the trip to north carolina part ii: snaps and bootses reunited

i know you've all been waiting with bated breath for part two of my trip to north carolina. suffer no longer, gentle readers! welcome to part ii: snaps and bootses* reunited.


i was so, so happy to finally be in north carolina with jen.  eeeee!  granted, it had only been a few months since we'd seen each other, but even a week is a long time in brenda-and-jennifer time. jen and her husband, brad, picked me up at the airport and drove me the two hours through snow and slush from the airport to fort bragg. we chatted for most of the way, catching up and talking about what we'd done for the christmas holiday and things. when we got to their house, brad made us a very tasty dinner and we chatted some more before going to bed.

the next day, we ran some errands and then went to visit my friend tammie, who moved to fayetteville not long ago. tammie and i were really close my first few years of high school, and then she moved away. we kept in touch off and on, though. i love that girl, and it was so good to see her and meet her adorable family. we had a delicious dinner, a lot of good conversation, and an excellent game of wii bowling before heading home.

most of the rest of my trip was just spent hanging out with jen and brad. we didn't go anywhere crazy, we didn't do anything particularly thrilling, but it was absolutely perfect. we just spent time together and chatted and had fun, and we played a ton of Settlers of Catan. i also got to meet some of the people who i've heard jen talk about. it's good to know that she has some good friends there. the night before i left, we celebrated New Year's Eve Eve, because i was going to be traveling on New Year's Eve. we celebrated with more delicious food and more Settlers of Catan, and it was awesome. then we went to bed for a couple of hours before we had to get up and go to the airport. but more on that later.

and now, because pictures say more than words ever can, here are some of the pictures from the trip!

this is my bed that was set up on the den floor. it was very exotic. piper, the evil cat of evilness (bless her heart) is trying her best to blend in.

mauley guards the incredibly steep stairs.

this was on the bathroom counter the first morning i was there. in short, there was an incident when i was a wee lass in which i walked into the bathroom and found a bottle of flavored lotion on the counter. this was in memory of that fateful day.

i heart tammie!

jen and baby ian. too much cute for words!

OMNOMNOMNOMNOM.

tammie's son duncan totally blew us all away.

brad helped ian bowl. or maybe ian was helping brad.

YEAAAAH SETTLERS OF CATAN!

WAMPYR!

i COULD NOT keep a straight face long enough to get a good picture of my wampyr teeth.

aaah, man.  looking at these pictures, i am so ready to go back. four days was not nearly long enough to spend there. sigh!




* i may have explained this in another post, but i'm too lazy to check. my sister jennifer calls me snaps. it goes back to a really bad sunburn i had many years ago, which earned me the nickname snappy the lobster. jennifer is called bootses because... well... because her avatar is a kudu named bootses that wears doc martins. it's complicated.