Jimmy V

So I have told you all before that I am a "crier". Well, now my fellow Gold's Gym members know it. Picture this: I am getting onto the treadmill and instead of changing the TV to Bravo! per usual, it is on ESPN and they are discussing the upcoming Georgia vs. LSU game so I leave the TV alone. About half way through my run, ESPN begins a feature focusing on "Jimmy V". Jim Valvano was a championship winning coach at N.C. State in the early 1980's, he went on to serve as the Athletic Director there and then worked as a basketball analyst for ESPN. At the young age of 46 he was diagnosed with cancer. In March 1993, he was presented with the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the first ESPY's, announced the formation of The V Foundation For Cancer Research and gave this speech:

I was bawling. I had to slow the treadmill to a walk and then stop it completely. The women on either side of me were definitely concerned. Then I obviously came home and tried to describe this episode to Sam but couldn't do it justice. It brought some much needed enthusiasm to my day and I hope you all enjoy as well. Thanks for reading & watching!

Mary

A Real Thanksgiving Blessing

Sarah and Whitner are engaged!!!

The future Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy!

Whitner proposed on Thanksgiving Day and Blair was lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving with Whitner and his family and help celebrate the happy couple. Sarah and Whit are great friends to Blair and I both and I always look forward to the weekends I get to spend in Spartanburg because we get to spend time with both of them. I am so excited for these two and what could we be more thankful for than two of our good friends deciding to spend their lives together? Not much. Well, besides the fact that the Georgia Bulldogs stomped Georgia Tech...I digress. I hope you all had an awesome extended weekend and got your fill of family, food, and football. Have a great week and thanks for reading!

Mary

Giving Thanks & Going Home

Tomorrow I am heading home to Atlanta for Turkey Day and I am counting down the hours! One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is all of the people that I get to visit with; family and old high school friends alike. Something about driving around Atlanta in the fall also makes me feel like no time has passed since I was 18 and riding up and down on the same roads going to my aunt's home or our old high school hang out.

I think this pretty much covers it! Image via Pinterest

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend plan that includes (but is not limited to) spending time with family and friends, eating and drinking, maybe doing some shopping and definitely lots of football watching. Thank[ful]s for reading!

Mary

Five

Um where is 2011 going!? Don't get me wrong, I am very excited that April 21, 2012 will be here before we know it but there are definitely times where I feel as though the list of things left to do is double or triple as long as things that have actually been done. So, as a month has passed since six, Blair and I have gotten a good bit accomplished in the past month; mainly one of the things that I was most worried about with Blair who has intense mall-phobia: registering.

71 Casserole Dishes?

Blair and I tackled Pottery Barn a while ago and it was actually a lot of fun. Electronics stress me out so Blair was put in charge of the scanner and off we went. Following a brief distraction thanks to the "Pocket Pets" that were being sold outside the store, we managed to get a lot done and got really excited about building our first home together...until we both started to get a little punchy. Blair tried to convince me that we needed to register for a globe and then wanted to ask for a decorative iron phone paper weight (I am not describing this well), which he proceeded to pick up and talk into as though someone really was on the other line. This behavior prompted the Pottery Barn register boss to [not so] politely ask us if we were done. Oooops.

Then we tackled Belk and to just be completely honest, the women at Belk loved Blair. They thought it was so sweet that Blair had agreed to join me and that he seemed so excited. And we were, until favorite employee #1 printed out our registry to see what we had so far and it turned out that Blair had accidentally registered for 71 casserole dishes. Yikes. We also picked this out and I know Blair would like to extend a personal thank you to anyone that is kind enough to provide this for us as a gift in our first kitchen:

The one-egg pan. Blair was all about this.

More importantly, Blair willingly entered the mall twice of his own free will. It really was a lot of fun and I am thankful that we got to do this together. April here we come!

Thanks for reading and I hope you all had a great weekend!

Mary

Seriously

Image via Pinterest

Hope you all have something fun planned & thanks for reading!

Mary

Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor in Chief of The New York Times,

I really appreciate that you let me read 20 free articles a month regarding world news, travel, books, fashion, etc. (including your Civil War blog...nerd alert!). However, this is also my complaint. Am I too much of a penny pincher to actually buy an online subscription? Maybe. My strategy of trying to keep count in my head of how many articles I have read so far this month is already failing. So, as a favor to your more money savvy readers, may I suggest you create a tally icon to be placed somewhere on the screen so that I do not find myself in current predicament again; its the 15th of the month and I am fresh out of articles. Keep up the good work [on a budget].

Thanks for reading!

Mary

364 More

Like I said, I love birthdays and yesterday was not a disappointment. A nice morning at work, lunch with friends, the afternoon off and dinner with the yellow house and the Wofford girls and I was one happy birthday camper!

Brownies. Chick-fil-A biscuit & calendar with coupons. Do my co-workers know me or what?

Flowers from my sweet friend Jenny and our collection of birthday cakes

Thank you for all of the texts, e-mails, facebook messages, and cards. It was a wonderful day and only 364 days until the next one! This weekend we are watching the Terrier take on Georgia Southern (ew) and my dad and Aunt Susan are coming up for the game and I am so excited! I hope you all have something fun planned this weekend, thanks for reading!

Mary

Wish List

When did my birthday list turn from this...

I'm a Barbie girl. Not even a little bit ashamed.

To this...

I absolutely want a sound machine for my birthday/Christmas/so my co-workers don't hate me.

Where did the years go!? I will be 25 tomorrow and cannot believe it. I love birthdays (yes, selfishly I love my own too) because I think they are a great way to remind someone of how special they are and celebrate that person; whether its a parent, sibling, friend, whatever, I am one of those "birthday people". My greatest wish for tomorrow though is just to just enjoy it, this will be my last birthday with my roommates in the yellow house and I am so excited about spending time with them and the Wofford girls tomorrow night...and maybe a Barbie or two.

Thanks for reading!

Mary

Celebrating The Old

Five years ago this weekend Blair and I began officially dating (wahoo!). Now, Blair says this doesn't count as an anniversary because our wedding date will obviously take the place of that but I say it does. What are our plans for this weekend? Glad you asked. Tomorrow is "date night". Not sure what that means yet but I want to see the J. Edgar Hoover movie...cool right? Saturday=football for Blair and a trip to the J.Crew outlet with my friend Sarah for me. I guess the day that we are meant to celebrate "us" we should be doing exactly what we would normally do. Fine by me! But first, a brief walk down memory lane...

Formal

 Wofford

Fall House

The Row

Swampwater

Clemson

My mother's favorite

Hope you all have a great weekend and thanks for reading!

Mary

I'm Coming Home To You

Well Homecoming 2011 was a success as was expected. Despite some nasty weather on Friday night, we still managed to enjoy a small cookout at Blair's house and then headed to the row to revisit our old stomping grounds/really just be looked at like we are old and stomping on other peoples' ground. Oh well!

Kickoff Cookout at Blair's Friday night

The grill master braving the rain

"The Girlfriends"; we survived!

Reunited!

Just as it should be

Saturday we all regrouped and headed back to campus to watch the Terriers pull off a great win against Elon. Saturday afternoon and night was spent watching lots of football and hanging out with our friends

Megan and I at her parents wonderful tailgate

Go Terriers!

Blair with 2 of his roommates from his senior year

A little fun in the sun.

Still scratching my head wondering where the weekend went but going back to Wofford makes me so thankful for the time that I was lucky enough to spend there. One of my non-Wofford coworkers was saying to some of the Wofford work crowd that they didn't realize homecoming was such a big deal. One of my Wofford coworkers response? "Psh! Only the biggest!" Couldn't have said it better, thanks for reading!

Mary