We had a great holiday. As always we had a full house with both our families here on Christmas day. I know so many people who have to pick but we are lucky to have my bunch here and Jeff’s crew willing to come down for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s just so easy to have everyone together.
As usual we did our Gingerbread Demolition Derby on Christmas afternoon – year 8!
Since Hayley is in a year-round school, our summer was short and she’s been back at Salem for two weeks now – her last year there! This year Mason from next door has joined her.
First day!
With Mason
It was a good summer though. Hayley was at moviemaking camp again and we await their premiere on the big screen later this month. She’s been doing great at riding, we love this barn and she’s got a new saddle now. I need to bring the good camera out and shoot her jumping, even if watching her jump terrifies me.
We took a fabulous cooking class with our dear friend Sara at the always amazing Southern Season. Their store gets bigger every time I’m there, it’s 60,000 square feet now! The cooking school was state of the art and fantastic. I’m so stoked she is old enough to take the adult stuff with me!
Amazing setup – the flat screens could show you what was inside the mixing bowl
With Sara
We went up to Blacksburg VA for the 4th again to spend it with Jeff’s family. I’ll post more photos from that later but I never have my camera out there, I’ve got to do better. Jeff did the 5k again and shaved a bunch of time off – he’s awesome.
Hayley took a ton of photos at the art museum there – looks like Grandma Sharen posed in one with some interesting stuff!
We stopped at Pilot Mountain on the way back and went up to the top.
Right before she went back to school, we got to see Rachel and her family, I’ll post more photos from that later too.
I am unabashed fan of 70s music and Friday night we headed out to Winston-Salem to see one of my all-time favorites – John Ford Coley. Coley along with England Dan had a ton of hits including Love Is The Answer, I’d Really Love To See You Tonight, Never Have To Say Goodbye Again, Nights Are Forever Without You and Sad To Belong to name a few. Love Is The Answer is my favorite song of all time so I was just thrilled to get to hear him live, even Jeff and Hayley were excited because they’ve listened to his stuff so much they love it too.
It was fantastic. Small intimate venue with John Ford Coley and an amazing country songwriter named Byron Hill alternating songs and stories – they were a great combo. We were 10 feet from the stage, got to talk to them, get autographs and take photos. As fun as hearing songs I loved from Coley, we were totally charmed by Hill who evidently has written something like 600 songs recorded by others, including 30 top-ten country songs. I’m not a country fan so he was new to me but he sang a number of his songs that went to #1 and I was downloading them by the end of the night.
In 2008 I posted about how funny I thought Leslie Hall was. She’d been an internet sensation with her hysterical Gem Sweaters Museum. CNN, Wired and others did stories on her fantastic band, Leslie & the Lys and their videos. (Now the humor of Leslie reaches even further that she’s regularly on the popular kids show Yo Gabba Gabba.)
A year later I happened to notice the band was playing in Chapel Hill and of course Hayley and I had to see that show. Not only did we catch the show, we got to meet Leslie afterwards. When they swung through in 2010, managed to visit with the band a bit before and after the show. I emailed with them every so often and Leslie even called Hayley on her 13th birthday.
This year, the band was back on tour again with opening acts Pennyhawk and Ramona & the Swimsuits. Since NC was about midway on their tour, they sent seven boxes of extra supplies to our house to resupply them. We loaded it all up in the jeep as lots of vegan goodies for the band and headed for their show. We hung out with them for about an hour before the show, helped unpack “merch”, Hayley got on stage to help with sound check and shared makeup with the band. They even hooked us up with tshirts. It was like we were roadies!
They knew we weren’t going to stay for the whole show since it was a school night so after the opening acts but before they went on, they got us from the audience and we took photos up in the dressing rooms. Then they brought Hayley up to dance on stage for a song. Both were unbelievably nice gestures.
Such a fun night!
More photos from this set: Regular view (easiest to find one in particular or print) Slideshow view (easiest to see them all)
We co-hosted a Christmas Eve party with our next door neighbors Wes & Jenn that turned out to be a huge success. We usually hang with them on Christmas Eve and we decided to ask a few more friends to come on over. We figured most people wouldn’t be around but they were! And they wanted to come so it got big right quick. It was lots of fun and hopefully we’ll do it again next year. We hang out with them on New Year’s Eve too and thank goodness that was a lot lower key even if Hayley had friends over.
We did the tree downstairs in the library this year for the first time.
I’m so bad about taking photos on Christmas day… I’m just so busy doing other stuff and then sleeping that afternoon. My mother-in-law luckily took some cute ones and shared so we can thank her for most of these!
One of her favorite gifts – a little pink papasan chair for her room.
The best thing in the world – my grandmother’s recipe for monkeybread. I have to make two batches each holiday.
And this was our sixth Gingerbread Demo Derby! We made a bunch of houses and had neighbors join us to smash them up! Super fun Christmas afternoon.
We found out the Clef Hangers were coming to Raleigh for a show and we had to get tickets for us and some of Hayley’s friends! The Clef Hangers are one of the most recognized and honored collegiate a cappella groups in the county (you might remember Anoop from American Idol a few years ago – he was a Clef and they appeared on the show several times). We normally go see them on campus. They sing a wide range of stuff, some gorgeous vocal stuff but also some fun stuff – their versions of Africa and Carolina on my Mind are simply breathtaking and we also love their song Blue & White.
Hayley and I went to Roy Williams Live when we heard new UNC football coach Larry Fedora would be making a surprise appearance a few weeks ago. Coach Fedora and his entire new staff showed up, just days after arriving in Chapel Hill.
Hayley lucked out and got Coach Fedora plus Coach Williams, new AD Bubba Cunningham and a couple of basketball players to sign her sweatshirt. After the event when we were chatting with Coach Fedora he said they’d been holed up in the football center working and the autograph to Hayley was his first autograph as the new UNC coach since he had moved to NC and officially started the job. How cool is that! I had done a ton of work during this football coaching search for IC so I felt like I knew the man already, haha. After the event, we drove by the football stadium and noticed it was open so we snuck in for a quick peek!
More photos from this set: Regular view (easiest to find one in particular or print) Slideshow view (easiest to see them all)
We posted in February of last year about Hayley and I having an awesome time at Drag Bingo. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it is Drag Queens and Bingo, joined together as a fantastic fundraiser for the Alliance of AIDS Services. They alternate drag performances with a round of bingo.
We had so much fun we started going regularly, bringing our friends and making new ones there. It’s a great event, we sit with friends with kids too. We’ve run into others we know, friends, teachers, all sorts of families and people. It isn’t for everyone and maybe some people find it shocking that we take our friends but it’s never too young to teach tolerance and it’s a damn good fun time.
This year, the band was back on tour again with opening acts 
