charlesbreland.com

weeeeellll, emily and i headed back down to south florida for the second weekend in a row, but so as to vary it a little bit, there was a hurricane this time. now, the hurricane didn’t actually hit us, it did ensure some windy weather (which emily liked) as pictured in the video at the end of this posting. so, without further ado, here are some pictures of the weekend……ok, with a little ado. i must mention that we went out to a piano bar the night before the wedding where i watched 8 auburn grads circle a table trying to come up with cool sayings on a napkin that could be written on the mirror behind the piano bar guys. after much hemming and hawing they eventually settled on “bama sux” and then proceeded to pay $33 to have it written on the mirror twice. i wouldn’t write this here, except that i got asked several times what i thought about that. “in my face!!!!”

ok, now, no more ado

here’s em and me at the wedding

here’s em with her friends jen and nicole

and here’s em and sylvia

and here’s emily blowin in the wind

finally, here’s the some video of the beach and the dancing after the wedding.

the wedding was lovely and the food was great and everbody said “i do.” oh, i will also mention that it was a mixed faith wedding (christian and jewish) which was pretty interesting and they even had a user’s guide in the program – which was cool. it also bore out what i had suspected all along, that rabbi’s are funnier than christian priests.

i flew in from green bay on the thursday before the 4th, and after a cancellation or two (thx a lot delta) we got into west palm by around 2. the good news is, we made it out on ronnie’s boat

by around 3:30 or so.

after much practice last weekend with ski (and life) coach john hoover, i was ready to shred. the video will be at the bottom, as i’ll just combine the videos from two days worth of shredding. we found some beautiful blue water that first day, though.

saturday we headed out to the beach.

i picked up a hottie at the beach, so i was pretty pleased (that kept me from having to put lotion on my own back – if i had known how much better having a girlfriend was than putting lotion on your own back i would have looked into this a long time ago).

here jeremy gets amorous in the water. note, my camera survived a trip into the ocean – yea me!!

you know what i didn’t get a picture of is katrina’s (my cousin ronnie’s wife’s) stomach. normally i don’t put belly porn on the web, but this would be a special exception as she is pregnant with their first child…..it’s a girl.

this is a girl, but bigger than the one in katrina’s belly.

this is just a picture of some umbrellas (explaining that in case any of my blog readers are blind and can’t see the pictures).

here’s a picture of emily. she’s sporting her trademark “why are you taking a picture of me?” look.

that night we went out on chlamydia street in west palm. it was a pretty good time. i think the highlight for me was either the free liquor at the first place (except for the jack daniels which one member of our party insisted on drinking) or the second place where a bartender when asked if she had any dark beer said, “i have amstel light.” if you had been there, that would be funny to you.

the next day we were back out on the boat. we set up camp on a sand bar, where we played some football and drank beer, while some people went out wakeboarding.

i’ll include the wakeboarding video here.

that’s ronnie getting major air, and cory driving the boat around giving good wake.

on the way home i snapped a photo of the hottie from the beach (she dug me so she decided to hang out with us all weekend).

on the way out, ronnie was delighted to find the rope swing open. here i got a photo of ronnnie jeremy and cory just in case one of them died jumping out of the tree.

we’re really gonna miss cory. just kidding. btw, cory was REALLY drunk that day. regardless he still gave good wake.

anyway, that night we had a cookout featuring my special recipe jalapeno burgers and then watched ronnie’s fantasy team lose.

the next day em and i headed back to atlanta, and we had two hours to pick up my suit for a wedding, grab my birthday present from my brother (an ipod mini) ((what you ask, wasn’t my birthday a blog-documented april? why yes, you are correct it was. at least the gift is nice. i’m listening to music on it now even as i mock jeremy)) and wash some clothes before heading to the braves game.

we got there just in time to see these guys arrive.

apparently andruw jones was influential in the battle of lexington

after the game we stayed for the fireworks.

and got to see dudes fall from the sky. an exhausting weekend, but a good time. thx to ronnie and jeremy for gettin the places in jupiter.

mr john hoover was gracious enough to have us up to his lakehouse june 25th. so, i played a tennis match with an infuriating partner that morning, but we won, and then i headed up to the lake house. once i got up there, stephen and john and i

went out on the lake. we stayed out there skiing til dark and got some good photos and some very mixed video.
here, john cuts some major spray on the slalom ski. john was sporting his trademark rainbow tow rope in honor of the gay pride activities that were taking place back in atlanta that day. he’s so down with supporting liberal causes…..what a guy.

the next day, i drove out into the countryside looking for bacon, and after we ate some breakfast on the backporch (pictured here)

we headed out on the boat for some more early morning skiing. it was a rainy morning, but captain hoover kept us safe and dry. here he sports kind of an “old man and the sea” sort of captain look. his face says, “don’t talk back to the captain.”

but i know no one really cares about the above pictures…..people might, however, like to see the video. first, here is my first ever successful time gettin up on a wakeboard. obviously, i’m not very good here, but of note, the last time i tried that, i spent an hour trying to get out of the water. within 30 minutes of getting out of the water that day my hands were so tired that i could literally not physically open a beer. this time went much better than that one.

anyway, i know that was boring, but i thought the commentary and coaching was pretty funny. anyway, here are in order some of the good, the bad, and the ugly from the trip.

special thanks to hoover for having us up, and to hoover’s parents for having a SWEET lake house.