The Class of 88 is Great!

And do I mean great! Everybody looked wonderful. I might have been the only one who added a pound for every year we've been out of school. We had a blast! Well...let me start at the beginning. After finally making it out of Nashville with only a couple of bumps in the road (see here), we landed in Philadelphia. We rented our car and drove straight to Millville, NJ. We got off at the old exit next to the mall so we could drive by my old house and BOY HAS IT CHANGED. There used to be a bunch of nothing there but now there are huge strip malls and shopping areas and loads of restaurants that weren't there before. I still managed to find the way to our old house. Not much had changed in the neighborhood but the tree to the left of the house was one my parents planted. It was tiny back then so that was weird. We were starving so I headed to Jim's Lunch. Jim's is famous for their burgers which you must order with "everything". Oddly, "everything" just means cheese, onions, and secret sauce. They're also only open from sometime in November until the end of May. The last time I was in Millville, it happened to be August so I missed out but I was ecstatic to find it open this time. We sat at the counter and my husband ordered a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, and mayo and then I proceeded to tease him, much to our waitress' delight, that at Jim's you order a cheeseburger with "everything". I savored every bite, it was soooo delicious. I think the waitress was confused by this clearly southern sounding girl who was so knowledgeable about a Jim's burger. I have been gone for 20 years and I definitely sound like it.

We then headed a little further down the road and stopped at the Harley Davidson dealership to see my old friend Sam. His family has owned the shop forever and it was BUSY. Guess the Harley crowd isn't suffering from the economy too much. My husband enjoyed finally meeting my old friend, Sam. He's the epitome of a 100% Italian guy from Jersey. So sweet and funny, he was a good friend. He's married with four kids now, bald, and still looks like he lifts weights daily and is really enjoying life. We laughed about the old times.

Next we went to Amy's house. We were staying with her overnight. She ran through the list of everyone who was coming and gave me the latest scoop on everyone. I was happy to have the last minute cramming session on who's who. We got dressed and headed to my friend Mary's. This was in large part the group I hung out with in school and in the neighborhood. I moved to Millville in the middle of my junior year so these were some of my first and closest friends.On the far left is Mary who often drove me to school and was a regular at the Jones/Carter house. The two in the middle are Amy (who we stayed the night with) and Susan. They both cheered with me in high school. Amy taught me to do a back handspring and Susan was our captain. She's the one who convinced me to try out. Gretchen is next. She is loads of fun and we often looked for trouble together. Robbie is on the right and he lived in our neighborhood too. Robbie rode the bus with me on my first day. I guess you could say he was the first person I met when I moved to Millville. We also got to see my friend Kenny who graduated a year earlier. I met Kenny at church camp before I moved to Millville.My husband and I ran into Kenny in New York City around New Year's Eve in 1995 when we were first dating and I brought him home with me to New Jersey for the first time. I hadn't seen Kenny since then and I was happy to tell him about all that had happened.

We finally headed to the Elk's Lodge and met up with the rest of my classmates. The time FLEW by. I didn't have any of those uncomfortable moments where I didn't remember someone. In fact, I didn't have time to talk with everyone I wanted to see. Some people didn't recognize me because I didn't have such HUGE hair. My husband was great. He didn't need to be babysat at all. He even made a few friends of his own.


Here he is with the husband of my crazy friend, Rhonda. I had such a blast catching up with her. She's a flight attendant with Jet Blue and he's a pilot. They just got married recently and were such a hoot. I bugged them to death about coming to visit us. You can see our husbands had fun acting goofy and trying to embarrass us and each other.

It all went by way too fast. We got up the next morning and had to head back to the airport. There are talks of a 25th reunion. They're thinking of having it in the summer. I'm all for that as it will be easier to get there and stay a couple of days and at least I might have a tan. Either way I look forward to seeing them all again. Thanks for the memories!

I Love Camping

At least I thought I did. We bought a tent, sleeping bags, a lantern, a Coleman cooking stove, all the best stuff years ago with the intention that we would be campers. We wanted to retreat to the quiet of nature and explore with our daughters all the wonders there are to be found.

We went camping this past week (yes, I said "week") in South Carolina at Hartwell Lake. We met my sister and her husband and several of their friends who have huge, plush RV's so I was excited that we had some backup for our first camping venture. I love my sister, her husband, her baby and her friends. You wouldn't believe the food they cook and eat when camping. Smoked chicken, ribs, wings, pancakes, eggs, biscuits and sausage every morning. My sister and her husband took great care of us. But camping wasn't quite the romantic ideal I had in my mind. The sites were tight and we barely had room for our tent. Now I will say that Big Sister LOVED camping. She can't stop talking about it. Little Sister, on the other hand, heard the word "NO!" all day, every day. As in, "No! Don't eat that!" or "No, don't touch that!" or "No, don't stick that in the fire!" We had a lot of laughs but there were some challenges along the way. I learned a few things over the course of those few days. Here are just 10 of them...

1. Camping is not fun when you have a fever.
2. When you have a fever, an air conditioned RV comes in handy.
3. When you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, an air conditioned RV comes in handy.
4. When the kids are bored, an air conditioned RV with Direct TV (no, I'm not kidding) comes in handy.
5. When your 2 year old is begging for a nap at noon, an air conditioned RV comes in handy.
6. When your 2 year old is begging for a nap at noon, mama has to stay behind while everyone else goes out on the boat swimming, fishing, and exploring...every day.
7. When your 2 year old is begging for a nap at noon and mama stays behind while everyone else goes out, it's the only time there is actually quiet.
8. In the dark of night, lying in a tent, nature is LOUD!
9. When you go camping, you must embrace the dirt. Thank God for it, because it will cover your children, your clothes, your food...everything. Uncle Pete really embraced it by wearing the same outfit every day. I'm pretty sure we will end up throwing away Big Sister's bathing suit.
10. They don't allow fireworks at state parks, not even on the 4th of July.

I learned so much more but I'll stop there. Notice there are no pictures from this trip. Remember what I said about the dirt? And the fever? We'll do it again though...someday.

Big Hats, Big Brown, Big Weekend

The Preakness! What an event! We just had an amazing weekend. My husband's college roommate, Billy, invited us to Baltimore for the Preakness. We arrived Friday afternoon, checked into the Renaissance and went straight to Billy's house for a get-together. Most of his family was there and they adopted us right into the mix. His house was just blocks away from the center of downtown and it was beautiful. We walked to a little neighborhood Italian restaurant for dinner and laughed and talked and ate for hours. Billy comes from a large Irish Catholic family and there are some characters! There was never a dull moment and the stories got better as the night wore on.

The next morning we dressed in our Preakness best and went to Billy's to meet everyone for breakfast. At around 10:00am a big charter bus arrived to take us to the races. I don't know what I expected but it was so much more than I could have imagined. We were in a huge tent in the infield. There were big bands playing, food and drinks galore, and big beautiful hats everywhere. There was a race about every 45 minutes so we would look over the program, discuss with everyone who they were picking for the race, choose a horse, and then place a bet. This is me placing my big bets! Nothing but a couple of bucks mind you but it was so much fun! Then we would look around and eventually wander up to the fence to watch the race. It was amazing how close we were. For the races on the turf we were literally 10 feet away from the horses as they ran by. The view of the grandstands was sight to see and nearby, ESPN was broadcasting from their tent.

The most exciting moment of the day, besides the Preakness race with Big Brown, was race 10. I had bet $5 on the number 5 horse to win. Now, there was no real method to my madness. I chose based on the names, the silks the jockeys wore, or the number. We were standing at the gate as the horses went by and sure enough, number 5, Pays To Dream, was in dead last. This is a picture of them as they went by. My horse is the one in the back of course.I just looked at Jeff and said, "Oh well, I'm not very good at this." Well, as the horses raced on, we couldn't see them because the track is huge. We tried looking at the big screens but there were enough people by then that we couldn't see what was happening. We watched for the finish as we heard people yelling, "Here they come! Here they come!" Would you believe that horse number 5 won! It was a 19-1 long shot so we won $101! Here I am with my winning ticket!

Finally, the big race was about to start. It was really a sight to see Big Brown and all the horses coming out onto the track. Big Brown ran in 3rd for most of the race and then blew everyone away at the last turn. I guess he's well on his way to being the first triple crown winner in 30 years. We met some fascinating people and felt like VIP's thanks to Billy and his generosity. It will be hard to top, that's for sure. I hope he invites us back next year!

The Amazon

My dad left for the Amazon today. He was invited by a friend to go to the Amazon to fish for peacock bass. I guess they are really special fish. My dad is soooo not an outdoorsy person. He likes sports and being outside but he's not into "roughing it". They are staying at a lodge but it's still the amazon. It will take them like a day and a half just to get where they are going. At first he tried to decline stating that he was not really a fisherman and had only been flyfishing once in his life. His friend assured him that it didn't matter and that he needed to go because it would be such an amazing experience where he would see all kinds of things he could never see anywhere else. So he cautiously agreed. Soon after, he got the paperwork (ie. release of liability forms) and he started having second thoughts.

The first thing that raised his eyebrows was the statement, "The client understands that fishing is a dangerous sport." Fishing a dangerous sport? Bungy jumping, dangerous, skydiving, dangerous...but fishing? The second thing was the statement, "The client understands that his/her stay at the Royal Amazon Lodge could result in serious injury or death." His STAY at the lodge could cause serious injury or death? I mean, I realize there are all kinds of dangerous animals and such out there in the Amazon but his actual stay at the lodge is dangerous? What could this possibly mean? Finally the real kicker, "The client must always be mindful that everything in the amazon is either eating or being eaten." WHAT!!!???!!! I'm saying a little prayer that my dad will stay on the eating side of the equation rather than being eaten.

Finally, I can say with great relief that he will decline the nighttime crocodile lassoing where a guy recently lost one of his arms. I'm totally serious.