The Brooks Board: Half a Century and Double the Fun!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Half a Century and Double the Fun!

What a weekend! This past weekend, we celebrated my mom's 50th Birthday! It was packed full of fun, and I can't think of a better way to have celebrated her.

My sister and I had been planning this shindig for a few months. All the details were a surprise to mom, so we had to keep it all undercover which was quite the undertaking! All she knew was that Rachel and I were flying her into Charlotte for the weekend. She thought we were just going to be hanging around here...but little did she know we had much more up our sleeves!

The first surprise was that my Aunt Shannon was flying in from Florida, and my cousin Katelyn was flying in from Louisiana. They flew in on Wednesday night, and Mom flew in Thursday. Picking her up at the airport started to turn into a mini-disaster. Her flight got in early, the parking garage entrance bar wouldn't come up, and it took us at least a half hour to get inside baggage claim once we got to the airport. Luckily - we made it to baggage claim before she did though. We sent Shannon and Katelyn up to the Starbucks and once Rachel and I found Mom, we asked her if she wanted to run up and get a coffee (she always does). We were deciding what to order, and Shannon and Katelyn snuck up behind us. She was totally surprised!! :-)

Friday morning, my other cousin Michelle joined us and we headed up to Crumpler, NC. My friend Elyse has a great cabin in the mountains (thank you Elyse!!) that she let us use for the weekend. The drive there was a little scary...It rained pretty much the whole time, and once we finally got into the mountains...FOG! I could barely see ten feet in front of me! But, we eventually (after a slow trip up!) made it to the driveway.

The driveway...that's a story! OK...so Elyse told me that the driveway was steep. That we'd need to drop our car down into second gear and floor it up the driveway. So, we drop the cars into 2nd, and floor it. But...thanks to all the snow and rain this winter, the very steep driveway was turned to very steep mush. We were going nowhere...not spinning, not stuck, just not moving at all! So, what did we do? We grabbed our things and hiked the half mile up the mountain. Holy hamstrings! We were so exhausted! Luckily, there is a very nice man who lives at the bottom of the hill who takes care of the house. We called him, and after he got off work, he said he'd come up and see what he could do for us. So, he calls later that night and asks us to meet him down at our cars and he'd back them down the mountain and let us borrow his 4WD Subaru for the weekend. Great! Problem - no flashlights, and it is pitch black outside! And - what if there are bears!!?? But - my mom, Rachel, and I braved the dark scary driveway and began the trek down to our cars. Then about halfway there, out of nowhere, in the pitch black night, two giant dogs start running up to us! So, we silently panic a little. Come to find out, the dogs belonged to the nice man at the bottom of the hill. He saved us, we zipped the Subaru right up the mountain, and proceeded to have a wonderful weekend!

We had a little birthday party for mom on Friday night...complete with presents, cake, and games!

Decorating!

Michelle and Katelyn

Mom's Goodies

Happy 50th!

Mom opening her new Pandora Bracelet

Cupcake Cake

We spent the entire day Saturday hanging out, playing games, and enjoying each others company. It was so nice to have a girls weekend. We definitely don't do it enough!!