Winos, Babies and Juice

Whenever we come back from a vacation or wave good-bye to visitors for a week, I find myself saying "Oh I am so ready for our normal routine!" 

Spoiler alert: there is never any normal routine. 

Right after we got back from the beach, I headed over to Raleigh for a quick visit. Pam had flown down from Boston to meet Emily's baby, and both she and Jess (up from Charlotte) were there for the weekend. I couldn't have 4 winos be together 2 hours away from me and not go, so I loaded up poor Bowen into his car seat again and we set off. 

Em and I always talk about how Bo and Cameron are going to be such great buds, but right now Bo is much more interested in older sister, Claire (2 yo). He could not take his eyes off her and she loved bringing him toys to hold or books to look at. We had a wonderful time visiting with each other, as always, including a lunch outing to Mellow and then your typical mid-afternoon juice sesh. (Explanation: Jess has become a juice convert and we were all very curious about the process and convinced her to bring her equipment and a crap ton of kale and beets. She obliged.)

Just to keep true to our roots though, we followed up the juice session with some champagne. Bo surprised me by taking a 2-hour nap at Emily's house - something he hasn't done in months at home - so I got some extra quality time with my girls before hitting the road to get home for bedtime. 

A few hours isn't long enough, but it will have to tide me over til the next winocation! 

And one last photo… when I got home that night and texted everyone to tell them I was home. Emily sent me this photo of everyone texting me at the same time. It's nice to know even when you're not there, you can still be there.

Winos + Wino Littles

This weekend, all the winos (and a wino little) came to Winston-Salem with the very best reason for a get together: we just missed each other and wanted to see each other. I’m so thankful for the effort that my college girlfriends have made to continue to see each other in the 8 years (!!) since we’ve graduated – especially as travel grows more complicated as families get bigger and jobs get busier. This was our 3rd trip to see each other this year, which I think is just perfect. (Actually, I think it’s not enough but considering we’re spread out among 3 different states, are coordinating 6 different work/life schedules and have 3 kids among us… I think once a quarter is pretty impressive!)

We pretty much did what we always do when we get together: talked a lot. Laughed a lot. Hugged each other’s babies. Hugged each other. Drank wine. Talked a lot.

Shelby arrived with John (11.5 months) on Thursday night, and we spent Friday catching up with over a long walk with the boys and getting things ready for a surprise baby sprinkle for Emily for baby #2. The rest of the girls arrived Friday early afternoon and we spent the afternoon catching up and showering Em with baby boy gifts. I’m so excited for Bo to have another little friend in just 3 months!

Matt was kind enough to man the baby monitors for us to have a night out with each other, and we had an amazing dinner at Mozelle’s Bistro. I talk that place up so much and I was a little nervous that I had set the bar too high… especially since returning to Winston usually means visiting many of our college staples and this was something new. But of course, Mozelle’s did not disappoint.

 

We kicked off Saturday morning with breakfast at Camino’s… another new-to-them place I had talked up (and fortunately, met expectations as well!) It was super crowded but we managed to find a corner to spread out and let the babies climb (John) or wiggle (Bo) and continue our never-ending chit chat. (Drink and chat, drink and chat… that’s pretty much what we do.) After breakfast, we headed over to campus for the requisite visit and trip to the bookstores. (There’s nothing that makes you feel quite so old and out of touch as walking around your college campus with a baby.) Shelby and I took the boys home for naps while the other girls visited Rose’s for lunch (a must-do every time they return to W-S) and then the rest of the day unwinded at my house, with wine and snacks and dinner and more chatter. Eventually, it was time to conclude the evening as Emily headed back home to Raleigh to her little one, the other girls headed back to their downtown hotel for early morning flights and Shelby and I yawned our way to bed, knowing little babies don’t care how much wine their momma drank the night before.

(I love this picture. Messy room full of happy people. And Matt in the midst of all the winos.)

I say it every time we get together, but it was an absolutely perfect weekend.

Wino Weekend: Meeting JB

We've been the best of friends since our senior year in college when we would meet every Wednesday for half-priced wine bottle night at Filling Station (thus earning us our still used moniker, "the winos.")   Since graduating, we've kept a daily email exchange going to stay in touch with each other's day to day life.  (My "wino" email folder has 21,834 emails in it to date.)  But emails are no substitutes for exchanging stories in person, and so we've made it a point to fly all over the country to see each other - for homecoming, for spring breaks, for engagements, bachelorettes, birthdays, weddings, tailgates, housewarmings, wine trips and sometimes for no other reason that that we miss each other.  But now we've progressed to a new reason for get together: meeting each other's babies.

John was born in December to Shelby & Brad, and we've been itching to meet him for the last 6 months - seeing his cute smiley face over instagrams and emails has merely been a tease.  Despite hectic schedules - Jess moving, Jenny wrapping up her school year, me getting closer and closer to a no-travel date - we were able to land ourselves a weekend in June for a much overdue wino weekend.

And it was, as always, perfection.  There are some people who you can literally just spend time with and be perfectly content and happy.  These are my winos.  It wasn't a particularly eventful weekend - we spent some time at the pool, and the girls had planned a surprise baby shower/celebration for both Shelby & I in the afternoon, and we had a few meals together. And of course, we got to meet little John and see Emily's baby, Claire - who is almost not a baby anymore!  It was blissful just to be in the company of my long-time friends and hear their voices catching me up on their lives.

I was a little teary headed back west on I-40 after dropping Pam off at the airport and hugging the rest of the girls good-bye... until I got an email from one of them the following Monday morning that simply said:

"So, when's our next wino weekend?"

Happy Birthday, Jenny!

Just like last year, the winos (minus new momma Shelb) converged on Raleigh to celebrate the birthday of the fabulous Jenny.  This was a big birthday too… the big 3-0!  I love what Jess said about our get together, so I’m just going to straight up plagiarize her: “Words cannot describe what glimmers of happiness fall on this otherwise dreary winter month when we are together.” (Jess, if I knew how to use EndNote I would create a proper reference for you.) 

We had dinner at a great Mexican place, Dos Taquitos, on Friday night in downtown Raleigh.  There was a long wait for dinner, but luckily we had months of conversations to catch up.  Well, sort of.  We email every day (yes, every day) so we’re all pretty caught up on each other’s lives…but some stories are so good, we reserve them until we’re together in person. 

I swear I actually did take some people-pictures at dinner, but I didn’t have the flash turned on on my phone so they didn’t come out good.  So, look! Food!  (It was good – tacos carnitos!)

Saturday morning, we lounged around at Emily’s house and got to spend some quality time with our wino niece, Claire, who just turned one (one!!!) a few weeks ago.  She is an absolute doll.  Doggy Coleman had to get in some snuggle time too, of course.

Later on, we went to grab lunch and watch yet another miserable Wake Forest basketball game.  Actually, our seats ended up being in a spot where the TV was really hard to see and none of us complained.  Sometimes it’s better just not to watch these things unfold. 

Before dinner, Jenny took us to this great place in downtown Raleigh called The Raleigh Wine Shop that did tastings.  You loaded a card and paid per the ounce to taste various wines.  I’ve just started noticing places like this popping up and I think it’s absolutely genius.  There was even a couch in the back with crayons and a coloring table – I’m not really sure what audience they were aiming for, but I took it upon myself to tap into my crafty side.

After the tastings, we had dinner at Humble Pie (a tapas restaurant) and then went out downtown to eek every little last bit of celebration out of the night. 

Weekend getaways with your best friends always go way too fast, and Sunday morning was here before I knew it.  We’d been counting down to this trip for so long and by Monday all of us were emailing that we had post-wino-vacay-blues.  I’ve been best friends with these girls for over a decade now (!!) and when we get together, it’s as if the time and distance since our last visit vanishes and we pick right up where we left back off.  I am so blessed with their friendships, and I’m so thankful that we each make the effort to get together a couple times of year since college.  I’m glad we were there to ring in Jenny’s 30th with her, and I’m already counting down to our next getaway. 

8 Points

I can’t think of one thing that would have made this weekend better.

Okay, wait.

That’s not totally true.  I can think of 8 things that would have made this weekend better.

8 teensy, tiny little points would have made this weekend better.

But seriously, other than Wake Forest’s loss to Notre Dame, it was a perfect weekends.  Three of Matt’s college roommates – Jason, Mark and Mike - came into town, along with Jason bringing his girlfriend Ting for us to meet the first time.  Pam and Craig came down from Boston, Jenny came from Raleigh and my sister came up from Charlotte.  Along with our usual tailgating crew and Winston friends, I think we had 20 some people come to pregame Friday night at our house and tailgate (for EIGHT hours!!) Saturday before the game.  I just felt like every time I turned around that weekend there was a friend I wanted to hug and talk to and clink glasses with and cheer on our football team with.  (Oh, Wake Forest. Oh, oh, oh, Wake Forest.)

Despite the loss, such a happy happy weekend.

Birthday Toast

Happy 30th birthday to my gorgeous, kind-hearted and funny best friend. 

I started this post off writing a list of all the funny and happy memories I have of you over the last ten years of our friendship, but it got insanely long, incredibly sappy and frankly, there’s some things I don’t want to share with the interwebs.  So I’ll just say this: Em, you bless everyone in your life with your huge heart, your infectious laugh and your incredible ability to be so present and tuned in to whoever you are spending time with.  You’ve also now become the first wino to break in motherhood and you’re setting the bar high with how gracefully you’re handling all the challenges that come along with that.  My birthday wish for you is that this new decade of life brings back to you all the love and joy you’ve given to others over the years in spades to you.  I hope your house stays full of Claire-giggles, your husband continues to be your best friend and you know how much your friends adore you.  Happy Birthday, darling. 

 

(Thanks for the pictures, Jessie K.  Hope you don’t mind I “borrowed” them.)

More babies?!

More babies. Yup, more babies.

I can remember the moment last spring when Emily sent us the email with a photo attachment… of a ultrasound. The wino listserve (yes, our emails have a name) blew up with excitement and joy. And here it is, less than a year later and one of my best friends is a mother to a sweet little girl named Claire Louise.

Claire was born on January 13th, and this last weekend she got to meet all her wino aunties. Pam flew down from Boston, Shelby from Chicago. Jess drove down from Charlottesville 2 days before her PhD dissertation, and I drove over from Winston. Jenny opened her condo up to us in Raleigh, and on Saturday we rang the doorbell of Emily’s house to meet our precious niece.

The winos' best friendship was cemented our senior year in college (2003) and we’ve traveled back and forth across the country two or three times a year for vacations together, bachelorette parties and showers, weddings, celebrating graduations, running races together, and of course, our wine country mecca last March. There was no question in our mind that when our first wino niece made her grand entrance, there would be a road trip to meet her.

She is absolute perfection. And her momma? Calm and peaceful like she has been doing this her whole life, instead of just 3 weeks. (And her daddy? Eager and proud to show us every picture and video that she’s starred in since her arrival in this world.) The love in that little living room was something else.

With Auntie Shelbs

With Auntie Pam

It’s a different thing, when your besties start having kids. I’ve already done the mental math to determine that her Wake Forest graduation will be in 2033. Maybe we’ll have a winning football team by then. I’m wondering if we’ll all be the crazy old ladies dancing at her wedding, while she rolls her eyes, embarrassed at her mom’s friends. (Yes, of course we will.) I can’t wait to see her grow up and see what traits of her momma’s she will inherit. If she’s lucky, it’ll be the ones that make her as wonderful a friend as her mom is. Although it wouldn’t hurt if she inherits the ability to make the most amazing lemon poppy seed bread ever. That one would serve her well, too.

Hi, sweet Claire. Welcome to the world, little girl.

Jessie’s Girls

Beautiful setting, best friends, delicious wine, cheese and fig plate, and chickens.  Just another winocation.

To be honest, I could do without the chickens.  But other than that, it was the makings of a perfect wino weekend.  We all convened in Charlottesville, where Jess and Charlie will be getting married in October, to celebrate our future bride-to-be. 

We visited King Vineyard, which is where their reception will take place.  Gorgeous.

Then we spent the rest of the afternoon at two of our favorites from previous visits, Veritas Vineyard and Blue Mountain Brewery, sampling the finest they had to offer!

Veritas’ newest addition, the chickens wandering the yard, was a surprise.  I guess I am a city girl, because I did not know what to make of those chickens getting so close to us!

We wrapped up the day with dinner with Jess’s family at Bang, a tapas restaurant.  I’ve visited Jess probably about eight times since she moved to Charlottesville in 2004, and I can say this for certain about that town: if you are a foodie, you will not be a disappointed.  (Fortunately, we had started the day out with a brisk 4 mile run through the hilly streets of Cville – which I hope help mitigated some of the damage!) 

My favorite event of the weekend was giving Jess her wino wedding gift.  I mentioned in a previous post how Jess is my “matched case” – we have many shared hobbies and passions.  One of those shared passions is documenting every single second of our life with pictures.  I know Jess has been dying for a digital SLR for a few years, and the winos went in together to give her one to capture all the exciting events leading up to her big day.  The look on her face when she opened it – delight, then shock, and then it sorta looked like someone punched her in the stomach, she started crying so hard! – was so priceless.  It made me so happy that we all know each other so well to know how to truly delight and surprise each other!  (Maybe she’ll be inspired to start a blog with all the pics she’ll soon be taking… hmm…)

It was a perfect weekend of time with my girlfriends, with delicious food, spent in one of the most beautiful parts of our country, celebrating the happiness of one of my favorite people.  To say my life is rich is an understatement.