For her 14th birthday, Hayley decided to have our dear friend Graham Morrison shoot she and her friends hanging out. Our regular stylist Michelle did Hayley’s hair that morning then an amazing makeup artist, Kitschkween aka Marissa Rhoades came over and got the girls ready. The results were fantastic.
After they had cake, pizza and watched movies until the wee hours of the sleepover.
The cake turned out awesome – Once in a Blue Moon designed a Graffiti Cake:
We had a birthday lunch and then birthday pie later on as well – we do love to drag out her birthday and make a big deal of it!
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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!
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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!
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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.
Friday night was the opening night of Twilight Breaking Dawn part I so I took Hayley and a bunch of her friends.
Then Saturday was the last home bout of the year for the Carolina Roller Girls so we headed out to roller derby and brought Mason along with us.
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Hayley had riding on Sunday so I snapped some pics of her at the barn. Some of you know, a few months ago we made the tough decision to switch stables and disciplines (from Saddlebred to English hunter/jumper). She’s now riding at Chadale Farms and we are all thrilled with the change, especially Hayley. She’s having a lot of fun and recently started going over really low cross rails so she’s on her way to jumping!
(Sidenote: I had my camera in the car because IC photographer extraordinaire Jim Hawkins called me with some tips for shooting in the Dean Dome because Hayley will be on PRESS ROW Tuesday night SHOOTING the UNC men’s basketball game!)
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What a Halloween scene! The highlight was hitting the insane haunted house in Snow Camp, the Original Hollywood Horror Show. As most of you know, we are horror nuts and love to be scared. So we made the hour drive to be scared out of our minds in the best haunted house around. It was well worth the drive! The bonus of the night was the site was a shoot for a vampire movie earlier in the week and some of the actors hung around – including Michael Welch (Mike Newton in Twilight!!) and Johnny Pacar (Damon in Make it or Break it and Jackson in Flight 29 Down). OMG – an actor from Twilight (he’s the local guy from town who asks Bella out early on and stays her friend) and Johnny Pacar… Hayley has loved both of his tv shows. Johnny hugged her and she swore she wouldn’t wash it for weeks.
The guys were hysterical hams before the haunted house
and great with Hayley
What a messy Halloween – it rained when we went pumpkin picking and rained all Halloween. Didn’t stop the girls from going out for candy of course. Hayley’s friend Mia came over again and Mason went with them on their candy run.
Picking pumpkins
Tired post-trick or treating
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We are back from a fun-filled trip to Great Wolf Lodge with our next-door neighbors and their two kids. Jeff had to be at work so he kindly took care of Annabelle and our neighbor’s pup too while we all goofed off for three days. The kids spent lots of time at the waterpark – the beauty of going during the week is much shorter lines for the rides. Hayley and Mason played Magiquest for hours and had a sleepover each night. We had fun checking out the GWL’s Halloween stuff, the decorations were really neat.
Most of the photos are with my iphone or Hayley’s camera – which in low light in a waterpark or lodge mean they are pretty grubby shots. But oh well, we were too busy relaxing and having fun to worry about it.
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So last week Jeff figured out a mistake in the show Raising Hope – something in an episode conflicted with another episode.
On a whim, I tweeted Greg Garcia, the guy who created the show to ask him about it. Amazingly he tweeted me back and confirmed they screwed up. I told him that made our night, how much we loved the show and how my daughter was excited b/c Greyson Chance will play young Jimmy. He tweeted back that we’d love the next ones and that Shannon says hi, sending us this photo:
A photo of Shannon Woodward (aka Sabrina on the show) waving hello to us!
We were so excited. This was the night before their season premiere and the show creator is tweeting with us, taking photos for us! So Hayley took the iPad and sent a message to Shannon via Greg.
Greg went even further and took a photo of Shannon and Kate Micucci (aka Shelley who runs the crazy dog, pet, baby daycare on the show) holding up the babies that PLAY HOPE and sending a message back to Hayley!
HOW COOL WAS THAT? I love the internet. This is the guy who not only created Raising Hope but also My Name is Earl and Yes, Dear… messing around online with some fans.
This year, the band was back on tour again with opening acts 
