Garden Party

this past weekend the pups and I spent four glorious days in Wilmington

the weather was absolutely perfect 

gotta love filters because even though the beach day was wonderful I am still just as pasty as ever

I took Beau and Maverick to walk the loop which was challenging but I think they loved it

historically last weekend is a big one in the books for Wilmington because it is the Azalea Festival

there are all kinds of parties, concerts, street fairs, and parades to celebrate a flower blooming

google it.

it is a little absurd but makes for a fun tradition

this is Caitlin and I in high school dressed as Azalea Belles
case and point about the ridiculous traditions of Wilmington

this year I did not get to attend any of the events that were part of the festival

but I did get to go to Julia's bridal shower

it was held by her soon to be sister in law

above are the gifts I got for the bride to be

my mom makes wine and I just took four bottles and hand wrote personal labels for her

the "gift bag" is dual purpose. it is a laundry-blanket-towel-beach-store-crap-where-ever-bag.

I stuffed it with a pizza stone, make your own pizza dough kit, and the wine of course! 

 Julia and I have been friends since the summer before starting college

even though she went to ECU and I went to State we remained close through mutual friends 

she started dating her soon to be husband, Will, just a few months after Jared and I did in 2008

it has been so fun to watch their relationship grow over the years

I can't wait for their wedding the first weekend of May

[I saw a picture of her in her wedding dress and starting crying. I will be a hot mess the day of]

I was so inspired by my mom's garden and all of the garden festivities of the weekend that we decided to start a garden of our own

my mom was so excited we were interested that she bought us all the essentials to get us started

[yeah, she is the best]

the people that lived here before us made planter boxes so we thought it would be a piece of cake to repurpose those babies for our garden adventure

thank goodness my mom let us borrow her tiller to break up all that over grown crap

first box has 5 different kinds of tomatoes

second box has peppers, spinach, and carrots

third box had watermelons, cucumbers and onions

Beau enjoyed helping show off the beautiful work we did

we had to fence around the boxes to make sure the two of them didn't go Godzilla on our plants

however, the fence proved to be no match for them since this morning I found two destroyed tomato plants and a half dug up box of dirt...

[I truly almost sobbed, but I also hadn't had my coffee yet.]

it has since been stabilized and and is now (hopefully) puppy proof

then we just have this adorable pot of basil sitting neatly on the kitchen window

[I would be very impressed if they could get to that and rip it to shreds]

today was back to "work"

it was one of our professional group days

basically we get together we other new grads/hires from the floor and ICU to complain about how our jobs can suck at times but we love what we do...

they call it "networking within the health system"

but really we get paid to eat out, gossip, vent and do things like this:

yeah, it is pretty awesome.

but now I have to work a crap ton of days in a row

boo.