Memorial Day "Rain-Cookout"

Mike and I were both pretty tired from all the recent race and other festivities lately. So we didn't make plans to do anything on Memorial Day. BUT....at the last minute we decided to invite Mom & Jeff over and throw some organic ribeyes (bought from Trader Joes) and mexican corn on the grill. I whipped up a quick and healthy whole wheat pasta salad and presto...Dinner! I was super excited that Danica came in 5th the day before in the race, so Emily & I wore our Danica shirts in honor of her winnings! LOL

Too bad it did start to rain as we grilled out....but the guys handled it and the food was Yummy!

Our Pool is Now Open!

Love the toys that the pool provides!

This weekend our neighborhood pool opened!! YEAH!! Emily is now the perfect age to free play in the baby pool. We also like the fact that it has a fence with a gate and we don't have to bring our own toys because they have a huge bucket full of stuff! So today while daddy & Matthew hit the race...we hit the pool! I am sure we will be back LOTS this Summer!

That's My "Harley" Grandpa!

Bye Papaw!

This morning on the way downtown, we saw a big group of motorcycles passing by us on the interstate. Low and behold..my Papaw was with all of his Harley friends heading out on one of their rides! Too cool to see you in action Papaw! Love ya, Emily!

500 Parade

Leading off is a race care driver of course!

Here comes Bert & Ernie

Elmo!!

500 Princesses

Uncle Sam

Strawberry Shortcake

Dragon

and....Danica!

Our friends from breakfast

The parade was awesome! I took lots of pics but here are the ones I narrowed it down to for Emily to have in her blog and everyone else can see a sample of our wonderful Indy 500 Parade! ENJOY!!

Waiting on the 500 Parade to Start

Dad packed plenty of snacks and drinks...

Lets get this show started!


We were excited to see that our seats turned out to be pretty close to Jillians and for the most part was shaded for most of the parade. I did feel sorry for those sitting on the other side of the street because they had full sun from the beginning. It didn't hit us until almost 1:30 and we had been in our seats since 11:15. We were on the bottom bleacher end seats as I requested when ordering the tickets and that turned out to be a great choice. Emily was able to either sit in her stroller next to our seats or stand up and play in front of us. I was fearful that people would try and stand in front of us but the street cops made sure that wasn't happening.

500 Character Breakfast

Hi Fred & Wilma!

Powder Puff Girls

Not happy to be that close!

Emily loves air hockey

and any other game :)

This is as close as we are going to get with Danica today! LOL

This year we decided that it was finally time to hit the 500 parade for the first time with Emily. Mike & I haven't been since we were kids either. We bought 500 Character Breakfast ticket packages for Jillians that included a yummy buffet style breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausage, gravy, biscuits, hashbrowns, fruit, etc.... The package was $26.00 a person but it included this breakfast, reserved seat on the bleachers, and a $10.00 gift card at Jillians to play games. It was a perfect idea! We got down there in time to beat the crowd, ate breakfast, and then had a total of $30.00 in game cards to play until time to head to our reserved seats. We will definitely do this again next year! Emily really wasn't all that hip on the characters still..not to mention she really didn't know who those guys were since they aren't on tv anymore. BUT...our seats were awesome and so was this whole experience!

Carb Day ( in the infield)

Burgers & Eggs for breakfast...these boys can eat

After we came back from the stands...this was our view

Grilling out lunch now..

Check out Matthew's massive steak! He did eat it all by himself :)

Had to move these tents so we could even get out!

Lets just say the infield was quite the party this year. I haven't seen it this wild in a long time. Not to mention all the girls that were passing out thanks to the heat and ummmm..alcohol?

Matthew grilled up breakfast and lunch and we hung out in my opinion a little too long. But...that was in thanks to all the people that put easy-ups behind their cars and didn't leave an aisle way for anyone to get out. I eventually just moved the above tents myself out of our way when the people took off to go to the free concert since they weren't really willing too.....sorry guys but we were ready to go! Hope we dont see you next year :)

Carb Day ( in the stands) Hot!!

Danica & Sara's cars taking a pit stop

40 Lap Race

I think they are getting hot!

I even had to shed my t-shirt...yuck!

I went to the track with Matthew again this year for Carb Day. His Mom (Tracy) and her nephew Steven also went with us. It's always fun watching the cars but it was a hot one in the stands today! I have to admit I dont like to show my fat arms in tank tops...but I really didn't care today!