Quarter Century Extravaganza!

We turn 25 this year. Quarter Century Extravaganza anyone?

My sister and Chris offered to throw us a party for our birthday at the beach house. Originally it was supposed to be a surprise, but I got really antsy and it turned into a huge celebration and bringing together of random friends.

James, Laura and I drove down together which resulted in us getting extremely giddy towards the end of the trip. Added into that the fact that my GPS brought us clear into the middle of nowhere before recomputing and we were treading down the back roads of Delaware.

Along the way it was getting darker and darker and people were lighting "candles" in their windows. We had a length philosophical discussion about this in which Laura likened the lights to Jesus and from then on as James so very well put it: "Laura has decided that candles in windows of MD country homes represent JESUS and is shouting such. Drinking hasn't even started yet."

Yes, we are quite excited when it comes to Jesus.

Finally made it to the beach house and everyone was already there and having a crazy good time. The wine was flowing, the friends were chatting, and Julibean had made us birthday cupcakes :)

As you can see <-- they were delicious. Julibean makes a mean cupcake. The boys devoured them. More debauchery continued into the wee hours of the morning.

Jim Scott took up residence in the garage, despite more elegant offers like the HP Palace under the stairs.

And we all lulled into a nice deep sleep until James woke up impatiently the next morning and wanted to get breakfast and hit the beach!

We grabbed breakfast at Big Peckers. Surprisingly although our group was easily a dozen people they only made one mistake. They totally forgot James' blueberry pancakes and then brought him some johnny-come-lately sympathy pancakes when the rest of us were halfway through our meal. Suffice to say, James' high culinary expectations were unmet. (Perhaps a bit of karma for waking us all up?)

James, Craig, Julibean, Jason, Morgan, Me & Jim

From there we made our way over the beach. It was nasty weather unfortunately, but we made the most of it. Skipping in the surf (James and Jason nearly throwing Morgan and I IN), Laura and Chris backing away every time the waves bubbled towards them, Becky and Andy building sand castles. It was a good time.

Some of the ladies: Becky, Morgan, Laura, Me & Julibean

May I just point out the awesome shirt Laura has on in this photo? Check it out! When she told me about it she basically said, "I have a t-shirt with my face on it." I had no idea what she was talking about but, by golly, that is TOTALLY her face on a shirt right there!

Soon we were joined by Schwendy and then Amanda and Chris showed up. Somehow we split off, the boys played around in the sand, tossing a frisbee, and the girls sat down to chatter. Amanda unloaded about 8 bridal magazines on me that her mother had been collecting. I swear, my FMIL is awesome.

We meandered over to play some Viking Mini-Golf. There are dozens of mini-golf places on the strip in OC but we love the Viking one. Not sure why.

Chris got friendly with a horse.

I visited my creepy mushroom faced friends.

And what mini-golf trip wouldn't be complete without a light saber battle?

After mini-golf we all went home to shower and change and get ready for a Party in the USA!