the scallop high to show off the first one!  It took us a little while to get good at spotting them but eventually we were catching them like little kids after Easter eggs.  I don’t have any actual pictures or video of us scalloping but here is a short clip that shows  how you do it (and how easy it is):

The limit is 2 gallons per person per day or 10 gallons per boat, whichever is smaller.  Since we only had 4 people on our boat, our limit was 8 gallons.  At the end of the day, Ryan caught 2 gallons, I caught a little over 1.5 gallons and Al & Doreen caught a little over a gallon each to finish with a nice full 5 gallon bucket.

We stopped scalloping at about 4pm (because we were exhausted) and decided to go back in for the day.  Unfortunately – the starter for Ryan’s boat died and we couldn’t go anywhere, bummer!  Charley had to tow us back with his boat, which is a lot smaller than Ryan’s, so we had to go really slowly.  It was around 8pm when we got the boat back to the dock and out of the water.  After the long, slow and stressful drive back we were too tired to shuck the scallops so we paid someone $20 at the dock to shuck the whole bucket and they were done in only about 10 minutes!  We went back to the hotel, ate some food and quickly fell asleep.

Monday we couldn’t go scalloping since Ryan’s boat was broken so we rented some kayaks and went out in search of manatee.  Charley and Mary followed behind the kayaks in their boat because they had the dogs with them and didn’t have anywhere to leave the pups while we kayaked.  After an hour or so, we were all so tired that we ended up letting Charley pull us behind his boat back to the rental place.  It was pretty fun being towed in the kayaks except a big wake hit Al & Doreen’s kayak and swamped it, LOL.  So they had to get out and dump the kayak and get back in.  Fortunately it was only a few feet deep so it wasn’t too difficult – mostly just funny.  By the time we got the kayaks returned we were all overheated and exhausted so we just grabbed some McDonald’s for lunch and all headed home.  We got back home around 8pm and scrambled to get ready for the week before we collapsed in our bed.

Overall the weekend was really fun and also really exhausting – I never thought it would be more relaxing and easy to be at work, haha!  We are definitely going to do a scalloping trip next year and maybe have it planned out a little better.  This year worked out pretty well though considering we planned it at the last minute due to Hurricane Isaac.  Hope more of our friends can come with us next year!