Labor Day Weekend

Poor, neglected (again!) blog!  Do you ever have those days (or in  my case, a series of days) where you have been SO busy, but you're not exactly sure what you've been busy doing?  That is kind of how the past few have been for me...they have flown, and I'm sad to report that Labor Day weekend is now almost over.  At least there's one more day to look forward to before the start of another work week, and we have a lot of exciting things planned in the near future, but I never can figure out where my weekends go!  AND...this should be my last week of travel for work (ever!!!), so I'm excited about that ((Disclaimer: as usual, this blog turned out to be MUCH longer than I anticipated, so brace yourselves.  You may have to come back later or read it in parts, ha!).

I think the last time I blogged was on Wednesday night when we were going to see my "little brother's" comedy show.  He was so good!  He was at the Comedy Zone in downtown Charlotte, which is actually underneath a bar and is a pretty cool set-up if I say so myself.  Anyway, there were four amateur comics that they let warm up the crowd before the professionals came on stage.  He went first and did a great job.  However, I do not think it is my bias speaking when I say he should have gone last...he was by far the funniest of the four amateurs, and some of them had been doing this for 7+ years!  Anyway, you can check him out here if you're interested.

Thursday night, we had a family celebration for my little sister, Katy (also known as "the bride" from other posts).  Thursday was an extra big day for her as she got her braces off (for the second time) and she was SO excited.  She just graduated from Appalachian State University (where else is there?) with a degree in Recreation Management (did I get it right, Kate?) and is currently job hunting, so if perhaps any of my readers have a job they'd like to give her (in Raleigh!), please feel free to do so.  She's pretty, funny, smart, and hard-working and a variety of other traits (bridezilla?  LOL just kidding!  kind of!) which I will not mention here so she won't get mad.  :-)

Friday, we didn't have too much going on - Dan came to Charlotte Thursday on the train so that he could be there for Katy's party and also because he was playing golf with clients on Friday (seriously, I need his job - except for the golf part, which I'm terrible at).  I didn't bring my camera cord home to upload the pictures I took of my cousin's daughter Layla, who came over to swim, but I promise to upload some as soon as I get them loaded - it will be worth the wait, she's SO cute!

Saturday, my girlfriend Allison came over for breakfast and to see our new house - it has been so long since I've seen her and I was so grateful to get to spend some time with her and catch up.  Alli, if you're reading I miss you dearly and hope we can get together again soon and that I can meet your imaginary boyfriend who is apparently real but I've yet to meet.  Saturday afternoon/evening was the NCSU vs. Liberty football game, sigh.

For some background, I am not an NCSU fan.  I am not really not a fan, either - what I mean to say is, we don't really have any ties to NC State.  My mother-in-law worked for the football program several years ago, and my husband has been a huge fan ever since, so we go to games sometime and watch them often on tv.  We were offered some tickets yesterday from a friend of Dan's, and I decided to play nice and be Dan's DD go with Dan to the game.  I guess I should preface this story with the fact that going to this game put me in a bad mood from the time I woke up - mainly because I had nothing to wear, and for once that is not an exaggeration.  I have next to no red in my closet, all of which is pre-pregnancy and did NOT look good.  I tend to lean more towards blacks, blues and greens for some reason, but I digress (I have always wanted to say that - did I even use it in the right context?  HA!).  Anyway, by the time I realized my originally planned outfit (consisting of some pre-pregnancy items) wasn't going to work, I was running short on time so I had to run to Target and do the best I could, which ended up being a red t-shirt that was a size bigger than what I normally wear.  Picture a bunch of cute skinny girls in cute red dresses and cowboy boots...and then me, the frumpy pregnatn woman in shorts and a t shirt (There were obviously plenty of people in shorts and t-shirts...I just felt like a frumpster in general yesterday, and you know how when you feel like that there's no changing your mind and it just ruins your day?  That was me.). 

My only condition for going to this game was that I didn't want to go at noon and deal with a bunch of drunks all day, so we mutually agreed that 3:00 was as good a time as any since the game started at 6:00.  What we didn't realize is that we didn't have a parking pass.  By the time we realized it, all of our friends with parking passes had already been tailgating for hours, so our only choice was to look for some of the pay lots - which to this day I am still not sure exist.  We literally drove around for about an hour and a half looking for a place to park, and because everything is so spread out and the rumored pay lots apparently fill up quickly (we never did even see one of these said pay lots), we ended up having to park like a mile and a half away.  And when I say a mile and a half away, I mean from the closest tailgate to where we parked - NOT from the stadium.  I do not know how many of you were outside yesterday, but it was H O T.  And I am pregnant.  And that walk was the definition of misery for me.  I didn't wear appropriate shoes because I didn't realize we'd have to walk so far, and there were several times when I thought for sure my husband was going to suffer death by pregnant woman I was going to die.  Luckily, as we drove the surrounding streets for 1.5 hours, we spotted our friends (and neighbors!) Meagan and Bo on one of our drive-bys and made our way to them for some shade and a rest before our trek towards the stadium continued.  I took my camera but in the end did not take a single picture.  Luckily for me, Meagan was better with hers and she got a couple.  I wish I'd have taken one from the side, because the bump has popped out of nowhere it seems like just in the past week (resulting in aforementioned nothing to wear saga):

*Please ignore all pit stains and nasty, sweaty, slicked-down hair in above photos due to aforementioned 29384239874 mile walk, heat, sweat and general misery. 

We stayed with Bo and Meagan for about 30 minutes until it was 4:30ish.  The stadium was still a LONG walk away, so we decided to get a move-on since I was slower than usual and pretty unhappy at this point.  After about a 1/2 mile and the stadium looking no closer than it had 20 minutes before, we decided to flag down a rickshaw (also known as a bike taxi).  It was probably one of the best decisions we have made in our whole lives.  Not exaggerating.  I felt so bad for the poor driver, because he had to take us probably 2 miles and some of it was up slight inclines, but in the end it was worth every bit of the $20 we gave him (They work solely on tips, and I guess it was worth it to Dan for me to leave him in peace and stop complaining for 20 minutes, ha!).  He dropped us off pretty close to the stadium, actually very close to where our friends Lindsey and Jason tailgate, so we walked over to say hi.  We had every intention of going to visit Steph & Jon's tailgate, but I felt like if I walked another step I was going to either (a) collapse or (b) die of a heat stroke, so I had to text them an apology and we stay put until the game started.  The game itself was pretty uneventful - I finally got to sit down and rest my swollen feet for a while.  While the first half was bordering on embarrassing for NCSU, they still won and looked much better in the second half.  We left at halftime because I was exhausted, and luckily for us, just as we were walking out Jason called to say he was taking his daughter home, and did we want a ride to our car? I am pretty sure my exact words to Dan were, "Please don't be offended if I plant one on Jason as soon as we get to their car." 

Today, we went to church (we visited the same one from last week again, and really enjoyed it) and then ran errands.  A LOT of errands, which included shopping for some m maternity clothes since there were labor day sales all weekend.  Results on that experience to come in another blog - possibly tomorrow's - because if I put them in this one it would surely be considered a short story...or novel.  After errands, we came home and were lazy - we both even got a nap in!  My husband is now cooking us a delicious dinner: an appetizer of his delicious roasted tomato/garlic spread on delicious toasted french bread and an entree of steak, sauteed spinach, and wild rice.  YUM.  I am still holding out hope that I will get to my closet cleanout tomorrow (I know I keep talking about it - I feel like if I write it on my blog, I'm more likely to actually do it...but so far it hasn't happened, sigh) and then it's back to Charlotte for the week I go. 

Hope all of your Holiday weekends have been spectacular!

Sarah