The Ultimate Question of course is what age did Jeff turn this weekend. (i’ll assume the geeks amongst us have enjoyed my bit of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy humor)
I decided to get all fancypants and make him a homemade birthday cake. I did the inside in his beloved Virginia Tech colors even though it stained my Tar Heel hands. It turned out pretty cool!
My friend Jason got married that day too so we went down to Charlotte for that and then to Dave & Buster’s to goof off. I parked the jeep clearly right in the hottest part of the parking lot b/c my rear view window fell off.
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What a great Christmas! It started off with going to the Carolina Ballet performance of the Nutcracker with Jenn and Mason. We did lots of crafts and baked, did our Christmas Eve Gingerbread house decorating and then our Christmas day Demolition Derby, the sixth annual! Between them, we opened scads of gifts and then had a full house for dinner. Top it all off with snow for a white Christmas and I don’t think we could ask for more!
Jeff’s grandmother (so Hayley’s great-grandmother) Faye spend some time with Jeff’s folks up in Virginia. She was supposed to make it down for Thanksgiving but wasn’t feel well. Luckily we found some time meet halfway for lunch and spend some time with her.
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Know how you can tell Hayley is getting older? Less photos. She went to a costume party as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz on Friday night and I got no photos. Then on Halloween she had her friend Mia come over to trick or treat, I got one photo and *poof* they were off into the night.
The Hippie and Skeleton Witch
Although, we did do tons of fun Halloween stuff this year. Since we all loved to be scared silly, we watched stacks of horror movies and went to haunted houses. Jeff and Hayley went to a scary night time corn maze and got so spooked, she fell over and took him with her – haha. Then we did the Clayton Fear Farm, the hayride was lots of fun. Lordy this child loves anything scary and yes we’ve relented finally on some of her horror movie requests – still no extreme gore tho. Thank goodness Halloween is my favorite holiday!
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.
We made Jeff a great rainbow cake for his birthday a few weeks ago. Super fun to make, it turned out cute and tasted awesome. We had some good Chinese at Red Bowl that night too so I randomly took some photos of that. What can I say, I like pretty food.
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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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