When the kids are away, the Mimi and the Pop Pop will play!

We started the holiday weekend on Thursday night at a friend's house for fireworks. We didn't have to worry about parking or crowds, just filled up some glasses with that yummy Sangria made with fresh picked fruit, relaxed in lounge chairs and watched the show!!

Right afterwards my kids and grandson left for the shore to spend the weekend at my cousin's house. Hubby and I had a 3 day weekend to ourselves! Friday morning we ... uh, hmmm.... well.... TWICE! hehe

Then we headed up the turnpike to Great Adventure!

At the Temple of the Tiger, outdoor habitat, you can get a really good view of the Bengal tigers. They were beautiful!

We saw an educational tiger show where the trainers exercise and feed them.

We probably should have stopped at just a show and a nice lunch somewhere, but for some reason we felt the need for speed. This is Kingda Ka. And for anyone who follows records involving coasters, this one is the fastest and tallest in the world. It's over in less than 30 seconds but what an intense half a minute!! It launches to 128 mph in 3.5 seconds and the main part of the tower is 456 feet. In.freaking.sane.

This next one was definitely more insane than the last. Named El Toro. As for rankings go, it's the third tallest and the third fastest wooden coaster in the world. And I would have LOVED it, if not for one major issue. Large passengers cannot really ride it or atleast have any degree of comfort while riding. Had they just told me, hey lady you're fat, get off, I would have been embarrassed but I'd have gotten OFF!! I guess they figured I was borderline in size and the girl who was in charge of checking the lap bar and seatbelt just kept jamming down on my bar. She was actually IN OUR CAR pushing down on the thing. I was looking at her and thinking, 'keep this up you freaking wench and I'm going to vomit my dinner all over you' but she had to do it. The hydraulic lock has to be engaged before the cars can be launched. So she cut my tummy in half enough to get the okay and off we went. I was actually in a slight panic at this point. There is really nothing to hold on to and no shoulder restraints so I grabbed hubby's arm thinking as we were edging down the track that the first bump we hit I'm cracking a rib big time. That lap bar was soooooo tight. Damn. A hill or two later I completely understood why. You get some funky negative G's on this ride and without that lap bar you'de be up and out and laying in the outer parking lot. Despite the extreme discomfort, it was fun because hubby was screaming like a banshee and I enjoyed that. It was pretty intense for both of us. He was having fun, I was having heart palpitations.

After that ride I was pretty well done for. We had already been on the Log Flume and the Sky Ride and Superman and the rest of the lines were between 45 mins. and 1 hour and 45 mins. so we headed home. Had dinner in bed and watched some movies.

Saturday we headed over to Philadelphia. Went to Pietro's for a late lunch. Hub had spaghetti and 3 huge meatballs and I had this white pizza with fresh spinach and basil. This is a medium. It doubled as my dinner! After eating we went to a Starbucks on Rittenhouse Square and he had coffee and I got my regular soy cocoa. If we weren't reeaaallly full from dinner we could have done some serious book shopping in the Barnes and Noble there.

We had some time on our parking meter and it was a perfect night to sit in the park and talk. We grabbed a bench and relaxed, talked about selling everything we own and moving to Philadelphia. Of course we couldn't afford the Rittenhouse area so we'll be staying in Jersey 'til we hit the lottery anyway. Back home again, we settled in for a movie. While watching, hubby gave me a deeeeelightful foot and hand massage with lavender mimosa lotion and I was asleep before 'Interview with the Vampire' was even over.

Today, the kids came back home from Wildwood. After we heard about their weekend and played with Alex for a little while we headed out for one more date. We hadn't been to a Korean restaurant in quite awhile so it was a nice treat. We ordered table bbq of beef and shrimp. They bring the raw meat to your table and cook it on a gas grill.

It's accompanied by dishes of lettuce, scallions, bean paste, rice, peppers and garlic to make lettuce rollups and assorted other dishes called 'pan chan' that come with every meal. They include kimchi, sliced radish, bean sprouts, seaweed, potato, etc. Yummy!

In honor of 'Celebration of Friendship', a couple more of my favorite chickies and me had our picture taken at the firework party on Thursday night. Carla is on the left. We were good friends in high school but lost touch after graduation. Many years later, after she heard my Father died, she wrote me a nice letter and we got together again and there has not been a week that's gone by since where we haven't talked. She's also my best customer since I started making jewelry and greeting cards! She's married to the guy she went to our Prom with but they had also lost touch for many years after high school and then reconnected years later! No kids, but 3 beautiful doggies who are just like children to them. They have a couple really good parties each year. This Fall, they are hosting a haunted hay ride!!
The sweetie in the middle is S, I won't use the full name as it's unique and she might be weird about it being on my blog. I was originally very good friends with her Mom. After she passed away, she moved in with her Dad and we became close. She doesn't have children either and isn't married, but what we have in common are things like astrology, tarot, spiritualism, and like subjects, music, food, etc. Every now and then we are able to meet for lunch, Chinese or Indian preferably, and recently saw Duran Duran together. Even though she is trained in massage, she's unable to practice due to a car accident, so her main job now is in radio. She handles the advertising traffic for a local station. It's not her dream job, ideally that would be something humanitarian or eco-friendly, but for now it's what pays the bills.

I'm very blessed to have great friends!!!

Hope you all had a great weekend! I am a little behind in blog reading but will be visiting all very soon. :)