I left to head north on Saturday, but before I left my best friend from high school, Lisa, was in town on her way to Hilton Head, so we had some time in the humidity of Charleston together. After a lazy morning (they were 2 time zones behind us after all, they flew in at midnight from AZ), we went downtown for a while and finished off the trip with a lunch on the porch at the Crab House. It was awesome to see her since I haven't since my wedding!
Round about 4:00 me and the pup finally headed north - first destination Richmond. My friends Rachel and Kevin recently moved there and I hadn't seen them since they left Columbia (SC not the country). I didn't get there until 11, but Rachel being the trooper she is waited up for me and the next morning she gave me a little tour of the neighborhood. They can walk to Gabriel's day care, Kevin's work, and a cute little grocery store. Gabriel was a little unsure of Kaylinn at first, but he grew to be quite a fan. He first of all loved her crate and kept climbing in it, saying 'bye, bye'. He also was a fan of yelling 'doggy' and dropping food on the floor, which Kaylinn was all too happy to clean up :) They were so cute together. I stayed for 2 days with the Beanlands in Richmond and then continued my northward trek.
I decided to take the method of 'play now, sleep later' for the trip as a whole, so I left Rachel and Kevin's house at 9 and made it home around 1am or so. Matt had arrived from Germany a few days before, so the next morning, mom, Matt, Nikole and I went out to breakfast and then I took a nap while they ran a few errands. That afternoon Brandy and John arrived with Dudley and the pups had great fun playing again. They are hilarious together, they just don't know what to do with themselves when they aren't playing :)
That night Brandy, Mom and I made these cookie popcicle things for Aunt Cindy's wedding. Aunt Cindy had sent me this recipe but we had to make a few adjustments. First we decided to put a different color cookie in the middle rather than try to make candy correctly. We also found out that apparently Martha Stewart makes her cookies in an air conditioned home (go figure) so our cookies were having a few issues with the whole melting thing, which made it rather difficult to get them off the table where we were rolling them out. So we improvised. I held a cold pack just high enough over them to cool them but not to touch them, Brandy got them off the table, and mom put the middle heart inside the outer heart. It was quite a fiasco, but the cookies were pretty impressive if we had to say so ourselves :)
The next morning we again moved farther north, this time to the main event as it were...well to the pre-main event. Brandy, Mom and I drove up and met Aunt Cindy and Jessica for a day at the spa! Aunt Barb, Tegan and Jordan met us there bringing delicious truffles Tegan made, and we all had a great time watching Cindy be pampered!
Afterwards we headed back to the hotel to get ready for a pizza party! This is when the real Walker world started to come alive. There were no actual written directions and when you have 20 or so people all attempting to get to the same place on the roads up there (let me tell you driving was less than logical) life gets interesting. At one point I looked around and there were people just everywhere all over the lobby, you could barely hear above the talking and talking, and yet we were all in our element. It was great. After a few embarrassing presents for my Aunt at the pizza party we headed back to the hotel to do the 'few' last minute things before the wedding. We quickly found out my Aunt's idea of 'few' was different than ours. Thankfully we had a mighty group of people ready to handle everything...even the rings and passports missing for a few hours. In the end it was one of the most fun few hours of the whole trip, but I generally feel that the night before a wedding is fun, so I may be biased :)
The next morning we got up and kept finishing 'last minute' items...oh you know like finishing sewing the dress (!!!). Brandy, Jessica, Sandor, John and I headed out to the wedding site to set it up and get everything ready - it was gorgeous! And my Aunt was beautiful!
Brandy and I with the parasols provided to keep us out of the heat!
my aunt and grandmother
My dad rented Cindy and Bruce a convertible to drive away from the wedding in, it was awesome, and they had a lot of fun driving around with the music blaring and the top down!
this is a classic picture of my dad and his sisters and brothers that they started taking back when they were little. it's hilarious!
The next day we all had to say goodbye as Cindy and Bruce were leaving on their cruise, the Ducharmes' were headed back to the west coast for the last minute plans on Jessica's wedding and the rest of us had to at some point deal with the real world. But, before we did that my Aunt Barb, Laird, Tegan, Jordan, Sandor and I went to NY! The first day we went to Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty and waved goodbye to Cindy and Bruce's cruise ship (although we later found out they were sleeping at that point, but we made a good show of it anyway).
waving goodbye to the ship
The next day we headed back to the city - this time getting lost in Jersey a few times - I'm telling you between the tolls and the lack of correct signs Jersey is my least favorite place to drive (they have signs mind you the signs just don't actually lead to where they say they will, or they lead to that road just drop you off going the wrong way). By the time we found out way to Staten Island, got across the harbor to downtown, checked out ground zero and took a taxi ride up to Central Park for a hot dog and pretzel picnic, Sandor and I had to head to the airport. Which I found, but got lost coming out of...seriously people, I am not a bad driver, Jersey has bad roads. Anyway, that night with my trip winding down I headed down to the Jersey shore to stay with my friends Kathleen and Jimmy at their beach house for 2 days of rest and relaxation.
Kathleen's family adopted me for 2 days - taking me to dinner, playing family cards, hanging out at the beach and most interestingly going to the Rubber Ducky Regatta. Yes there is such a thing as a rubber ducky regatta and we saw it!! only in Jersey :)
that's a LOT of rubber duckies!
But at some point I had to go back to work and pay for all this travelling so after 2 days I got back in the car went back to my parents for a day before heading back down to Charleston. Kaylinn was happy to see me again..although she was generally more interested in the birds and squirrels running around the yard :)
All in all the Tour de MidAtlantic was quite a success! Over 2000 miles of fun times and lots of laughter!
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