I have to add my notes still but our trip to Illinois was fantastic! Here are most of our Chicago pictures- from the W hotel on Lakeshore, Art Institute of Chicago, Gino’s East for deep dish pizza, fireworks cruise on Lake Michigan, Shedd Aquarium, mani/pedis with Grandma Sharen, Ryan & Jill’s wedding, family hanging out ones, the window getting busted and more. I still have to add the pictures from meeting and petting the penguins behind the scenes at Shedd Aquarium. Most of the aquarium and artwork photos are Hayley’s photos.
I love this photo of Hayley dancing with her cousin Ryan.
And this video of her nailing him leaving the church to head to the reception. Ryan was about Hayley’s age at our wedding and nailed us leaving too. Revenge is sweet!
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It’s been a busy week! Hayley wanted to go to the NC Museum of Art so we headed over there to wander around since we hadn’t been since the renovations. She took lots of photos of her favorite stuff, mostly Egyptian and modern stuff. Good warmup for our big Chicago trip and visit to the Art Institute there!
I took this one photo of her but the rest are hers:
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Then this week Hayley and I went to see Rent put on by Broadway Series South group in Raleigh. First time I’d seen it on stage and it was wonderful. Hayley was transfixed by Angel – it was a raucous intimate setting in the Fletcher Theater so she had fun hooting and clapping. I think we would have stayed after for autographs but Hayley was in a very cool movie making camp over in Durham all week and morning was going to come early!
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Hayley had a soccer tournament down in Wilmington this weekend in May and we had such a great time!! I’ll post more photos later!
We stayed down on Wrightsville at the Blockade Runner and made sure to hit a lot of old spots I love from my years in Wilmington. We hit the Oceanic with Nicole, Trolley stop for hotdogs, the Fish House for a fantastically fun team dinner and then Elijah’s so I could get my crab dip fix. Funny to be outside Elijah’s with Jeff and Hayley – brought back a lot of memories of the gang down there. I ate lots of crab and buffalo shrimp, heck I think drank more this weekend than I have in past two years combined.
The games on Saturday were tough – long story but the kids still had fun that night at dinner (the parents had more fun). In the first game Saturday, Hayley’s team played a team with several kids she played three years of rec soccer with from ages 6 to 9. Then on the next field over was another child from that same team too. Getting to see those three kids and their parents was really neat for us. TThank goodness Sunday’s soccer was much better and a nice solid win to end the season for the kids.
We had to go back to the beach after that last game and I’m glad we did – three dolphins showed up on the beach and Hayley was just beside herself over it. She’s getting older and those moments of rare unbridled joy of childhood are getting less frequent.
Forgot to post these! These are from the second part of the UNC 100 years of Basketball celebration Alumni game, the part in February. This very well could be the last public appearance of legendary UNC Coach Dean Smith and I’m so glad Hayley was able to see it. That was the highlight of course but other memorable moments include seeing the oldest UNC basketball alumni around actually playing ball again – guys in their 70s and 80s on the court! They broke up the game into segments being played by groups of players from a similar era. Very cute.
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We had a great Easter with our friends. We did eggs with the same gang we have for years and then we did our joint hunt that Easter morning with the Renfroe family next door. We are really lucky to live in a neighborhood with friends we love! We worked in the yard some, went to a lacrosse game.
I love this photo of Mason and Hayley, 2010:
Especially compared to them years ago:
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Poor Jeff, we just keep dragging him to more sporting events where UNC kicks VT’s butt. The times VT wins (and they definitely do – outside of last year, they’ve whipped us in fball most of the time) we just seem to be elsewhere. Hayley was a ballgirl for UNC women’s lacrosse last week and of course UNC won 19-3.
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If you are a reader of my little site here, you know of my great affection for the Keeper of the Gems, aka Leslie Hall and her band Leslie and the Lys. I mentioned her on her two years ago and several more times including meeting Leslie and the band at a show last year (CNN story, 09 concert pics, initial post).
Well fast-forward to February and Leslie and the Lys were playing in NC again. We arrived early to get good seats and lucked out as the band was just hanging out before the show so we spent 30 mins chatting, getting autographs and being silly – they actuallydid US State flashcards on Hayley’s iTouch with her which was hysterical but informative since they were on a concert tour of the country. A bunch of folks we met at the show before and kept up with on facebook showed up, all in our sparkly sweaters. It was a great deal of fun.
After the show, Leslie grabbed Hayley (literally) to take all sort of funny pictures.
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A few weeks ago Nicole came up into town and Jeff watched the kids so we could go out and visit with our sorority sisters Mary Evelyn and Tracy. Dear friends, funny memories and wine equal a good time in my book!
We had our 5th Gingerbread Demo Derby after Christmas – we had more friends involved than ever in the creation and destruction. Christmas Eve we had family and friends over for Chinese food and the construction of the Gingerbread House, which was one big deluxe house, one small house and one little leftover kit so it was more of a Gingerbread Country Estate. I simply don’t care how they look, what I care about is having fun and the kids being silly (ok the adults too).
If you don’t know the background, we discovered that no one actually liked gingerbread despite making houses yearly. My brother-in-law and I came up with the idea to smash them with remote controlled cars and we’ve been doing it each year ever since! So once the gifts are opened and the Christmas food consumed, we drag the Gingerbread house to the cul-de-sac, the kids get 30 seconds to grab candy they want and then we rev up the cars to smash it up. Oh and anything left standing, the kids get to jump up and down on.
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And yes I’ll get back to posting photos soon. I’m still taking them, just haven’t felt like posting them. Nothing is wrong, just busy with life. Yes I’m about three months behind.
