Wednesday, October 21, 2009

GT HOMECOMING 2009


We hit the road this past weekend for a trip Brian and I have anticipated for a while. We headed to Atlanta Friday afternoon to drop off the children with Brian's parents and brother and sister-in-law. Benjamin, Catherine and Mary Scott were super excited about having a sleep-over at their cousins' house, and little Anna experienced her first night without me. Brian and I were equally excited to have a night away. We love our kids dearly and deeply, but it sure is refreshing to get a little break from the demands of parenting 4 children. Once we'd given each of them a big ole' hug and kiss good-bye, Brian and I headed to meet up with some old friends, his college room-mates and their wives, for dinner in Buckhead. We enjoyed a delicious meal at Bricktops made even better by great conversations as we caught up on the happenings of life over the past 14 years - an abridged version at least! And what a treat it was to sit through the entire meal without getting up once -no trips to the bathroom, no "be quiet, we're in a restaurant", didn't even have to cut up any ones food! After dinner, we all climbed in our party wagon - my minivan (kept us grounded in the fact that we are all parents of some precious little bits) - not sure where we were headed. Apparently, the guys (Brian and his college roomies) have always been an indecisive bunch. We spent the next 45 minutes driving back and forth on Peachtree looking for a good spot to enjoy coffee and dessert. We quickly discovered the busyness of Atlanta hasn't changed a bit... the waits for a table were 45 minutes at 10 0'clock at night... you've got to be kidding me! So we finally settled on Caribou Coffee where we continued to enjoy great conversation and had some good laughs. Though none of us had turned into pumpkins quite yet, we decided to call it a night around 12:30 pm when we headed to our hotels. It was a fun evening, indeed!

We awoke the next morning brimming with excitement about our plans for the rest of the day. Our entire trip was centered around going to Georgia Tech's homecoming game against Virginia Tech. The game wasn't until 6 o'clock in the evening so we had some leisure time before heading to the stadium. We enjoyed breakfast at the Flying Biscuit with Ben and Heather who we've remained in pretty close contact with since our college days. We squeezed in a quick little shopping trip into Marshall's to pick up some winter wear... turned out to be freezing cold on game day and someone had taken my coat out of our car when we dropped off the children. We got Brian a GT toboggan, me a GT scarf and big GT blanket at the bookstore prior to the game hoping we would keep some measure of warm. No trip to a game would be complete without a visit to the Varsity... "what do ya have?"... so we had lunch there where we were joined by the final room-mate, Eugene, whose wife wasn't able to come. So the group was finally complete - Brian, Ben, Jeff & Eugene. I enjoyed every second of listening to them laugh and joke with one another and hearing them reminisce about their years in college... it was great! And thankfully the wives, Heather, Jenny and myself, enjoyed talking with one another as well. We all had such a nice time together that we are aiming to make it a yearly tradition to meet in Atlanta and attend a GT football game.

The game was the perfect ending to our trip. Our Yellow Jackets, against the odds, showed up to play some good football. The defense was strong and quick and stopped Virginia Tech in their tracks. Though it took our offense a while to get in the swing of things and our passing game left a whole bunch to be desired... the Jackets got the job done and beat the Hokies 28 - 23. We had a blast cheering our team onto victory while bundled in our big blanket... completed by high fives, hot chocolate and roasted peanuts. Way to go GT!!!

Thankfully, while we were enjoying our time away, the children were having a great time playing with their cousins. We sure do appreciate Scott and Cathy and Mark and Heather being so gracious to love on 'em and care for them. It was a weekend our whole family enjoyed!


the roomies... Jeff, Ben, Brian & Eugene

Ben and Heather

Jeff & Jenny







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