Stella Marie Juarez

baby

Monday, November 17, 2008

Weekend Wrap-Up

We had a busy but fun weekend that involved very little sleep.

Friday night we celebrated Katie's birthday (early). I got her a ticket to the Reba/Kelly Clarkson concert for her birthday and Dad and Jeannie were going to go with us. Sadly, Jeannie suffered an unfortunate encounter with a hard boiled egg and was unable to attend. We missed you Jeannie! We began the evening with dinner at Bottega Cafe with JB and Martin. We didn't have any candles so JB put the table candle on the dessert plate and we sang Happy Birthday.

She blew out the candle and we ate her birthday desserts for her. Martin and JB then left and the three amigos went to the concert. We had a BLAST!! Reba and Kelly were unbelievable. Head over to the Woodside to check it out.

After the concert we went back to Dad's and sang country music at the top of our lungs until 2 a.m. (Fun but not necessarily smart.)

Saturday morning Martin and I had to get up and drive to Nashville. Martin's contact from HBO Sports got us tickets to the Tayor v. Lacy fight.
"Jermain Taylor and Jeff Lacy have been buddies ever since they roomed together in the 2000 Olympic Games. They had always hoped they would never have to fight each other. But with their careers on the line, friends or no friends, Taylor and Lacy are going to go at it. Will a friendship forged in combat survive combat? "

Martin was BEYOND excited. As Katie will tell you, we had to hear about this every day leading up to this weekend!

I had heard of their names before but didn't really know anything about them. I was looking forward to seeing Deontay Wilder who was having his pro debut before the Lacy/Taylor fight. Wilder is from Tuscaloosa, Alabama and was on the U.S. Olympic team this year. Martin knows him and has refereed some of his fights in the past.

I will admit I was mostly interested in trying to see celebrities and getting on television - and Martin agreed to take me to a nice dinner before the fights.

We got to our hotel in Nashville and I was exhausted. The weather was gloomy

which made me even more tired. The fights started around 6:00 p.m. and we had 5:00 p.m. dinner reservations which left no time for a nap. It did leave about 15 minutes to watch Bob Ross. That guy is just nuts.


He just takes a paint brush and randomly smudges paint on a canvas.


Then all of a sudden - out of nowhere - snowy mountains. How does he DO that???

We had to pick up our tickets before dinner because Martin was dying to find out where our seats were.

When he took them out of the envelope I thought he was going to pass out. Yes, you read that correctly - fourth row!

We went to dinner at Miro District. Dean (you may remember him from Bottega) opened Miro District about three months ago and the restaurant was amazing.


I wanted to take lots of pictures but as you can see they turned out too dark.

We started with the stone crab claws with arugula, orange, shallot, and citrus aioli. The crab claws were enormous, fresh and delicious. Martin had the grouper with creamy polenta, fall vegetables and carrot nage and I had the butternut squash risotto with braised beef, leeks, brussels and sage. Martin was dying to get to the fights but I had to try the tiramisu with polenta poundcake, mascarpone, and espresso. It just sounded too good and it did not disappoint!

Like the restaurant, the bathroom was very nice too.


But when I went to wash my hands, I looked in the mirror and saw the weirdest thing - those mirrors make your pupils look solid white. It was CREEPY. I tired to take a picture but didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.

The picture shoes the white outline but when I looked in the mirror my entire pupil was white. I know, random but it was really bizarre!

We then went to the Vanderbilt University gymnasium to watch the boxing matches. As soon as we walked in we found out they didn't serve alcohol - it was going to be a long night!


We watched about five hours of boxing (vote for me for world's best wife!). I was pretty entertained by people watching.

These guys were walking around trying to get attention.





They looked absurd and it ended up being about 90 degrees in there so I can't imagine how hot they were in their fake furs. They were here getting their picture made with Evander Holyfield (who was also there for the attention, in my opinion!).



Evander "The Real Deal" Holyfield is a multiple world champion in both the cruiserweight and heavyweight divisions. And check this out - he has 11 children. Yikes.

A pair of twins sat in front of us. Well actually the man sitting next to us called them quadruplets.



They were identical twins and even dressed alike. As you can see they were identical from behind as well. It was a lot more impressive in person but let me just put it this way - Kim Kardashian has nothing on these girls!

I didn't really get to see any celebrities but there were a lot of boxers from the Olympic team that Martin recognized and Eddie George was there.

Deontay knocked his opponent out in the second round and Chaz Witherspoon beat Adam "The Swamp Donkey" Richards. Yup - that was his nickname. Swamp Donkey.

I wanted Jeff Lacy to win but that didn't happen.

But it was a good fight and Martin had a blast.

After the fights we met up with one of Martin's clients. He is a senior at Vanderbilt and he wanted to introduce Martin to all of his friends. He took us out to several different bars. Martin was a celebrity - apparently Alex talks A LOT about him. All of Alex's friends "couldn't wait to meet him" and Martin hated all the attention :)

Sunday morning we got up and went to the hotel restaurant.

For a light lunch under flying saucers(?).

A club sandwich the size of my head and enough french fries to feed a family of five.


Our initial plan was to head on home after lunch but Martin saw that the bar next door had ALL of the football games on. So we decided to duck in there for a drink and to watch the games. Tampa Bay won their game but my Falcons lost.


We then finally got in the car and came back to the 'ham.


Martin had to get back in time for the Cowboy game.

The weekend was fabulous and ended on a high note when the Cowboys beat the Redskins (aka Martin beat Katie).



Thanks T.O., sorry K.F.

1 comment:

K. said...

you look so pretty in the eyeball shot! but somebody get the girl in the first picture a hair cut, would you?