Wow. What a weekend. Neal and I hung out with friends, family, kitties and managed to do a bunch of things around the house, all this weekend. Not bad!

Thursday night, we ate dinner at my parents. We had such a great time. I always enjoy spending time with Mom and Dad. My mom’s gardens are amazing, which always makes me a little jealous.

So, our friends recently bought a house and decided to have a Fourth of July/Housewarming party. I’m so excited they found a house they love and was soooo excited to see it. They asked everyone to bring a covered dish, so I snuck out without Neal looking and bought some patriotic platters on which to transport my food.

Isn’t that great? Woke up Friday morning feeling refreshed. Spent some time wrapping the housewarming present Amanda and I got.

Guitar Hero, Aerosmith. I know, we’re awesome friends. Good call on that gift, Amanda.

Wrapping the present was kind of a bitch. The cats scratched, bit and clawed their way through any paper/ribbon they could get their little paws on.

When that was done, I got myself and my food all ready to go. I decided to make rice krispie treats and a cold vegetable pizza.

Yum.

Cats didn’t help. No surprise there.

Amanda picked Neal and I up around 2 p.m. The trip took us about an hour, but boy was it worth it. Our friends’ — Andi and Shawn’s — house was amazing. Two-car garage, 3 bedrooms, master suite, great kitchen, fireplace. It was so exciting to see their place and hear them talk about it.

Everyone was in good spirits. We were celebrating the Fourth of July and our friends’ happiness.

The food was plentiful and delicious. It couldn’t get any better.

Oh wait, it could get better, because of a certain gift the newlyweds and homeowners were about to open:

GUITAR HERO! They loved it. See, they currently only had one guitar. Now they have two, which means they can co-op on songs and BATTLE each other. How cool is that? Yeah, I know we’re nerds. Who cares. Guitar Hero rocks!

So we played around a little bit, while some others played washers.

Here’s Neal playing washers with our friend, Sac. The funniest thing is these two little girls at the party nicknamed Neal “Punkhead” because of his hair cut. HAHA! So here’s Neal “Punkhead” Erickson. HEHE.

After a while, it was time to get the party started and shoot off some fireworks.

There’s me with my sparkler. Notice my firm grip on my red cup, not spilling a drop of its contents. That’s technique ladies and gentlepeople.

What? A girl needs her drink break..

After a good round of fireworks, which involved some near catastrophes, we retired inside for more Guitar Hero. And more drinking.

As you can see, Neal and I were very serious about our one-knee move…

Our friends, Goody and Chris, decided to form a band, Finger Bang. Yeah, you heard me. They called themselves Finger Bang. There are no words…

Here’s Finger Bang, taking a much-needed beverage break. On a side note, aren’t these cabinets cool? I love the corner glass cabinet.

Anyway, the band’s many beverage breaks are probably what resulted in this:

Yeah, don’t ask.

We took the obligatory couples shots:

We ended the night by playing Pass Out, which, as you can imagine involves continued consumption of the beverage of your choice until, well…. you get the idea.

It was such a fun party. I haven’t had that much fun or laughed that hard in a while. I couldn’t ask for better friends.