Anniversary ~ Birthday ~ Wedding Weekend Extravaganza

July is always a busy month for the Fannings. That means a full calendar with weekends full of fun and celebrations! Nothing I love more than a calendar with weekends filled! This weekend took us to OKC for an oh so relaxing getaway. About three weeks ago I had the sudden urge to plan a birthday/anniversary surprise for my hubby dearest. I usually stink at coming up with something new, fun and creative. I wanted so badly to think of something that would actually surprise him. All I can usually come up with is a new outfit or a pair of running shoes or something that he has specifically requested. Well that's no fun! So I thought and thought and thought....and I thought some more. BINGO! What does my husband like to collect? Why tattoos of course! I guess I use the term collect loosely. He has been wanting to cover his right upper arm for awhile now and has mentioned it several times. The difference between him and I is that I'm a "get something done now" kinda person and he's more of a "let's sit around and wait" kinda fella. I guess we balance eachother out in that sense. :) So anyways I got a good reccommendation from my cousin's wife and called the tattoo shop to make an appointment for this past Saturday. I told him it was a surprise and that we would stop by on the Friday before so that he could show him what he wanted and he could get the sketch ready. Well it didn't turn out quite like I'd planned....the very next day Riley had found a picture of a tattoo he wanted and was asking me if I liked it. I kept thinking "what a coincidence! How weird is it that he came up with a picture randomly the day after I called and made an appointment?!" So I called Chad, the tattoo artist, back the next day to tell him that Riley had a picture and he told me to email it to him. Great!, I thought. This plan was coming together very nicely....until the next day. Riley told me about his trip to the tattoo shop here in Woodward after he got off work that evening. He had looked at some pictures and was thinking about making an appointment. Sheesh! This guy is on fire! So he had another sketch after that trip when his tattoo fever rose even more. At that point I decided I had to let him in on the surprise. To say that he was excited would be a gross understatement. He got busy drawing his "real" sketch and making his final changes to it. Most of you probably don't know this but Riley loves to draw. Not a lot, but when he gets going he's pretty serious about it. His tongue must be a tool he needs to draw because it's stuck out of the side of his mouth all the while drawing. My Rembrandt doesn't enjoy talking while he's drawing....in fact he usually doesn't even hear me...that's how serious he is. Lol! So he was in on the secret. Now if I could just keep my other secret a real secret I'd be in good shape. The same day I'd called about the tattoo, I also made reservations at The Skirvin downtown for the weekend. I'd been there before for a bachelorette party and absolutely loved it, so I was wanting to surprise Riley with it. I ended up keeping this one a secret until the night before we left. I'm sure you can guess why. Riley was asking me "hey, are we staying at the Mustang house or should we get a hotel?" and "babe, let's just get a hotel for the weekend." So the other secret was no longer a secret. But it lasted longer than the first so I was okay with that. The boy couldn't wipe the smile off of his face everytime he thought about his tattoo. :)

We were both so ready and so excited when Friday morning rolled around. I made the executive decision to leave at noon. We both promised eachother we'd be off work and ready to go. I fully expected to have to drag Riley away from his desk come 11:30 but it was in fact the opposite. Darn my ever-changing work schedule! I finally showed up at the house at 1:00 to find a husband with a smirk on his face saying "so what happened to your rule about being here at noon?" Lol! We headed out of town around 1:30 and were almost to Seiling when I mentioned something about my friend's wedding. Riley got this serious look on his face all of a sudden. "What's wrong?" And then it donned on me....."did you forget to bring clothes for the wedding?" Back to Woodward we went all the while he plotted about different things it his bag that he could combine together to wear to the wedding. No babe, you cannot wear a polo and your flip flops. I'm sorry. ;) Oh yeah, I guess I forget to mention that Friday was our actual anniversary so we didn't mind at all the backtracking as long as we were together and laughing...that was all that mattered. We pulled into Mustang around 5:00 and we were going to do a lil housekeeping (aka, cleaning the dead flies up off the floor) and then be on our way. We were so pleased (sarcasm) to find that one of the realtors had locked the door into the house from the garage. Greeeeeaaaaat. We didn't have our key....just a garage door opener. Didn't do us much good. Oh well, cleaning up dead flies really wouldn't have been a romantic anniversary activity anyways.

We finally found ourselves downtown and checking in to the hotel. Or were we? "I'm sorry Mrs. Fanning, could your reservation be under another name by chance?" Nope, I've just got this one name. Just when I was about to throw a mini tantrum inside my brain I recalled that the man I spoke to on the phone to make the reservation kept calling me Mrs. Sanning. I corrected him a couple times and thought he had the correct spelling. I asked her to look up Sanning and sure enough there was our reservation! Woohoo!!!!! Weekend of relaxation begins NOW.........

Mr. Sanning

And if you are wondering if the hotel is haunted........the answer is YES! Here's my proof. Three of the drawers were open when we entered the room. Kinda creepy huh?

We didn't let the ghost bother us though. He must've been a friendly one.

Birthday boy!

Just makin' a quick phone call

Callin' his BFF for a chat

After I pried Riley away from the room we walked over for some Mexican food. We just so happened to run into my cousin Justin and his wife and kiddos. After enjoying more than one pineapple margarita and too many salty chips to count we headed off on foot to walk off some calories. The Reggae festival was in full swing across the street so we thought we'd check it out aka "people watch." If you ever feel the need to people watch then a Reggae festival would be your best bet. Enough dreadlocks to stretch around the moon and back and the scent of a certain illegal substance floating in the air. Needless to say, we didn't stay long and made our way down beside the canal for a stroll. After the heat had gotten to us we make the trek back up to our hotel. We had a couple hours until our reservation at Redpin would be ready. We settled in for a movie and kicked back. Soon we had our walking shoes (er, sandals) on and we were at Redpin for some drinks and bowling......

Perfecting his form

Whoever said  bowling isn't a sport is dead wrong. Well maybe it's just a sport when it's 100 + degrees outside and the indoors feels the same. I've gotta say that Riley either had one too many beers or my bowling skills have improved quite a bit because I kicked his booty. Riley and the gutter were really good friends that night. But he didn't seem to care because we were having a blast.....

Lookin' kinda tired by the end of the night

Saturday morning. Riley's 28th birthday. The sun had actually risen before we rolled out of bed the next morning. Yay for an 8:30 wake up! I think we could've slept until noon if we didn't have yummy breakfast on it's way up. I figured the birthday boy ought to have a nice big breakfast to start out his big day! Nothin' better than ROOOOOOOOOOOM SERVICE!!!!

He scarfed down breakfast and settled back in bed while I headed out to get my hair done by my long lost hair stylist/friend Ms. Becky. It was so nice to catch up with her! Meanwhile, back at the hotel Riley had big plans to work out and swim while I was gone. I called him when I was on my way to pick him up and asked him about what he'd done that morning. He said he got the best workout of his life just lying in bed watching his Saturday morning tv lineup. Good for you birthday boy! Who works out on their birthday anyways?! I picked him up and we ended up here........

He was like a kid in a candy store looking through the tattoo books and checking out the shop. He didn't need books because he knew exactly what he wanted......

He had emailed Chad a picture of his sketch earlier in the week but they still had a lot of tweaking to do to it so that it would work well with his existing tattoo. His plans were to hide the tribal band tattoo that he got when he was 18, but Chad had another plan in mind which Riley liked quite a bit. While they kept on with their tattoo talk and drawing I gave the birthday boy a kiss goodbye and was on my way to my anniversary gift. A spa day! I nearly fell asleep during an hour long pedicure...best EVER! Just when I thought I couldn't relax anymore it was time for a massage. Ahhhhhh. I lazily drifted through the mall into each store I'd been missing so much. Of course it was Miss Hallie who benefited most from my shopping withdrawal and she scored some precious stuff from Baby Gap. I picked up another gift for the birthday boy while I was there and then realized that time had flown by and I needed to hurry if I was going to pick him up on time. He was anxiously waiting for me to show up so that he could show me his new arm art. It looked quite good and he had gotten a lot completed in just an hour. I was gone over two hours but a lot of his time there was spent perfecting the drawing. He still has a lot to complete so we will go back in three weeks to complete it. I've sworn not to post a picture of it until it is complete. ;) We were both beyond content at that point after both getting the best gifts we could have asked for....except that our stomachs were feeling famished because we'd skipped lunch after our big breakfast. What to do when you can't decide what you want for dinner????

Why, ROOOOOOOOOM SERVICE of course!

Cake for the birthday boy!

Pillow for a table? Check. Smile? Check.

A movie and room service later we were wishing we could just live at a hotel year round and have people at our beck and call.....we joked about calling guest services and asking for them to bring up more diapers and extra binkies. Or how about bring us some homemade baby food made fresh from the kitchen. We also thought it would be nice to have an in-room diaper changing and baby feeding service. Ok, we kid, we kid. We were feeling very thankful for Nanny and Papa watching the babe for us right around this time as we lay there without a worry in the world. The only thing on our agenda was to get fancied up for my friend Amanda's wedding that night......

Ready to go!

It was about an hour drive out to Luther, OK at Tres Suenos Winery. Thank goodness the GPS was friendly because it was out in the boonies. We pulled up to find a beautful setup and lots of guest inside already getting the party started. We met my friend Julia after we parked and went inside to grab a fan and then found out seats outdoors. It was a beautiful ceremony and not too awful hot outside although the fans did come in handy. After the bride and groom had said their "I dos" everyone eagerly gathered inside for some dinner and drinks. I'm a sucker for weddings....ESPECIALLY weddings where the groom gets a lil teary-eyed. :)

Mrs. Polk!

We had a mini-PT school reunion and caught up on everyone's lives. I'm not the only one who thinks we go way too long in between seeing eachother. We were missing our class clown and my best friend Laura at the wedding so we made sure to send her a pic to show her what she was missing out on.....

Julia and I felt it appropriate to edit Amanda and Robert's coozies they had made. We refer to Amanda as "Von" as in VonRaesfeld, her last name. She had mentioned something about keeping the "von" and becoming a VonPolk. We were all for this idea so we did a little tweaking to our coozies. Just a little FYI, coozies weren't made for cups of water apparently.....

Much better!

I love any opportunity to dress up and go out for the night my hubs.....

It was time to dance so everyone made their way outside when the band started up. The bride was smashing on the dance floor and of course, as she should've expected, I was lurking around the corner acting like the paparrazi.....

Gotcha!

Julia & Carolyn

After a little dancing and a lot of sweating we found ourselves back inside where we watched the bride and groom cut into the most delicious cheesecake we'd ever eaten.

Amanda, my friend, you looked simply fabulous and radiant!

A day of pedicures, massages, tattoos, shopping, movies, room service, a beautiful wedding, quality time with Riley, wineritas, good friends, cheesecake and a comfy bed.....we had died and gone to heaven. We made a late night run to Walmart to grab some Aquaphor for Riley's arm (which was pretty sore by this point, and it didn't help that I'd slugged him in the arm accidentally about six times throughout the night). I wanted to milk the night for all it was worth and stay up late but I fell asleep in the middle of our movie. Our plan was to get up, order breakfast and go for a run downtown.....instead we slept in until 10:00!!!!! Stellar move on our part! Soon we were loaded up and ready to get home to our babe. The only thing standing in our way was a 2.5 hour drive and this.......

That's not lookin' good man

We waited a good thirty minutes in the parking garage while Riley helped guide this poor guy and his girlfriend down the ramp. I couldn't bare watching because those dang parking garages scare the heck out of me because it always looks like the top of your car is going to get smashed as you exit. He worked awhile letting a lot of air out of each jacked up tire but this didn't seem to do the trick. He ended up finally having to back up all the while making this horrible scraping and screeching noise. Lesson learned: don't take your jacked up truck with monster tires into a parking garage. Ever.

We received a not so warm welcome from our girl whom we had missed so much. She was sleeping in her crib when we showed up at Nanny and Papa's to pick her up. We chatted while we waited for her to wake up and then finally couldn't take it anymore and had to go see if she was awake. She was stirring and burrowing her head into the matress when I walked in. She must've seen a ghost of something because she started bawling when she saw me. Ah, I love you too girl. :( Daddy didn't get a lot of love either. Payback for leaving her all weekend? Hmmm. It took her quite awhile to warm up to us and upon getting her back home she was handing out kissed left and right. She also made it a point to climb in my suitcase after I emptied it. Think she's making a statement here or what????

"Please don't forget me next time..."

What a way to spend the weekend! Although we missed our favorite girl a lot, it was more than nice to getaway just the two of us. Riley has convinced himself that he has entered the end of life stage at only 28 years old. I'm trying to convince him that his best years are yet to come and he still in fact looks young!!! So if you happen to see my hubs, let him know how youthful he is looking because I think he's already looking into retirement villages. In my eyes, we will always be those young naive 20 year olds we were when we met. Happy anniversary and happy 28th to my man!!!