Holidays, Weddings, Our Anniversary, Racecars, and Riding!

With the year winding down, I thought I’d do one last post to recap the last couple of weeks.

Alyssa and Cori flew in from Philly in November so that we could join EJ, Sarah and Jill for a bridesmaid dress shopping weekend o’ fun! Alana couldn’t make it but was still a part of the selection process. We actually wound up finding a really pretty dress in the perfect color that all the girls agreed on at J. Andrew’s and I’m really excited to see them all in it on “The Big Day”. I love my ladies so much and I’m so honored that they’re a part of our wedding.

As I mentioned in my last post, I separated my shoulder in a horseback riding accident and was in a tremendous amount of pain. After about two and a half weeks, I was still very miserable but had healed enough to go and play polo again with Leslie, Erik and Sarah. Erik had never played before and hadn’t been on a horse in well over a year, so it was really cute watching him struggle a little but he did surprisingly well overall! It was my first time back on a horse since the accident and I’ll admit, I was nervous as heck but the polo ponies at Polo Bear are so well broke that I was cantering around trying to hit the ball in no time and was too busy having fun to realize I was scared!

Erik and I spent Thanksgiving in New York with our families, as usual. I was especially glad to be able to visit some friends while we were up there and I even got to ride a zebra at Indian Head Ranch! We also went up to GPNY for some killer gokarting which would have been a lot more fun had I actually been able to focus on driving instead of not barfing in my helmet thanks to the insane amount of food and ice cream we had pigged out on beforehand… LOL. Good times, though.

Here I am riding a zebra. Yes, it was awesome.

We attended the 2011 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) trade show down in Orlando, FL with Precision Turbo & Engine, which was a ton of fun as always. Despite the fact that I have to stand in a convention booth for three days non-stop, it’s SO much fun because I’m surrounded by some really amazing people and I get to talk about racecars all day – awesome. We debuted a lot of exciting new products at this year’s show, too, and I’m excited to see what the next year has in store. I also wound up meeting some really great new friends and reconnecting with some long lost old ones!

Other notable events from the past month and a half include: Ray & Betsy’s rowdy wedding (congratulations, you guys!) here in GA as well as Caio & Michelle’s wedding (congrats to you both as well!) which also included a fun weekend roadtrip up to Charlotte, NC. We had a super-yummy “Girls Only” potluck holiday dinner which was a blast, too! I feel so lucky to have such a great group of girls in my life. Our gun club’s (GPSL) holiday party was this weekend and it was nice to see those guys again, especially since I’m usually riding on the nights that Erik shoots so I don’t get to hang out anymore.

On December 9th, Erik and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary; it’s amazing how quickly the years have passed. He surprised me by picking me up early from work, blindfolding me and driving me to a “secret location” for my “surprise”. It turned out to be a private jeweler and he let me custom-design a setting for the solitaire engagement ring he proposed with back on August 12, 2010! It was an amazing experience overall and very surreal. He’s such a great guy – I think I’m the luckiest girl in the world. 🙂 Afterwards we headed downtown to go see Cavalia’s Odysseo show, thanks to some amazing tickets from our very sweet, very generous friend Jonathan. We ate dinner and had cocktails in the tent before the show which absolutely blew my mind and then toured the stables after to see all the beautiful horses that starred in it!

Speaking of horses, last week I had my first lesson since the accident. It had been 6 weeks and I was surprised at how weak my shoulder still is/was. I’ve lost a lot of strength and conditioning (and, to be perfectly honest, almost all of my confidence) so I’m not quite sure how I feel about riding at this point. We’re getting a new trainer tomorrow (this will be my 5th in just 10 months… ugh) and hopefully I can start riding strongly and well again. I’m sick of dreading something I used to love so much. *fingers crossed*

Advertisement