winnie and her rock star band(s)

the bean, the kid, and i spent a fun and fabulous afternoon with some of the SFAMily. the monkey has a great picture-filled recap here. our beloved winnie is leaving us for the wrong coast, but for the right reasons - her hub is there! so we planned a farewell shindig for her, which was graciously hosted by nanette and her wonderful ILs.

somehow, i managed to have a 2:00 start time stuck in my nugget, which i of course didn't realize was wrong until i pulled up the evite to get the address. mm-hmm, by the time i was plugging the info into the navigation system, it was already starting. nice. and we still had to stop at the store to pick up some soda that i'd volunteered to bring! d-oh.

when we first started talking about details for this get-together, i jokingly said that i was going to make a recipe i'd found called "winnie's white chocolate drops." i bookmarked it and forgot about it until saturday, when it was time to make the treats i promised to bring. so i printed it out, realized i already had all the ingredients on hand, and got to work.

they were so easy - just melt together some peanut butter and white chocolate chips, mix in some rice krispies cereal, peanuts, and mini marshmallows, and drop tablespoonfuls onto a baking sheet. stick them in the fridge till they're set, and then melt some chocolate chips in a ziploc baggie, cut the corner, and drizzle. i ended up going to bed before the last step, but managed to get it done about 20 minutes before leaving for the party.

and because i'm a total dork, i decided it would be fun to make my drizzles into "w"s - for winnie, of course!

when we got to the house, i was not-so-secretly pleased to note that we were not the last to arrive. i really HATE being late! ugh.

nanette picked up cuban food from versailles for all of us - i went with the combo of chicken and pork. i'd never tried this place before, and i instantly understood the raves from the other girls with my first bite. oh, so delicious. i wish i had more of it right now. the monkey mentioned that the pork was even better than the chicken i was "mmmmmm"ing over, and she was totally right. and the kid LOVED the rice. oh, how i wish there was a versailles near us.

and along with my "winnie" treats, nanette made a batch of red velvet cake balls - and i almost wish she hadn't, because we helped ourselves to the leftovers (packed carefully in a baggie) and now i literally have to sit on my hands to keep from eating them all. they're just so dang scrumptious.

after the eating was over, and we'd all managed to get in a nice amount of chit-chatting, it was game time. nanette busted out an impressive stack of xbox games that included karaoke revolution, guitar hero, rock band, and dance dance revolution. this was actually how i managed to bribe the kid into going to this shindig - she LOVES rock band. and as we watched her in action, she proved that she's pretty damn good at it.

nanette went first, at the guest of honor's request, and we all joined her in karaoke-ing "baby got back." and then the monkey jumped up to deliver quite an impressive rendition of "humpty dance" - she didn't even need to look at the screen for most of the song!


the bean got lots and lots of attention, too.

r had quite the magic touch!

i love my girls.

the monkey was quite proud of her perfect score. ha!


our rock bands, in all the different configurations (i love how the kid managed to score a part in almost all of them):

check out these band members, totally focused on their parts:

this made us sad.

amber finished off the gaming with a quick DDR demo.


lastly, here's a group photo - what's a GTG without a group photo?

and as i said to winnie, i refuse to look at this as "goodbye" - we have e-mail and the knot to help us keep in touch! this does not, however, mean that i won't miss her. winnie makes me laugh like no other.

good luck, winnie + hub, travel safe, and KIT!

U R
2 good
2 be
4gotten!

have a bitchen move! whee!