blessed with the best

so here we go.  girls weekend to south carolina take 2.  all my other besties have blogged about this trip already and since just our friends read our blogs {for the most part} you have probably read this four times.  yay for number 5!  we had the most wonderful time visiting ol' shannie shan down in her new town.  the only complaint i have is that our visit was far too short. 

i'll give you a recap of our 36 hours in south carolina.  this is my journal afterall, right? 

.we all have brown hair. and small eyes.  it was really sunny.

things started off a little rocky for me.  my first bump in the road was when i realized {at work} that i had left my pillow, blanket, boots, shampoo & phone charger at home.  i am usually such a good packer.  i have no idea  what happened to me!  i told my sweet, loving husband about a few of those items and he kindly brought them to my work.  he's the best.  at about 4:30 i realized that i also forgot to pack some very important medicine.  very important.  so bump number 2.  again my sweet hubby took it over to rachel's instead for her to bring to my office where we were all meeting.  shew....crisis averted {so i thought}.  i'm a scatter-brained mess but at least it all worked out before we had to go!

we left right after work on friday {5:00 on a friday, is there anything sweeter?}.  we had zero traffic trying to get to the interstate which was basically a miracle in lexington.  the lord wanted us in sc.  we stopped somewhere in southern kentucky at a packed pizza hut as rachel exclaimed "i got no where to be."  we had a feast of crackers, croutons & ranch as we waited half an hour for all our personal pan pizzas.  which 1.  were not cooked in a personal pan.  2.  was served in a bowl.  yes, i said a bowl {which our server didn't acknowledge}  3.  none of us could eat more than half our pizzas.  our eyes are bigger than our stomach...or maybe the 12 packs of crackers i ate were too much.  during this time we were also peer-pressuring jenna to drink as much mountain dew as her body could handle.  she had worked the past two nights in a row and barely slept at all in the past two days.  jenna drives a stick and well, the rest of us don't so she was the ONLY way we were getting to sc.  she had to be awake for it!

guess what happened when we went to leave.  yep, i forgot my wallet.  hours from home, no wallet, no credit card, nothing.  just when i thought i had everything together.  dang it!  luckily my sweet friend jenna covered me for the weekend.  can you imagine if i was driving all by myself!?  i surely would have waited until i nearly ran out of gas to find out that i had no money on me.  geesh!

on our merry way we went.  one detour through the north carolina mountains, lots of laughter {even to the point of crying}, some bathroom breaks, many songs sung at the top of our lungs & a few hours later we landed at shannon's home.  it was a good trip.  we got to town around midnight.  jenna was spent to say the least.  we sat around, ate gigi's cupcakes and caught up until we just had to pass out.

we got up around 10 and all got ready for the day.  it was fun to get ready together.  since we all used to be roomies with shan it was just like back in the day.  sometimes you just need a girlfriend to straigthen the curly pieces in the back of your head, you know?

we swiftly ran off to bojangles for some chicken biscuits.  rach wanted to buy a half gallon of sweet tea instead of a drink.  i don't think she did though.  i ate and ate.  it was delish.  we don't have one here in ky so it was a greasy treat just for us girls!  next off to the creepiest creepfest flea market.  we were excited because we love old junk but this was different.  they did have some fabulous giant dressers that i wanted so badly but unfortunately they wouldn't fit in the car.  it was cold and people were selling homemade rice crispie treats and drug store medicine.  it was really strange.  with the same speed we ran to bojangles, we ran away from the flea market.  you never know til you go, yes?

then for a more "sure" adventure we went to world market.  yes, it was glorious.    i could walk around that store for hours. literally.  i found some really great deals!

i got these sweet little tea towels which i promptly washed and ironed after i took this picture.  pardon all the wrinkles; i knew you'd love them anyway.

i got a little tart dish to hold jewelry in our guest bathroom.  you've got to pamper those guests!

i also got one of those glass contraptions that is short and fat to hold a candle.  i'm going to put hydrangeas in it instead once they start blooming!

and i got a curtain rod on super sale for our master bedroom which was a mini disaster because it didn't fit very nicely in the car.  thank you for your understanding other passengers.  i would have gotten beautiful curtains as well if they actually had them in the store.  i need to do some web-browsing :)

here's me & shannie shan, living it up.  why would they sell these hats? 

{sorry anyone who was thinking "wow, those are some cute hats."}

next was a starbucks run & then off to the river.  we love it there in downtown greenville.  it was a beautiful day as long as you were in the sun.

.princesses.

i really loved this blooming tree. i love yellow too.  i wasn't going to share it will you until i saw the girl walking on the bridge above.  and then i had to share it.

after people watching, dog watching, photo shoots & playing at the park we went to early dinner.  yep, right at 5:00.  that's when the restaurant opened.  i swear i'm 24.  the food was decent at the restaurant but the service was absolutely terrible.  our waitress left us for huge chunks of time without ever checking on us and forgot to bring rachel her appetizer.  when our food came rachel told our server to just take that off our order {sweetly} and the server didn't even apologize...can you believe it?  she said "oh, i just got caught up."  that's it!  and we know she didn't get caught up.  we all saw her standing at the bar chatting it up with the bartender.  comical.

it was getting chilly at dusk so all the rest of our hanging out was indoors.  we went to barnes & noble, caused a raucous, spoke & laughed loudly to the chagrin of holly who wanted to be a library, bought a giant sketch book to document mine and benny's life together & read magazines with the girls.  our final stop for the night was to a grocery store where we loaded up on little pints of ice cream and two-bite brownies to take back to the apartment.  we do what we want!  then we just hung out at shan's.  we talked all night.  until about 3.  and then we woke up at 11:00 a.m.  11:00 a.m.  i said.  we slept all whole morning away.  we had to leave at noon to make it home in time for campaigners so we packed up, went on a dunkin donuts run and that was that.  it was terrible to say good bye to shan.  we hate leaving her there.  but it is her home and she gets mad when i try and stuff her in my suitcase.  so we just had to blow kisses and get going.

the way home was uneventful.  oh wait.  we had lots more laughing.  bathroom stops. more mountians.  a 30 minute detour off our route just in the name of zaxby's chicken fingers & a speeding ticket.  we finished our journey as we finished our 11.5 hour playlist {made by dj jenna}.  it was perfect.

i am so blessed to have such a wonderful group of girl friends who are real, hilarious, beautiful and filled with the Spirit.  i'd go with them anywhere!

.to adventures.