Nic's Bachelorette Party

A group of us spent the weekend at my parents' beach house in Wilmington celebrating a “last hurrah” for Nicole. It was the first time I have ever been to a bachelorette party where everyone (but the bride, of course) was married. Two girls in the group even have babies! With Mike's ten year high school reunion just a couple of days away, and then this dramatic shift in our b-party scene, the realities of our passing 20's is definitely starting to hit me :)

Despite our old age (jk) we still managed to leave our mark on the town. We spent Saturday afternoon shopping, watching football and being lazy. We had dinner at The Bridge Tender (fabulous Gorgonzola Walnut Salad if you ever go), and then we jumped in a limo and headed downtown.

I think we were supposed to bar hop, but our first stop was so much fun we ended up staying all night. A mix of dancing, cocktails and just talking with the girls... It was a near 180 from our parties back in the day, but still a total blast.

Here are a couple pics from the weekend... Mols, Candice and Nic, if you're reading this I love you to pieces!

P.S. Yes, the last picture was taken in the women's bathroom - what we were thinking I do not know!

Waffle Making 101

In my attempt to become a domestic diva I decided to wake up early and make Mike waffles. We were given a fancy-dancy waffle maker for our wedding, so I pulled out some Barefoot Contessa mix and the other necessary ingredients and thought how hard can this be...

Well, just in case you are ever in this same situation, there are two recipes on the back of Barefoot Contessa waffle mix. One is for waffles and the other is for PANCAKES. Of course I am not paying attention to the title (just focused on ingredients), nor have I ever made waffles, so I proceed to brew up some fantastic pancake mix and throw it in our waffle maker. Disaster! The thing split right up the middle when I opened the lid. The mix was "glued" to the waffle grates - top and bottom - which took forever to clean out. Worst part about it was I was racking my brain trying to figure out what I had done wrong... The only thing I could think of was that soy milk was not a good replacement for regular milk. So, yes, I do the exact same thing all over again, but this time with skim milk. Same disaster!!!

I was so incredibly frustrated at this point and close to calling William Sonoma and telling them I think we have a dud waffle maker when I happened to notice the word pancake on the back of Ms. Contessa's mix.

Pancake Ingredients: milk, egg, butter
Waffle Ingredients: water, egg

Arg! Martha would be so disappointed…

Lexie's First Birthday

Penn State Adventures

Mike has always wanted to take me to a big ten football game... So on Saturday morning we woke up at the crack of dawn and began a five hour drive to State College. The drive up was awesome! We went through West Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania and saw absolutely beautiful country side. We got out a couple times in WV so I could say I've actually been to the state (a hot tamale run for me and a Dairy Queen blizzard run for Mike were included in our adventures). Finally, a little before noon we arrived at PSU.

I'm going to take a second here to share a few facts about the weekend and about the Penn State football experience before I go any further...

- Over 100,000 people come to these games
- Hotels sell out years in advance...
- Duke and Courtney (my brother and sister and law) and their 1 year old little girl, Lexie, found a room at Motel 8 for $300 a night
- Duke is a Penn State Alum
- Mike and I did not have a hotel room
- None of us had tickets - the plan was to scalp them at the tailgate
- It was Lexie's first birthday

- The Penn State Nittany Lions were scheduled to play Notre Dame (big game)

So back to the afternoon...

After picking up the other Bucys at the Super Motel 8, the five of us headed to campus and did a quick tour of Duke's undergraduate experience. We toured the Beta house, went to the famous stone Nittany Lion statue, ate lunch in the student union, and walked through the main quad... All of this touring started on the West side of campus, and our progressions eastward eventually led us to Beaver Stadium (the PSU football arena).

Beaver Stadium is unlike any football stadium I have ever seen. It's on campus, but there is probably a 1 mile wide strip of land that surrounds it on the outside. This open space lends itself quite well to NASCAR-like pre-gaming. People bring in campers. They have grills and flat screen TVs. They are dressed - um - spirited. (Nothing like the couture outfits we would wear to a UNC game. I'm talking paint, socks, bags, t-shirts... I even saw a pair of boobs dressed for the occasion.) Duke knew two different groups of tailgaters partaking in the fun, so we spent our 4 hours before the game bouncing back and forth between the spreads.

Mike, on the other hand, hit the scalping circuit the minute we got to Beaver Stadium. I am not exaggerating when I tell you he spent the full four hours looking for tickets. The game had started, Duke had found tickets for his family, and I was sitting on a curb waiting for my husband to return. We were tired, hot, and ticket-less.

We never ended up getting into the game. It was so sad! But while I was manning my curb I did manage to help a group of undercover cops catch a criminal...

Yes, I know it sounds totally outrageous, but it's true. I was sitting on my curb and heard this stampede of people behind me. Freaked out, I turned around and in that very second some kid comes lunging into me. He trips and falls into the street. Within seconds a swarm of cops were on top of him... They slammed his head into the pavement and handcuffed him. Even though I was more ready to cry by this point than I had been throughout Mike's failed ticket search, I managed to snap a pic for the blog!

Since we never got in the game, Mike and I headed to a famous ice cream shop (the Creamery), grabbed me some dinner, and then made the 6 1/2 mile walk back to our car and headed to Charlottesville. We got home around 2 am and - crankily - went straight to bed.

Here is a photo journal of the experience.

Bad Day...

Ever had one of those days when things just are not going your way? That epitomizes the last 24 hours for me...

After a walk with Addie last night I tried to turn my cell phone on. (I always carry it with me, turned off and tucked in my sports bra in case of an emergency.) Anyway, I went to turn the thing back on and nothing happened. I tried plugging the wall charger into it and turning it on, nothing. I tried taking the battery in and out, in and out, in and out; still nothing. I took it out to my car and tried charging it with the car charger - nothing!!! I even tried beating it on the counter... Still nothing.

Since then there has still been no sign of life with the phone. And, because I have scheduled to terminate my contract with Verizon and move to AT&T, they will not give me a new phone. AT&T supposedly has a phone in the mail to me... I waited with baited breath all day for the mail to arrive - it finally came and no new phone. Working from home without phone and without a spouse (Mike's in San Fran) is not easy!

As if all of this isn't complicated enough I had two more technical malfunctions today... I was vacuuming over lunch and somehow I blew a fuse. After finally locating the fuse box (or whatever that thing is called) I could not get it to open. I had pliers, a screwdriver, everything you could imagine trying to pry the darn thing open. Unlike the phone, I eventually got into it and restored my electricity. Yay and thank goodness!

Then to top it all off, I was headed to a much needed yoga class and my car wouldn't start. It makes a noise, but won't "catch." So now I am stranded without a car, without a phone, and without a spouse...

Since there is no one else I can talk to about it, I thought I would use my blog to whine.

Mike comes home from San Francisco tomorrow morning. I'm drinking wine and getting to bed asap in anticipation of his (rescue) return!

Husband Award

I don't mention the wonderful things my husband does for me and Addie enough... This will be a short post, but I wanted to thank him for a wonderful dinner Saturday night and for watching Addie while I was in Virginia Beach. This was the first time I have ever left him alone, "playing dad." I was a little worried, but he did an exception job; belly rubs, walks in the park, cuddles at night, and all. I love you baby.

A New Cliché: Two Right Feet

I met Rox, Cat, and Brae in Virginia Beach for the Rock and Roll Half Marathon this weekend. Rox always brings a funny moment or two to our girls’ weekends, but this one might take the cake…

Saturday night before the run, and moments before a long-awaited dinner, Rox says she thinks she may have forgotten her running shoes. (Keep in mind she has driven 7 hours from NYC to go RUNNING and she thinks she has forgotten her shoes). So the girls agree to give up their dinner reservation, go back to the hotel, and to look for Rox’s shoes.

She runs upstairs… Scours the room… No shoes.

It’s getting close to nine o’clock by this point, so everyone is on a frantic search to find a place that’s open and that sells running shoes. Brae and Cat locate a Dick’s Sporting Goods store. They go by. Rox purchases the exact same kind of shoes she left at home, and everything seems cool.

Fast forward to Sunday morning and moments before they are heading out for the race. Rox is dressed (hair done, mp3player in-hand) and goes to open her new pair of running shoes. As luck would have it, she notices something is not right – they have sold her two right footed shoes!

After a minor freak out and the consideration of trying to run in her two, new right footed shoes, Rox gives up and heads (in flip flops) with everyone to the race start line. On the way she sees a girl who looks about her size… She asks if the girl has an extra pair of 8.5 running shoes. No luck.

A few minutes later her boyfriend chimes in and says he has a pair that might work. So he runs back to his room, grabs his boy shoes and brings them down for poor Rox.

The pic above is of Roxy’s two right-footed shoes. Her legs are probably still sore, as she ran in the strange mans shoes that were at least a size too big. I’d say her metal is worth more than most!

Prayer help needed!

A friend of mine from Junior League (Julia Middleton) has been battling cancer for several years. She has what is called a Thymoma tumor and her tumor is wrapping itself around numerous organs in her body - not IN them, but around them. One is around her heart & is constricting her superior vena cava vein at 50-70%...

Over the past two weeks, Julia's fight has gotten tougher. Just yesterday they brought her home from ICU and hospice has been called in... Julia is one of the strongest, most compassionate, and most selfless people I have ever met; why something like this would happen to such a beautiful woman I will never understand.

We are receiving periodic updates from Julia's incredible husband (Mid) and he is asking all of us to pray for her. In particular he asked that we pray for her gut to absorb nutrition, her heart to beat stronger, her mean blood pressure to be over 80, her kidneys to get normalized, and oxygen to get to her brain. Please pass this prayer request on to as many people as possible.

If you want to see pictures of Julia and her husband they have a website: http://www.julia.wazollc.com

Green-Bird Restaurant

My sweet parents threw a dinner party/birthday celebration for me and Caitlin McKenney (a friend from our Ecuador trip) this past weekend. Going into it, I knew it would be an elaborate affair, however; I had no concept of just how spectacular and unconventional it would actually become.

After all of our 26 guests had arrived my father came out of the kitchen, welcomed us to the "Green-Bird" restaurant, and started explaining how the evening would work...

"Here's how it will work," he said. "There are menus at each of your seats. You are to go and find your place at the table, grab a pen and choose what you want to eat and when you want to eat it. Each course option must be selected once and only once. You must choose one "implement" that will be used to eat each course and you will choose a beverage to accompany each course..."

With that, we were off - excited to see our menus and start selecting what we would be having that evening... Unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. When I turned the menu over this is the "foreign language" that I saw:

SERVICE WITH A CHUCKLE…

Today’s specials are listed within,
So select what you like and dig right in.
Though names may be strange, each contains a clue,
To some dish or implement familiar to you.
If you figure them out and select in right order,
You’ll consume our mystery dinner without disorder;
But if you can’t decipher the true name of the dish,
You may start with dessert and end with the fish.
In any event, it is all in good fun;
So stick around until we are done.

Today’s Specials:
1. Nero’s concoction

2. I need some Rolaids

3. An oriental gymnast’s best

4 To Akba its sikbaj

5. Peculiar is no friend of Ashlie, Caitlin or this girl

6. Sparrow guts with yellow stuff

7. The Marlboro Man and Mr. Head could have been this one’s cousin

8. Some times a swollen ovary can be sooo good

9. Goi with an oblate homo and a nut

10. Choose One:

A. The leg man who goes blind with a sock and a southern delight

B. Get those legs near me and I’ll sock you because I’m full

Available Utensils:
1. Slurper

2. Pitcher

3. Petit Pat

4. Eraser

5. Tuner

6. Mack

Beverages:
1. Ethiopia's Wine

2. A Monk’s Yeast Infection

3. Liquid Life of the Master

4. A Clearly Forbidden Prescription

5. Two plus One

The evening was a blast! I ended up eating my meal in this order. Have fun guessing which thing is which!
1. Asparagus with hollandaise sauce, with a fork and red wine
2. Civeche, with a knife and red wine
3. A cheese course, with a fork and red wine
4. A sorbet intermezzo, with a fork and white wine
5. Strawberry shortcake, with a fork and coffee
6. Zucchini soup, with a fork and red wine
7. Spring rolls with peanut sauce, with a toothpick and water
8. Grilled salmon, with a fork and white wine

DGH on the Radio

Some of our Globetrotter kids are going to be on a local radio station this Thursday. I know a lot of you are outside the listening area, but for those who aren't, make sure to tune in. The station is 107.5. We should be on around 8:30.

www.murphyinthemorning.com

Living like a "yaya"

My dear friend Joan Wellman had her 53rd birthday last week, so her girlfriends showed up in full force to help celebrate. Mallory, Lauren Bostian, and I were included in the festivities, and it was such a blessing to see friendship span across so many generations (20 years to 79).

In honor of Joan I wanted to share a prayer she taught me a couple years ago. She takes time to say this every morning of her life...

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Happy Birthday "Joan-y"

Happy Birthday Poppy

My sister just dropped by my office and was showing me some pictures she had taken at our dad's 50th birthday party... Thought this one was fun; definitely captures the spirit of the night!

Boys will be boys

Mike and a group of his best guy friends from high school have an annual Lake House tradition that pops up every summer... As they prepare for this year's festivities, a blast from the past video made it into my hands.
For all of those who ever wondered what goes down during the course of these 3 man-days (me included), now we know!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ_kLx2hHz8

Today's teens get an unfair rap...

Imagine being so popular in school that hundreds of kids would crowd around you, pen in-hand, screaming for your autograph...

Imagine having something so special in your backpack that every boy in school was practically on top of you, waiting to see what you might pull out next...

Imagine one student from every grade stepping up to a microphone so they could sing you a "welcome" song when you arrived...

Imagine your teachers loving you so much they would invite you into a private room and serve you biscuits and juice...

This was our reality in Tosagua, Ecuador!

As many of you know, Dustin's GreenHouse recently teamed with Habitat for Humanity's Global Village program on a 37-home build project in the small town of Tosagua... Typically a Habitat project comes with an immense amount of interaction between you, the volunteer, and the homeowners. However, because of the scale and unique structure of the project we were working on, our team of volunteers did not have the luxury of getting to know the families we were building for. So we took it upon ourselves to find ways of engaging the community - outside of hammers and nails... We went into to the schools.

The 2007 Globetrotters visited fours schools during our stay in Tosagua. We handed out stickers, stuffed animals, games, and school supplies... We gave away soccer balls, jerseys, shin guards, and cleats... It was like Christmas, only with 16 Santas and 90 degree weather!

Here are some pictures from that experience. Our "kids" signing autographs, handing out supplies, and just "plain old loving" a sea of strangers... In my opinion, life doesn't get more beautiful this.

Long, lost (Ecuadorian) post...

We are back from Ecuador, and speaking on behalf of everyone that went, we returned different people than we left. The Galapagos Islands were one of the most magical places I have ever been. Sea Lions would come up and lick your hand... Birds would let you get within an arms reach of their nest... Shark would swim calmly (not hungrily) along your side... Giant turtles would amaze you with their lifespan and their stillness... Thousands of iguanas would nest on a rocky shore… Hundreds of stingrays would swim beside our boat, blanketing the sea with a dark gray cover... Midnight skies would shine with the brightest of stars; the Southern Cross leaving you speechless time after time...

We were at sea for five days. Each morning we would wake up to a homemade breakfast and hop on one of two dingy boats bound for shore. We would spend hours walking the island of choice for that day – exploring the wildlife, the plant life, and the absolute purity that surrounded both. By mid-morning were typically headed back to our boat where we changed clothes and got ready for a swim... Certain days we were scuba diving and others we were just snorkeling... Our guide would take us out to an island, say jump in, and we would spend the next couple hours (and all the energy in our beings) swimming around them... He would take us in caves, pull shark (by their tails) out of their "lair," point out eels, turtles, coral, and more. I am not exaggerating when I say one day we snorkeled with at least 35 white-tip sharks or that everyday the sea lions would dive (like dolphin) by our sides.

After our mid-morning water activities we collapsed over lunch and typically found ourselves napping on the top deck. We played cards, told stories, dove off the back of the boat - everything you can imagine doing on a lazy afternoon at sea. By 3-ish (if we had not already set sail for our next stop) we were back on the dingy boats, heading towards a new island, set for exploration.

Evenings were spent over homemade dinners, celebrating birthdays (we had two while at sea), listening to Latin music, and playing games (celebrity was a big hit). By 11-ish we were all in our cabins, preparing to brave the often rocky seas that led us to our next morning’s adventures…

I will post again on the next stage of our trip tomorrow... Don't want to overwhelm or bore anyone to death with my "raves" over the past two weeks of my life... Hope you enjoy the pictures and the stories!