T-Town Whhaaaaaat!?!?!!?

Whooooaaaaaaa mama. 

Have I got a weekend for you!

For starters, sorry for the unannounced, unintentional blog hiatus.  But let’s be honest, you should be used to it by now!  I am a self-admitted inconsistent blogger.  There you go. 

Anyway, I’ve had a great month working in a new job (!), and getting back into the swing of things after the holidays.  I wont go into a lot of detail about my job on the blog, but I am still working for the same company, just in a different capacity, and on a different team.  This change has made my YEAR and was a huge ginormous answer to prayer.

Other than settling into a new role, I have been doing some inconsistent (I’m sensing a theme here) running in preparation for another half marathon on February 25 in Oxford, MS.  I am kind of nervous because my training for this one has been so on-and-off.  Bex has a knee injury that has prevented her from running with me, and my co-dependant self can’t seem to peel myself out of bed in the morning for a six or eight miler. 

Anyway, Oxford is notoriously hilly and I am not banking on a PR this race, but just planning to have fun!  We shall see….stay tuned!

In other news, I spent the most fun, hilarious, silly, amazing weekend with my college friends last weekend in…

Wait for it…

The home of our alma mater…. TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA!!!!!!!!!!

I spent four years (yes, including two summers) in Tuscaloosa meeting amazing people, going to crazy fun parties, learning daily, and even managed to work in a class or two while I was there.  :) So when my old sorority sister Lacey announced she wanted to have her bachelorette party at our old stomping grounds, I jumped at the chance to revisit our glory days!  So we rented a house, bought out the wine store, and embarked on an epic Bachelorette weekend! On Friday night we had a huge dinner at the house and spent time catching up and reminiscing. There were some other….um, activities, as well….and let’s just say we stayed up until one o’clock in the morning laughing at each other and doing some ‘shopping.’  And I’ll leave it at that.  ;) Lacey also opened all her lingerie gifts!  She got some great stuff for the wedding night….And the perfect little something for every night after that!  Ha! On Saturday we got up and went to one of our favorite places for lunch…Buffalo Phil’s, right in the middle of all the action on campus. A very special future-Pi-Phi joined us for lunch!  Linnie Grace! Of course we passed her around and had a great time telling her all our old college stories!  She told me she definitely wants to be a Pi Phi at Alabama, even if her daddy says he wants her to attend University of Phoenix online in their basement.   

Huge milestone…Linnie ate her first lemon!  She loved it, obviously. 

    

  When it was Kristin’s turn to love on baby girl, she held her up and said, “How does this look?  Do I look like a natural?  I hope so because I’M PREGNANT!” Ahahahahaha LOVE IT!  And these were the surprised faces after her wonderful announcement!

SO fun, right!??!  Along with all the other celebrations of the weekend, this was a wonderful addition.  So, so, happy for Kristin and her husband Matt!!

After lunch we walked down to the stadium…perfect photo op! I had not been to the stadium since we graduated in 2005, and they have really ramped it up since then!  I guess two National Championships will do that for ya!  They added this cool walkway leading from University Boulevard to the main entrance of Bryant-Denny Stadium. Along with ten-foot-tall bronze statues of every coach in Alabama history that has won a National Championship.

Here’s The Bear himself!  Holder of six BCS championships at UA.

Current Head Coach Nick Saban with Current Bride Lacey Patterson:

Another photo op on Saban’s championship wall!  It was Tall Brown Boot day, can you tell? Next stop was sorority row and…you guessed it…the Pi Phi house!  Ahhhhhh, memories…..

One memory we could not recall as a group was the lock code to get in the front door.  So we had to stand around until someone walked around to the back door and got in! Inside we just walked around and checked out all the new stuff since we’d left. The new brick courtyard in the back is my favorite part! Here’s Kelly with her brick!  Cute. Next we wondered upstairs to where all the bedrooms are, and where they hang all the old composites.  Please, follow me as we go back in time alllllll the way to 2001….

See me…there on the right?!  And that’s Kel on the left.  She looks like she’s in the eight grade.  And what about those perfectly-curled-under locks? Niice.

And now on to 2002…also knows as Sophomore year.  Somehow I have quickly gained the freshman 15 and extremely bushy eyebrows, while Caitlin looks like she belongs on the cover of a magazine.

Ahhhhh, my personal favorite…2003.  Also known as Junior Year.

And Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza Year, apparently.  Seriously, I look like I’m storing up for the winter with those cheeks.

And last but not least…2004!  Fall of our Senior Year.  Please excuse the mark on the glass covering my gorgeously chubby face.  And look….Kelly invested in a straightener!  And lipstick!  It’s amazing the things you can learn in college.    Here’s Kathleen and I in front of our old room.  We would have gone in, but the current residents… ‘Mallory and Allison’….were not home so we just left them a note and took our picture for old time’s sake. And we had to get a couple of pictures on the front steps…just like bid day!!…although our bid day picture had about 45 girls in it so we’re missing about 35 ladies here….shout out to Pledge Class 2001!

This picture may be a little more accurate representation of the original:

Sigggghhhhh…memories.  What a fun weekend!  Saturday night we went out to a fabulous dinner and stayed at the bars until approximately 2:48am when a large bald man in a tight black T-shirt politely told us we ‘don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.’

Needless to say it was an amazing weekend pretending we were 19 again, and I cannot believe how goofy, funny, silly, and ridiculous all these girls are after 10 years of friendship!  We had an amazing time, and decided we might even consider making this an annual thing!

Now on for more adventures this weekend at Lacey’s wedding in Nashville!