{Celebration of Life}



Manuel and I

 "And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years" - Abe Lincoln

Another year older and another year wiser. I was truly excited about what the weekend had in store. It was the celebration of many lives. Michelle arrived Friday afternoon for the weekend of festivities. It was her first time ever visiting me here. I had a great weekend planned. We had two tickets to the Sweethearts for Scholarships Gala that evening. This was the 8th annual "black tie" banquet and charity auction to raise money to support scholarships initiatives at Nashville State Community College. The event was located downtown and hosted at the new prestigious Hutton Hotel for the evening.

There were local celebrities, such as Manuel, one of Nashville's favorite, silent auctions and of course the Sweetheart couple nominated for this years event who preformed after dinner. After the event we met up with Andrew to show Michelle around Nashville. Our first stop was Citizen, that was where "the Dr." and other friends were going after the Gala, and he wanted us to meet him there. The evening was quite interesting, opinions were formed on certain situations and from the actions of people that were around me. I wasn't really aware until I got home, although this was only opinions, I still had to make my own decisions on how I wanted things to happen. If the pursuit was still worth it, what would I do?

The next day was recovery and relaxation before the big party. My little brother came to visit and stay with us that day. We sat around pretty much all day watching movies. The weather that day was quite nice out surprisingly for February. Planning for this night took months. Our guest list was around 150+ of friends from all the birthday babies. Doug reserves us the VIP upstairs room at MAI that night. They were also hosting the i106 Bitterball that night for Valentines Day.  So I remember running around getting ready and trying to decide how the drive was gonna go. Michelle had an idea about getting a limo to take everyone.

So I called and Andrew and he gave me Matt's number to book one. This was a great birthday present from Michelle that night, it worked out for us nicely, because my little brother was able to go to dinner with us. We met everyone at Todd's before dinner where the limo picked us up. There was about 20 of my closest friends that had dinner with us at Urban Flats. I was really happy my little brother could come hangout. The vibes of the table were quite amazing, it was filled with excitement, giggles, love and true appreciation of friendship as we toasted to the birthdays, and enjoyed our drinks over delicious flat breads of our choice. After dinner we finished it off with a cake and candles. When I think back and remember watching the smoke of the candles fade, just looking around at everyone engaged in conversation with glowing smiles of joy, I felt truly blessed to be seated around all of my friends that night. After a wonderful dinner it was time to get the party started, we loaded up the limo and headed to MAI.

.:Party Photos by Carl Gillespie:.

It was quite the disaster when we
 got there. Everything was so disorganized and on top of it all Doug was at home sick. They had booked a frat party before the club opened that night, and were having trouble making them leave to reopen. My argument to them for not letting us in, was that we had a time booked and it was a separate private party, but they made us wait outside. I was NOT happy at all with this. Another issue once we were able to get inside around 11ish was that, we had agreed upon our guest list as no cover that night (which is why went through the trouble of putting it in alpha order with full names) but we were told when we got there that they had to be in by 12 or they had to pay cover. This was unacceptable!! Jake had guests from Urban Flats that were attending when they got off, etc...there were quite a few people coming in after 12 because of prior obligations.

I was so pissed, that we ended up getting it back to the way it was supposed to be but paying the price of running up and down to verify names, because the doors girls apparently didn't know how to read. I was tired of battling with them and wasn't enjoying the night anymore, so around 12 I gave up and headed upstairs. From that point it was all shots, I needed to catch up to everyone. At the end of it all it was great night. I had so much fun and spent time with close friends that I only see every once in a while. The next year of my life was definitely going to be something to celebrate!!

.:XOXO TMARIE:.