Good morning! Everyone at work is still in shock over what happened to our wonderful friend, but hopefully we will be able to help her get through it or give her whatever support she needs.
I didn’t want to let this post get too far away from me, because it was truly a wonderful weekend spent celebrating my brother-in-law’s graduation from college, his 23rd birthday as well as Mother’s Day! We made sure that every celebration had it’s proper attention!
Friday morning we were up bright and early to get ready for our flight. We said goodbye to little Thatcher (a friend in the building watched him for us this weekend) and made our way to the airport. Luckily our flight was on time and we made it to our gate in a jiff. I was proud of myself for packing so light – only my Vera Bradley duffle bag was toted with me on the plane (and my purse of course) and it easily fit in the overhead compartment. ** I love that the high prices for checked luggage have forced me to always carry-on. I love just popping off the plane and heading off right away rather than having to wait for my luggage to make its way around “the belt”. **
We arrived in Atlanta and rode the MARTA to meet M.’s sister for a quick lunch before making the drive to my brother-in-laws graduation weekend. We dined at Chick-fil-A (an absolute must since we’ve been missing it like CRAZY!) and I even treated myself to one of their delicious “ice-dream” cones and a diet lemonade (yum!). After lunch we met up with M.’s sister’s husband and piled in their car for our little two hour journey.
I always love when car trips are memorable and this one certainly was. We actually spent the majority of our time re-capping bad reality TV shows including the show Swamp People. I’ve never actually watched an entire episode from this show, but I’ve definitely seen bits and pieces. The husbands were making my sister-and-law and me crazy with their hilarious impersonations of the “characters” on this show. I don’t think I have laughed that hard in a while – it was all just too funny. The impersonations kept up throughout the weekend and anytime there was a moment of silence, someone would break out the funny phrases again.
We dropped all of our stuff at the hotel upon our arrival and then immediately got ourselves ready for the first event of the graduation celebration. The “ceremony” was really nice and they even had students telling the audience about their time spent at the university and how it has impacted their lives and how they believe it will impact their future lives. The event was actually outdoors and the weather was PERFECT for it. The sun was shining with puffy white clouds in the sky (which actually helped since we were looking directly towards the sun!) and we were all seated on a lawn of perfectly manicured green
grass. As the sun started set everything was just more beautiful. We caught up with my brother-in-law immediately after the ceremony, took a few photos (of course!) and then headed off to our next destination – a beautiful dinner that was set up by M.’s mom for the occasion.
The restaurant that M.’s mom chose was perfect for our celebration! We had a nice long table for all of the family members (I think there were 19 total!) and M.’s mom had
picked a special menu for the occasion. I really wanted to order every single thing on the menu (hey, it was an Italian restaurant – give me a break!), but I ended up going with a ceaser salad to start and an AMAZING vodka sauce pasta with shrimp and chicken. M. actually ended up picking the same dish, but I’m glad that we both had the same thing because mine was so good I don’t think I would’ve wanted to share! ;)
After we were all finished eating, my brother-in-law opened up a few gifts. He
received some wonderful things and we all went in together to buy him a brand new i-pad! I think he was pretty thrilled with his newly-completed “i-Family” as he termed it! After the gifts were all opened he was presented with his amazing cake that M.’s mom had “designed” for him. People – this cake was STUNNING! I was obsessed with the gorgeous colors and the amazing design! My brother-in-law is moving to San Francisco in a couple of weeks to start a new job so the theme of the cake was “California 
or Bust” and you can clearly see the amazing golden gate bridge in the background! Awesome! It was delicious too.
Once everyone was socializing and eating their cake, we decided it was a great time to tell M.’s grandmother and grandfather (who will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary this summer) about their special gift from the family. We’re all pulling together to renovate M.’s grandparent’s kitchen! M.’s
grandmother LOVES to cook and bake and she is always, always, ALWAYS in the kitchen. Well, they certainly need an upgrade and to say that she was surprised was an understatement. I definitely saw her shed a few tears! I can’t wait to see the finished product and I know that she will love the new space for all of her culinary adventures.
Whew! We had had so many surprises that evening that when we finally made it back to the hotel I crashed. I was super tired from the early wake-up call, the two hour drive, and the evening activities. It felt great to get some sleep and prepare for the big G-R-A-D-U-A-T-I-O-N day on Saturday.
Saturday we were up and ready to go by around 8:15. We all piled in cars and headed over to the
graduation site – which is actually the same lawn that we sat on for the ceremony the evening before. We picked out our seats and then relaxed in the spring sunshine until the grads made their debut. The music played and they all walked in wearing cap and gown! It was nice that D. had a red accent on his gown because it was much easier to spot him in the crowd. The graduation ceremony was really lovely and I thoroughly enjoyed the speaker and his overall message. After the ceremony we greeted the new grad by taking about a million pictures (I’m not the only one who loves pictures!) and spent 
time meeting a few of his professors.
Before long we were all getting a little hungry so we stopped for a quick lunch with everyone, said our goodbyes to some of the family that had to make their journey home and then the rest of us hopped in the car to make the drive back to Atlanta. It was even warmer in Atlanta and I was completely happy soaking up the warm weather…even if I did end up with nicely sunburned shoulders and a little ring around the neck of where my green
dress cut.
Once we arrived in Atlanta we relaxed! After a busy few days we were ready for some down time. We caught up on a few of the season five episodes of Friday Night Lights (my sister-in-law and her husband have Direct TV and for some reason they have already aired the final season so they had all of the episodes recorded!), but didn’t completely finish the season (I’m dying to know what will happen next!!). We played around with D.’s new i-Pad and we even took a quick nap! Before we knew it all of our stomachs were rumbling for some dinner so we headed off to the easiest place we could think of – Chilis (yet another restaurant we don’t reall
y frequent in NYC…I don’t even know if they have one here!). A delicious turkey club and strawberry lemonade later I was feeling good.
After our dinner we stopped by the mall for a little browsing and M.’s mom also needed to make a quick return. I loved how not-crowded the mall was and wanted to stay and look forever! I was completely and totally obsessed with the shoe section – M. had to break me away. Once we were back home we stayed up for a little while and once again crashed after our busy day!
Mother’s Day we had planned to go out for lunch and do a little present opening. Mother’s Day was also my brother-in-law’s (the recent grads) 23rd birthday! We had double celebrating to do. Where better to indulge in double celebrations than with double portions of food?….The Cheesecake Factory! An old stand-by that M. and I were plenty excited about visiting since we haven’t indulged there since our time in DC. During our lunch we had our present opening moment. D. opened up his birthday presents and was surprised to see that we had all gone in on a plane ticket for him to come and visit NYC (he’s never been)! He’ll be spending some time with us coming up this week and into next. He was absolutely thrilled and was convinced that after a conversation with M. a couple of weeks ago, that the tickets were simply too expensive and that we wouldn’t be able to treat him to an NYC adventure. All along though we knew that we already had the tickets waiting!
M.’s mom opened up her presents next. First she received a wonderful book from D. and then she opened our gift which was a beautiful gold “key” necklace. Finally, my sister-in-law gave her a great new cosmetic case that I was slightly obsessed with! It had a great little click closure and the pattern of the fabric was super cute. I think my mother-in-law was just happy to have all of us around her that day and the weekend spent with family; The gifts were just icing on the cake!
We finished off our meal with dessert (the red velvet cheesecake for me, of course) and then relaxed at M.’s sister’s apartment for a little while. Time flew by, but it was time to say goodbye to everyone that afternoon. M.’s parents needed to make the drive back to Tennessee and we need to get to the airport. A quick MARTA trip and two hour plane ride later we were back in NYC and still feeling completely happy about our weekend spent with family.
Next graduation up – my beautiful little sister’s! I’m already excited about it! :)
**Also, I wasn’t able to be with my mom on Mother’s Day, but of course I was thinking about her the entire time! I decided to buy her something fun for the occasion and went with a Michael Kors watch with gold and tortoise shell links and a fun, round, gold face. I can’t wait to see it in person in June and I hope that she loved it. I missed her that day! :) Luckily she had my dad and sister to keep her company and they all celebrated by going out for a delicious dinner with my grandmother that evening. M. was also super sweet and decided to send my mom flowers without even cluing me in! She received a gorgeous bouquet of roses and hydrangea in beautiful spring colors! **
I didn’t want to let this post get too far away from me, because it was truly a wonderful weekend spent celebrating my brother-in-law’s graduation from college, his 23rd birthday as well as Mother’s Day! We made sure that every celebration had it’s proper attention!
Friday morning we were up bright and early to get ready for our flight. We said goodbye to little Thatcher (a friend in the building watched him for us this weekend) and made our way to the airport. Luckily our flight was on time and we made it to our gate in a jiff. I was proud of myself for packing so light – only my Vera Bradley duffle bag was toted with me on the plane (and my purse of course) and it easily fit in the overhead compartment. ** I love that the high prices for checked luggage have forced me to always carry-on. I love just popping off the plane and heading off right away rather than having to wait for my luggage to make its way around “the belt”. **
We arrived in Atlanta and rode the MARTA to meet M.’s sister for a quick lunch before making the drive to my brother-in-laws graduation weekend. We dined at Chick-fil-A (an absolute must since we’ve been missing it like CRAZY!) and I even treated myself to one of their delicious “ice-dream” cones and a diet lemonade (yum!). After lunch we met up with M.’s sister’s husband and piled in their car for our little two hour journey.
I always love when car trips are memorable and this one certainly was. We actually spent the majority of our time re-capping bad reality TV shows including the show Swamp People. I’ve never actually watched an entire episode from this show, but I’ve definitely seen bits and pieces. The husbands were making my sister-and-law and me crazy with their hilarious impersonations of the “characters” on this show. I don’t think I have laughed that hard in a while – it was all just too funny. The impersonations kept up throughout the weekend and anytime there was a moment of silence, someone would break out the funny phrases again.
We dropped all of our stuff at the hotel upon our arrival and then immediately got ourselves ready for the first event of the graduation celebration. The “ceremony” was really nice and they even had students telling the audience about their time spent at the university and how it has impacted their lives and how they believe it will impact their future lives. The event was actually outdoors and the weather was PERFECT for it. The sun was shining with puffy white clouds in the sky (which actually helped since we were looking directly towards the sun!) and we were all seated on a lawn of perfectly manicured green
grass. As the sun started set everything was just more beautiful. We caught up with my brother-in-law immediately after the ceremony, took a few photos (of course!) and then headed off to our next destination – a beautiful dinner that was set up by M.’s mom for the occasion. The restaurant that M.’s mom chose was perfect for our celebration! We had a nice long table for all of the family members (I think there were 19 total!) and M.’s mom had
picked a special menu for the occasion. I really wanted to order every single thing on the menu (hey, it was an Italian restaurant – give me a break!), but I ended up going with a ceaser salad to start and an AMAZING vodka sauce pasta with shrimp and chicken. M. actually ended up picking the same dish, but I’m glad that we both had the same thing because mine was so good I don’t think I would’ve wanted to share! ;)After we were all finished eating, my brother-in-law opened up a few gifts. He
received some wonderful things and we all went in together to buy him a brand new i-pad! I think he was pretty thrilled with his newly-completed “i-Family” as he termed it! After the gifts were all opened he was presented with his amazing cake that M.’s mom had “designed” for him. People – this cake was STUNNING! I was obsessed with the gorgeous colors and the amazing design! My brother-in-law is moving to San Francisco in a couple of weeks to start a new job so the theme of the cake was “California 
or Bust” and you can clearly see the amazing golden gate bridge in the background! Awesome! It was delicious too.Once everyone was socializing and eating their cake, we decided it was a great time to tell M.’s grandmother and grandfather (who will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary this summer) about their special gift from the family. We’re all pulling together to renovate M.’s grandparent’s kitchen! M.’s
grandmother LOVES to cook and bake and she is always, always, ALWAYS in the kitchen. Well, they certainly need an upgrade and to say that she was surprised was an understatement. I definitely saw her shed a few tears! I can’t wait to see the finished product and I know that she will love the new space for all of her culinary adventures. Whew! We had had so many surprises that evening that when we finally made it back to the hotel I crashed. I was super tired from the early wake-up call, the two hour drive, and the evening activities. It felt great to get some sleep and prepare for the big G-R-A-D-U-A-T-I-O-N day on Saturday.
Saturday we were up and ready to go by around 8:15. We all piled in cars and headed over to the
graduation site – which is actually the same lawn that we sat on for the ceremony the evening before. We picked out our seats and then relaxed in the spring sunshine until the grads made their debut. The music played and they all walked in wearing cap and gown! It was nice that D. had a red accent on his gown because it was much easier to spot him in the crowd. The graduation ceremony was really lovely and I thoroughly enjoyed the speaker and his overall message. After the ceremony we greeted the new grad by taking about a million pictures (I’m not the only one who loves pictures!) and spent 
time meeting a few of his professors. Before long we were all getting a little hungry so we stopped for a quick lunch with everyone, said our goodbyes to some of the family that had to make their journey home and then the rest of us hopped in the car to make the drive back to Atlanta. It was even warmer in Atlanta and I was completely happy soaking up the warm weather…even if I did end up with nicely sunburned shoulders and a little ring around the neck of where my green
dress cut. Once we arrived in Atlanta we relaxed! After a busy few days we were ready for some down time. We caught up on a few of the season five episodes of Friday Night Lights (my sister-in-law and her husband have Direct TV and for some reason they have already aired the final season so they had all of the episodes recorded!), but didn’t completely finish the season (I’m dying to know what will happen next!!). We played around with D.’s new i-Pad and we even took a quick nap! Before we knew it all of our stomachs were rumbling for some dinner so we headed off to the easiest place we could think of – Chilis (yet another restaurant we don’t reall
y frequent in NYC…I don’t even know if they have one here!). A delicious turkey club and strawberry lemonade later I was feeling good. After our dinner we stopped by the mall for a little browsing and M.’s mom also needed to make a quick return. I loved how not-crowded the mall was and wanted to stay and look forever! I was completely and totally obsessed with the shoe section – M. had to break me away. Once we were back home we stayed up for a little while and once again crashed after our busy day!
Mother’s Day we had planned to go out for lunch and do a little present opening. Mother’s Day was also my brother-in-law’s (the recent grads) 23rd birthday! We had double celebrating to do. Where better to indulge in double celebrations than with double portions of food?….The Cheesecake Factory! An old stand-by that M. and I were plenty excited about visiting since we haven’t indulged there since our time in DC. During our lunch we had our present opening moment. D. opened up his birthday presents and was surprised to see that we had all gone in on a plane ticket for him to come and visit NYC (he’s never been)! He’ll be spending some time with us coming up this week and into next. He was absolutely thrilled and was convinced that after a conversation with M. a couple of weeks ago, that the tickets were simply too expensive and that we wouldn’t be able to treat him to an NYC adventure. All along though we knew that we already had the tickets waiting!
M.’s mom opened up her presents next. First she received a wonderful book from D. and then she opened our gift which was a beautiful gold “key” necklace. Finally, my sister-in-law gave her a great new cosmetic case that I was slightly obsessed with! It had a great little click closure and the pattern of the fabric was super cute. I think my mother-in-law was just happy to have all of us around her that day and the weekend spent with family; The gifts were just icing on the cake!
We finished off our meal with dessert (the red velvet cheesecake for me, of course) and then relaxed at M.’s sister’s apartment for a little while. Time flew by, but it was time to say goodbye to everyone that afternoon. M.’s parents needed to make the drive back to Tennessee and we need to get to the airport. A quick MARTA trip and two hour plane ride later we were back in NYC and still feeling completely happy about our weekend spent with family.
Next graduation up – my beautiful little sister’s! I’m already excited about it! :)
**Also, I wasn’t able to be with my mom on Mother’s Day, but of course I was thinking about her the entire time! I decided to buy her something fun for the occasion and went with a Michael Kors watch with gold and tortoise shell links and a fun, round, gold face. I can’t wait to see it in person in June and I hope that she loved it. I missed her that day! :) Luckily she had my dad and sister to keep her company and they all celebrated by going out for a delicious dinner with my grandmother that evening. M. was also super sweet and decided to send my mom flowers without even cluing me in! She received a gorgeous bouquet of roses and hydrangea in beautiful spring colors! **
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