North Carolina

First of all, I want to let everyone know that our house is officially on the market!! I haven't posted about my trip to North Carolina before now because we have desperately been trying to get our house in decent shape so it would be presentable enough for potential buyers to come look at it. We listed it and put up the For Sale sign on Tuesday, and we're already having our first couple come to look at it tomorrow morning! We're not going to get our hopes up or anything, but it's nice to have such a quick response! Here is the link to the listing of our house: http://www.valleymls.com/(1itkzju4jso3kfjr2lmkuv45)/propertyDetails.aspx?mls=265479&category=1

So, about my trip to North Carolina... One of my old college roommates and very best friends, Rochelle, got married in December, and she and her husband had their reception on February 9th. (She's currently going to grad school at NC State). We couldn't afford for Jared and I to both fly out to NC, and I was one of Rochelle's bridesmaids, so I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep up with Taylor the whole time, so Jared was stuck with baby duty all weekend (although it kind of turned out that my mom had baby duty all weekend... thanks, Mom!) I booked a flight out of Nashville, so Jared, Taylor, and I drove up to Nashville Thursday night and spent the night. We ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, and Taylor absolutely loved it! She was dancing all night to the music. Unfortunately, I don't have any good videos of her dancing. I took a cab to the airport Friday morning because I had to be there early and didn't want to have to wake the baby up so Jared could drive me. Normally, if I leave Taylor with Jared or a babysitter for a couple of hours, I'm completely fine, but because I knew I wouldn't see her for a couple of days, I pretty much started going through baby withdrawals immediately since it was my first time spending the night away from her.

As soon as I got to the Nashville airport, this thought crossed my mind- oh yeah, I have a connecting flight in Chicago. I hope they don't have any bad delays because of snow... Well, we boarded our plane on schedule. My flight was supposed to leave at 8:20am. At 8:15am, the captain comes over the intercom system and says that they have delayed the flights coming into Chicago because of snow and that our departure time was now delayed until 9:00am. Luckily I had a good book to read. Finally, 9:00am rolls around, and we start taxiing away from the gate. Then, we stop, and again, the captain comes over the intercom system and says a "distinguished visitor" was arriving at the airport so they were stopping all flights until that person had arrived. I was sitting on the left side of the plane, but to the right of us, in the far distance, I could see Air Force One. After the military helicopters that had escorted him left, we finally took off around 9:30am. My main concern at this point was that I was going to miss my connecting flight, but I was just hoping that flight would be delayed a little bit as well. Well, lucky for me, it turns out that the same plane I was on was the one that was flying from Chicago to Raleigh so that wasn't a problem.


Landing in Chicago

When I arrived in Chicago, Rochelle picked me up from the airport and very graciously brought me some lunch. We then went Trader Joe's, a grocery store, and bought several bouquets of flowers. We then went to the home of the sister who was planning Rochelle's reception, and she helped us take apart the bouquets and rearrange them for table centerpieces. That night, Rochelle's family and Joel's parents came to their apartment, and we all ate dinner together. Afterwards, Rochelle and I took the roses she had bought and made the bridesmaids' bouquets. I had never done this before, and I must say they turned out pretty well. I was definitely better at the bouquets than the centerpieces. I was so tired after all of that and was in bed by, I think, 10:30pm which would have been 9:30pm Alabama time.

Saturday morning, we got up, got dressed, and went to the Tucker House where the reception was held. It was one of those old Southern homes with big white columns, and it was just beautiful. We took some pictures beforehand and then enjoyed all the yummy food. Rochelle's sister made the cake, and it was awesome! One of Rochelle's other bridesmaids, Vian, was her freshman/sophomore year roommate from the University of Miami, and all the other bridesmaids, except Rochelle's sister, were from NC, so Vian and I stuck to each other the whole time because we had that whole "hey, I don't really know anybody here" bond going on... haha

A couple of hours after the reception and clean up, we went out to eat with Rochelle and Joel's families. We all had a really good time, and I could definitely tell that I was having baby withdrawals because I took tons of pictures of Rochelle's niece and nephew.. haha Her nephew's big eyes and facial expressions kept reminding me of Taylor.

My flight out of NC was at 10:25 the next morning. My connecting flight was in Chicago again, and as we were about to land, they told us that the temperature there was 4 degrees and the wind chill was -20 degrees!! I had about a two hour layover this time, and the airport was so cold where they would have to open the gates to board the plane. Luckily, Rochelle packed me a lunch from all the leftover reception food, so I had enough money with me to buy some hot chocolate to warm me up! I finally made it to Nashville, and I finished my book, "The Choice" by Nicholas Sparks (which is really good) just as Jared was arriving to the airport to pick me up. I was so excited to head home, but then, for some reason, Jared and I could not find each other. He says he followed the signs for Arriving flights, but when he drove through, we never saw each other. He circled around a couple of times and then ended up trying Departure flights which definitely was not the right place. I don't know what the problem was. I think there were three levels, but somehow he never made it to the baggage claim area. I stood out in the cold for like 30 minutes as he circled the airport several times... haha (it wasn't funny at the time!) I finally ended up going to the flight departure area, and we finally found each other.

My mom was watching Taylor at our house, and I was very anxious to see how Taylor would react when she saw me. When I walked in the door, she smiled and crawled to me but didn't act all that excited at first. She then proceeded to slap me in the face a couple of times as if to say, "Don't you ever leave me again!" ;-) After that, she just laid her head on my shoulder and cuddled with me for a bit. Even though I missed my family, it was great getting to see Rochelle and spend time with her and share such an important time in her life with her.