And Chevy Makes Four!

That's right folks...there's a new baby in our lives and we call her Chevy. :-)

We finally bit the bullet and decided the time had come to get rid of at least one of our old cars before they both bit the dust!  We are so pleased with our purchase!  We got a great deal and an even better interest rate, so we're very happy about that.  It will definitely be hard to have a car payment though considering neither of us have ever had one!  So, here's to the new baby...we love her very much and can't wait to show her off to all of you. :-)



Officially Purchased!



 

Getting ready to learn about all our fun features.



We're super excited.  And, we're super tired and hungry b/c we didn't leave the dealership till 10:00.  There's our salesman Miguel in the background!  :-)



The front seat...



There's the backseat...



Here's the dashboard...



Here's a closeup...



The front...



And the back...



Buddy's new bed/cover/don't drool or chew on our new car thingy...



And here's Barrett washing her on Day 3.  :-)




 







Fashion For Life and a 2nd Birthday

Thursday night, Anna and I went on a date for a good cause.  We attended the Fashion for Life fashion show at the Belk Theater here in Charlotte.  All the money from the event goes to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to support research for a cure.  One of the peds oncologists from our clinic is running for LLS Woman of the Year, and this was one of her fundraising events.  One of our kiddos is the LLS Charlotte Girl of the Year and a few of our patients, their siblings, and some staff members were in the show.  There was a silent auction, food, drinks, dessert (yum), and we had a wonderful time for an even more wonderful cause!  (note: terrible quality photos to follow). :-)

Side note:  Friday was the "2nd Birthday" of one of our patients at work.  He had a bone marrow transplant in Charleston.  The next couple months will be tough for him and his family, so say little prayers.  :-)  We all wore orange on Friday to show our support of him.  Orange is the color of Leukemia. 

Me and my coworker Greg showing a little love for our buddy. :-)

Diet Cake? Yes, Please.

OK...I've been wanting to try this cake for like...7 years?  I found it on a Weight Watchers discussion board when I big-time followed the WW program back in college.  I never got around to trying it, so this week I got a wild hair about me and decided to go for it.

Holy Yummy Town.

Two ingredients...cake mix and a diet soda.  That's it.  No eggs.  No oil.  No water.  Dry cake mix and 10 ounces of your favorite diet soda and you are on your way to a low cal dessert that doesn't taste like one.

I tried lemon cake mix (because lemon is awesome) and diet ginger ale.  Delish!  They say that dark cakes (chocolate, Devil's Food, etc.) go well with dark sodas (Coke, root beer, etc.) and that light cakes (white, yellow) go well with light sodas (Sprite, ginger ale, etc.)

This will be making a frequent appearance in my kitchen.  I am a total sweets junkie.  I just can't help myself.  I'd rather eat a piece of pie than a steak.  Seriously.  Now, I'll just have to keep myself from eating the whole pan at once! :-)

April Showers Bring...Parties?

Well, two weeks of crazy NC Spring weather and we have the parties to prove it.  :-)

Last week, we were in Wilmington for Bre and Kevin's wedding.  Bre is one of my sorority sisters.  She and Kevin have been together for almost the entire time I've known them, so it was really special to see them finally become husband and wife.  The wedding was at the Brooklyn Arts Center at St. Andrews.  It was the venue's inaugural event and they had all the guests sign a wood plank to place in the floor.  Bre did such an amazing job with the planning and it was all executed beautifully.  We got to see some wonderful friends and had such a fun time.  Congratulations Kevin and Bre Hatcher! 

On Monday night, we had a pretty serious storm roll through Charlotte.  They said there were 90 mile an hour gusts of wind!  I woke up in the middle of the night to Buddy staring me directly in the face...good times.  I got up to go to work on Tuesday morning and traffic was unbelievable!  After sitting in my car for about and hour and a half and barely getting 1.5 miles, I decided it would be in my best interest to turn around, head home, and try again later.  Come to find out, I-485 was closed.  CLOSED!  485 is a MAJOR road in Charlotte, especially during rush hour times for people trying to get into the uptown area.  So...all of those folks who usually use the parking lot better known as 485 were making a new parking lot on all of the alternate routes.  When I finally left my house at 11:00, traffic was still backed up and it took me almost an hour to get in.  Fun.

This weekend, we had a crawfish boil!  :-)  Matt and Lora were coming into town from Richmond because we had initially planned to go to the Avett Brothers concert here in Charlotte.  However, tickets sold out super fast and being that I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a true blue fan, we decided not to hunt too hard for tickets.  So, with the plan still for them to come to Charlotte for a visit along with a promise of good weather, we decided to pull out the turkey fryer/boiler pot/steamer we got for Christmas.  We planned to do a shrimp boil, but our friend Will told us there was a crawfish farm in SC.  When we looked into it, we were pleasantly surprised to find that it was only about 40 minutes from our house.  So, crawfish it was!  Matt and Lora brought their fur babies with them, so we had a bit of a doggie daycare for the weekend too!  Most people who came over had never eaten crawsfish before, and I think they were a hit!  We had such a fun time...great food, lots of good friends, and nice weather for a few hours.

Michael and Aundrea's baby Samuel :-)

Just as we were finishing our last batch of crawfish...the bottom fell out of the sky.  There was thunder, lightning, high winds, and then...Holy hail storm.  I've never seen anything like it!  The hail was just about the size of a large grape and it came down so hard it looked like a blizzard.  It piled up like snow around the drains coming off of the houses in the neighborhood.  Unbelievable.

It was a long, fun weekend.  We're all pretty tired...but the good kind of tired.  :-)  Hope you all have a wonderful beginning to your week.