Weekend in Tampa

Friday, February 24 we arrived in Tampa Florida, to spend the weekend with our great friends, Ken & Kim Spooner.  Ken picked us up from the airport around 11am, he took us to lunch at The Grillsmith.  We then proceeded to their home and waited for Kim to come home from her new job @ Omnicare. We went out for dinner and later that evening we picked up their daughter Haley from her middle school. She is a member of the TCMS "tech crew".

Saturday morning, Kim made a wonderful breakfast and we enjoyed some Keurig coffee.
This is very handy and we may have to check in to having one of our own for convenience.
The rest of the day was spent visiting, we did have a little down time, when Ken & Kim went to Haley's piano recital.  Late afternoon, Kim opened a special bottle of wine from Swanson's vineyard in Napa; she'd been saving for this occasion. We will definately be checking them out on our next trip to Napa. Then we got cleaned up and ready to attend the TCMS - Denim and Diamonds fundraiser at Busch Gardens in Tampa.  It ended around 11pm and we got back to the house and visited some more before heading to bed in the wee hours of the morning Sunday.

The Denim and Diamonds event, started with cocktails and silent auction, followed by a buffet dinner, lively performers from Busch Gardens.  Then they held a live auction for some larger donated prizes (a Australian Shepard mix puppy; tickets to Tampa Bay Bucs games; etc). After that we were given $1,000 in coupons to gamble at the Casino. For every $1,000 you won you got another chance for a raffle ticket to win the biggest prize (week long vacation for 8 people at a resort in Daytona Beach plus all the extras). They also had a photo booth where you could have up to 4 photos taken as a rememberance of the night.  It was a very fun evening, and I'm sure they raised alot of money for their school. Totals are supposed to be announced later this week.
Sunday morning, Kim left on a business trip to Arizona so Ken was the host of the day. We were off the airport at 4:45pm and arrived at our home in The Colony around 9:30pm.
What a whirlwind weekend, but it is always great to be around the Spooners. Lots of stories and lots of laughing!  Good for the soul!