The Wickedly Good Derby Weekend!

A zillion days ago, the Durham Performing Arts Center came out with their 2009-2010 Season Calendar and I flipped out. Not one, not two, but THREE shows I HAD to see! Grease with Taylor Hicks; Wicked; and Beauty and the Beast.

Well, for our anniversary in September, K-dawg got us tickets to Grease, Casting Crowns at the RBC Center, and Beauty and the Beast. Not to seem ungrateful, but I really, Really, REALLY wanted to see Wicked. I loved the books and had to see it come to life.

An idea was born! We'd just have a fancy shmancy girls night out. Then, sometime in like January, I got info about a pre-public sale ticket special since we'd already been to DPAC this season. Use a code word and get up to 8 tickets ~ perfect! So then began a string of emails with my best girlies to first find out who was interested and then to find a date that would work (working around all the schedules was no easy feat!) and, TA DA ~ April 30th was planned!

I'm awful at this whole picture thing, but we all looked so cute in our fancy duds! We ate at Dos Perros in downtown Durham. They had a Wicked themed cocktail! And, I broke my B.R.A.T. diet to enjoy a virgin one with my preggers Sissy while the rest enjoyed the real deal.

Highlights of the night:
- Packing 6 people into K-dawg's Explorer (seriously has me debating a mini-van for the next wheels, baby or not!)
- R changing clothes in the backseat on the way there (see above, 4 people on the back bench!)
- Meeting D's sister-in-law, S, who was AWESOME
- Catching up with A outside of Twitterland!
- My SISSY was here! (Yes, that was enough to make me happy)
- Seeing Ranger D all dolled up!
- S finding us reservations at the last minute when I FAILED to be able to at the American Tobacco Campus.
- S shouting out "WAVE TO THE PRISONERS" The Durham jail is across the street - you can SEE the inmates looking out of little peep holes. STRANGE/SPOOKY/WEIRD!
- Edward from Trading Spaces sitting in the row in front of us
- Getting to see costumes up close as the cast was collecting for a charity after the performance.

Oh, the show it self? Too amazing for words. Seriously. There were moments I had literal chills. LOVED it. Will see it next time I have the opportunity. NOW my favorite musical EVER. Really, I can't describe how great it was. And the talent! If you can, GO!


We got home late and Sissy and I enjoyed PJ chats (so much like our days in college!) until we were about to crash. AND, I should tell y'all, she just has the cutest baby bump EVER. And, tomorrow, the world finds out as my brother-in-law so eloquently put it "it's an Almond Joy or Mounds".

~~~

And yesterday, Sissy and I had the best morning EVER! We could just enjoy and go without family pressures/stress/etc.

What we did:
- Garden Store at the house for goodies!
- Fresh Market for roses for the Derby Party
- Chick-fil-a to get my Sissy some PROTEIN for breakfast
- TJ Maxx/Homegoods
- Borders so I could get my Pioneer Woman cookbook!
- Target so she could find something cute to wear for her Teacher of the Year thing this week and I could get groceries for the Derby Party.

Then, we were going to pick up lunch. And, I told her about these two shops near a little Greek restaurant where I could get rice for that stupid B.R.A.T. diet. And, I'm glad we did! She found the most PERFECT Mother's Day present for mom~ It was a little box with a charm that's a grammy and the little matchbox it's in says "World's Greatest Grammy". Why is this so cool? Mom's decided she wants to be called "Grammy"! Can't wait to hear her reaction since it's probably the only thing we'll ever find that says Grammy.

After lunch, it was back here to get things ready for our Derby Party. With the tummy whatevers I'm having, Sissy was a HUGE help in pulling it all together. I'm so sad she couldn't stay and enjoy, but I sent her home with goodies to thank her for her help!

Derby Party:
Then, we had the cutest Derby Party ever. Ok, it was the first, so by default it was the best! We have the best group of friends ever and I'm so glad everyone could come on short notice (seriously, it came together in about a weeks time). And, everyone brought yummies and we had quite the spread. Pioneer Woman's Olive Cheese Bread was a hit with K-dawg. We had a table full of food and I don't think anyone left hungry.

And, I made mint juleps for everyone (well, everyone except the babies!) Didn't have one myself, so hopefully they were good! And, thank you fridge for the crushed ice function. It saved the day!

Something else we did that was kind of neat (besides just eating and hanging out, which we're amazingly good at doing) ~ we had all the horses and their odds as of about 5:00 on slips of paper. We drew names to cheer for until every horse had a fan. It made it so much fun to watch and cheer!

And, if you were here and reading this: Thanks for coming. Since I was a little girl, I wanted to host a party. With dresses, and hats, and juleps (not that I knew what a julep was); and y'all made it possible. You can't host without guests, and y'all are simply the BEST!

And now, it's all cleaned up and we're hosting Small Group here tonight so the leftovers will be put to good use....

So outside this crazy tummy thing, it's been an amazingly good weekend! And, every cloud has a silver lining....with either not eating or BRAT eating the last 4 days, I won't gain an ounce!

Hope y'all had a GREAT Derby Weekend too!

~~~
Prayer Requests:

- The Gulf Coast; y'all, this oil spill is scary stuff!
- Arkansas/Tennessee and others impacted by the tornadoes, storms and flooding
- Everyone taking final exams; it's that time of year!
- Me. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I've had some crazy thing going on for a week now. I'm not going to go into the gross details, but I saw my GP on Thursday; she put me on clear liquids only for 24 hrs, then I graduated to bananas, rice, applesauce and toast (tortilla chips since I'm gluten free.) It's not getting better or calming down (and has gotten worse!), so I've called my doctor this morning and she's going to find me a specialist to see *hopefully* tomorrow, back to just clear liquids and increased the frequency I take the meds she gave me . It was crazy for me to do all that I've done the last few days, I know that now. But, I'm glad I pushed through and did, no matter how stupid that may have been because of the memories that were made and the good times that were had. Please pray they can figure out what's going on and provide relief soon!