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Friday, February 25, 2011

#70- Go to the Daytona 500

I do not know where to start. Every item that I have crossed off this list so far has given me wonderful stories and this one did not fail to follow in suit!

My good friend Nicole helped me cross this one off. We left for Daytona in the morning with no plans, no tickets and a cooler full of beer. Once we got to Daytona, I was shocked with the chaos all around. It was great! Tons of people were walking around, music was blaring, it was awesome.

Parking was horrendous. The cheapest parking we could find was $40 ($120 was the highest I saw). We got parked and made some beer snuggies...




One of the neatest things we found out about this NASCAR race was that you could bring in coolers, bags, etc. in with you! So of course we PACKED our purses with beer (and water... for you mom!) and began to venture in! (I fit 9 beers in my purse! Got those packing skills :))



Once we found parking, we had to move onto the next obstacle... tickets. We knew we had a few options, we could go to the gate and get tickets (around $150 each) or we could scalp tickets. Now I know its not completely legal, I don't know the rules and such, but we took a chance. We found a lovely man who sold us tickets for $75 piece (under face value) and we prayed that they were real!!



We followed the crowd into the raceway (our tickets worked! YAY!) and had to get on a tram to get to our seats in one of the towers. We made friends with some people along the way. If I can say anything about NASCAR people, they are some of the friendliest people I have met! We were also suprised with a concert before the race by one of my all time favorites, Brad Paisley! Talk about America!

We enjoyed our seats. I had to ask some people around me for sun screen even though I had applied some before we went in. Darn ginger skin! Everyone was great and everytime the cars passed by, everyone would stand up and watch. Every time they passed by. Everytime.

One thing my dad had advised me to do was to go down right next to the track and walk around so we could be right next to the cars and hear how loud they were. We got up after a little while in our seats and got back on the tram to bring us around. While standing at the ATM, I saw these two guys with these huge yellow earphones on. I wanted to know what they were listening to and of course wanted a picture with those rad earphones!



After we took our picture, we found out that the guys were army vets who were visiting from Arizona specifically for the race. They invited us to come up to their box and gave us tickets to get up. After going down to the track and hearing the cars (great tip daddy!) we found the elevators to the box and went up.



This is the part where the most amazing thing of the day happened to us. We knew we were going up to a box, but we had no idea that we would be in a box RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE STARTING LINE! We literally had some of the best seats in the house (tickets go for about $1,500-$3,000).




We had such a great time. Here are a few more pictures from the day. This was one experience I completely and totally would recommend to anyone and everyone, even if you don't like NASCAR. I had the best time!


Monday, February 21, 2011

Thursday, February 17, 2011

#1- Run a 5k and raise money for a good cause UPDATE

I received an email about a week or two ago that I was named on the Pink Honor Roll for 2011 as one of the top 20 donors in North Florida! I cannot thank you all enough for your donations, support and best wishes. This truly has been an amazing experience. Though we just made it in the top 20, it is still an honor to be reconized and part of such a great group!

1. Robin Kettlewell
2. Tracey Robbins
3. Ellen Wiss
4. Diana Mackoul
5. Mikki Hunsinger
6. Debbra Good
7. Blake Wall
8. Joanna Drummond
9. Renay Daigle
10. Brenda Courson
11. Peri Nolan
12. Amy Wilking
13. Sandie Koutavas
14. Andrea Sisk
15. Bobbi Jo Broxson
16. Kim Sandberg
17. Kimberley Stanton
18. Craig Johanson
19. Kerry O'Brien
20. Kimberly Holloway

Sunday, February 13, 2011

#74- Paint my own pottery

I had a lovely adventure to Puddy Mud, a local paint your own pottery studio in St. Augustine, with two friends this past Friday. I was shocked by the number of options there were to choose from and my indecisive personality made it difficult to chose what piece of pottery to paint, the colors to use, the theme to go with and the overall outcome of the piece. It was a little stressful!

My two girlfriends had done this a few times before but it has been years since the last time I had. I believe it was a birthday party when I was around maybe 9 or 10? They were much less stressed :)

I decided to go with a BIG project theme, since I was doing this for the project and could get a cool souvenir out of it. Being indecisive, I chose about 5 or 6 different colors and tried to spread them all out around the plate which I chose to paint.




My experienced friends went a little more technical with a bubble technique:


I will post some pictures of the finished project after I pick it up tomorrow (Monday/Valentine's Day!)

PS. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! <3

Charity Poll

So the National Military Family Association won the poll! Thank you to everyone who voted! I started putting some money aside so I will be able to make a nice donation. I will let you all know when it is made.

Thanks again!

Saturday, February 5, 2011

#11- Become a vegetarian for a week

A week of no meat. I don't know how some people live their whole lives like this! I am definitely a meat and potatoes kind of girl (I'm Irish, duh.) but I can see just how much I really like meat. I made it the full week with fruit and some veggies. Also tried some cereal bars which were nice and easy.

On the plus side, I did lose some weight! I think it was just because I didn't have as many options, but still a nice plus! I will not be becoming a vegetarian anytime soon but I did value the experience :)