Auburn Angels

Growing up I had this Mary Engelbreit picture framed in my room with the quote, "Ah, how good it feels. The hand of an old friend!" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And many times throughout the years I remember staring at it, curious as to what the quote really meant, and of course during those years in elementary school, wondered how someone got famous using a sentence fragment. But because I absolutely loved Mary Engelbreit I never took it down, and actually packed it away when my parents moved. Reflecting on this weekend, that quote popped back into my mind. I took Danny to Huntsville to meet some of my Pi Beta Phi pledge sisters from Auburn while we were all gathered to celebrate at our friend Hayley's wedding.

dancing Friday night at Mickey's

During my last year of college I took the status of undergrad alum because after returning from my semester in Italy I was busy catching up and working on my senior thesis design project. Because of the undergrad alum, I missed out on many of the '02 pledge class last college memories and regretfully lost touch with many girls I considered great friends at the time. My years at Auburn were packed with so many fun times...and seeing everyone this weekend made all those memories come to life! On the drive back to Atlanta Sunday, I enjoyed narrating countless stories to Danny about all the fun we Pi Phi "Angels" used to get into.

Hayley and Michael's wedding was absolutely beautiful! As president of our sorority, Hayley has always been organized and I knew that her wedding would be a product of her fine planning. One of my favorite touches was the milk "shots" and cookie cake served at the end of the night. Some of the groomsmen surprised the bride & groom with a tandem bicycle presented during the reception. And the couple were such good sports they rode it out (until the stairs) when making their grand exit to the limo!

We were blessed to have our friends Ben & Ashley (sorority sister and one of my "italy girls") graciously open their lovely home to us for the weekend. They have renovated a house in Huntsville and I was really inspired seeing the finished product. Danny made best friends with their two adorable maltipoos, and I'm crossing my fingers he misses them enough to get one for our family. Two other college friends, Aubrie and Joe, stayed at The Still's as well. They were just married last month, and it was really nice to catch up with them and hear all about their newlywed life in Asheville. After re-connecting with so many great people this weekend and hearing about the exciting new stages in their lives (engagements, jobs, babies, etc), I would really like to try and better keep up with the friendships that were started so long ago!

Danny, Sophie & Dakota

Kickball for Alzheimer’s

This Saturday our kickball team participated in PLAY KICKBALL to END Alzheimer's Tournament at Piedmont Park. And what a day it was!!! We battled through four long games in mere 99.9% humidity, but prevailed as the tournament Champions!

Members of "Just the Tip of Our Support"

Our good friend and JtT teammate, Shannon, is the Development Coordinator for Atlanta Alzheimer's Association, the beneficiary of the tournament. She organized the entire day and did a fantastic job with everything! She even managed to hold off the inevitable rain until after the games were complete.

With so many of our friends having loved ones affected by Alzheimer's we were all excited to help support such a worthy charity. A lesser benefit of the day was that our team got a great warm up before the Go-Kickball Fall League begins in a couple weeks. We laughed that we played half our season's worth of games on Saturday alone. After we finished, we went to Manuel's Tavern in Midtown, a sponsor of the tournament, to enjoy some good food and cheap drinks and quickly made friends with the second place team.

Danny and I could not believe how sore we were on Sunday. We had no clue that "growing old together" would happen so quickly, but took Sunday as a literal day of rest and enjoyed relaxing at home.

St. Augustine

This summer's "tour de Florida" is complete with this weekend's last minute trip to St. Augustine. Danny's old roommates were going down to Pam's family beach house and we were lucky enough to tag along. Friday night we stopped over at the Henderson's in Jacksonville for a late night of card games. Pam's dad introduced us to the game of doughnut and made the mistake of serving us his real Wisconsin cheese curds brought back from his recent trip...they were gone in about three minutes despite everyone's initial disgust when contemplating what a cheese curd really was.

After a great night's rest and a yummy breakfast by Mrs H, we were off to the sandy beaches of St. Augustine! We arrived just in time for an afternoon shower, but wanted our beach time anyways so we stuck it out. When some larger black clouds approached, we ran in for sandwhiches and some more card games up in the condo. Luckily we were able to end the afternoon with fun in the sun...laying out, swimming in the chilly waves, and even my horrid attempt to play sand volleyball.

We cleaned up for dinner and enjoyed seafood and the really great live band at a restaurant called Oasis. They played all our favorite tunes from high school and we totally belted them out as if we hadn't heard them in eight years. Sunday morning when we woke up it was already showing signs of being a true bright sunny day. We enjoyed a few hours at the pool then packed up and hit the outlet malls before the drive back home.

It was a quick trip, but totally worth it! We've been so busy this summer and this was a perfect couple of days to hang out with some of our best friends, which has been a rarity since Danny moved out of their Admiral Drive house in April. We have missed the frequency of our get-togethers and therefore we really enjoyed cathcing up this weekend, and what place could be better than at the beach?!