whata weekend!!

we had such a great weekend in Charlotte with our friends Danny and Amber! After audie got off work we drove to Durham and went to their house. We ate dinner at Cracker Barrell, yummy, carb city!! So good, then we were on the road to Charlotte, about a 2.5 hour car ride, so we were there around 11. We stayed at an amazing hotel!! A friend of Amber's was a former employee of this company so we got a friends/family discount and got this amazing hotel for cheaper than less nice ones around. I was really impressed which probably points out that i'm a total hick that hasn't ever stayed in a 4 star hotel before. It was just super nice, we got turn down service, a minibar (super expensive, so we didn't partake of that), robes and a great view of the downtown area. We loved staying there and loved the great deal we got.

Saturday morning Danny and Audie walked down for the comic convention and Amber and I slept in a bit more. Danny and Amber's room actually had worn out towels in it (a maid or someone accidentally left the cleaning towels rather than the clean towels) so they got a coupon for a free breakfast for two in the hotel restaurant. The boys went to get bagels at another local place, but we got a great breakfast buffet, so YUMMY!! (best part it was like a 18 dollar meal each, but we got it free!) Then we set out for IKEA!!! I was SO excited!!! I had never been and wasn't really looking for anything in a real way, but just wanted to look at everything and experience the store!

It was so much fun!! We went through the show room part first, and looked at all the set up rooms and ways that the furniture can be customized and used together to make the rooms and stuff! SO GREAT!! It was really neat to see the 'complete' ikea look. but really my style is just way more traditional than the majority of the furniture. Even though i didn't want most of it in my house it was still an awesome thing to behold, and i love it all so much!! i found a sofa, some chairs, closet customization stuff, and an amazing kitchen that i want in my future house, but wound up not buying anything. But we looked all around upstairs, broke for lunch and then went through the downstairs marketplace where you can fill up your bag/buggy! Overall i think we were there for like 4 hours!

After that we went back to the hotel and flipped through the ikea catalogs we picked up when we were going out the door and just lazed around, the boys came back and we all took some naps and showered after our long shopping/walking/conventioning days. We then saw a good friend of mine from High School, Jessica and her husband who just moved to Charlotte. It was so good to see an old friend and get to meet her hubby. We went to dinner and walked around downtown and wound up at a lounge type place and had some drinks and just visited and hung out. we wound up closing down the place around 11 and went back to the hotel lobby to sit and visit some more.

This morning we came on back to durham after sleeping in. we made it all the way back to durham without stopping for lunch because we had such late breakfasts, so we went for Mellow Mushroom for lunch and have gotten back to Raleigh all safe and sound.

This week is going to be a lot quieter and chill, because we don't have a ton going on, we're going to just be hopefully unpacking and settling in more, it seems crazy that we have that much more to get put up, but we still do have a lot of work to do. I think that this weekend we might go and get our new driver's licenses, let's hope that i don't fail the driving test or something!!

alrighty, that's about all for now!

julia