Our Birmingham Weekend

We had such a great long weekend in Birmingham!  On Thursday afternoon, the four of us headed over and arrived just before dinnertime.  Ryan and I love to eat at our old favorites each time we go back, so we visited Gianos.  It's a little deli in Vestavia where we ate probably twice a week while at Samford.  The funny thing is, every time we go back, the owner asks how we've been and has said he misses us!  It was just as good as we remembered.  Afterwards, we visited a new place called The Yogurt Tap which was neat.  They have a dozen different flavors of yogurt plus many, many toppings to choose from.  We all enjoyed it.

On Friday morning, we met a sorority sister of mine named Ann Wade Parrish at Samford.  Ann Wade is an excellent photographer.  She took lots of pictures of the girls and our family all over Samford's campus.  I can't wait to see them!  I'll be sure to post some once she sends them to us.  After the pictures, we went to Milos for their famous burgers and sweet tea; yum!  After Milos, we stopped by a local playground that is awesome.  Lily describes it as looking like a castle which is true.  They had a great time climbing and sliding until a hail storm came out of nowhere and we scampered back to the car.  From here we went home to put the girls down for their naps.  Once they were down, Ryan and I went to a new bookstore called 2nd and Charles.  It's a concept store by Books A Million that basically buys books, DVDs, CDs, and games from individuals and resells them.  It was great!  We found tons of good items for the girls which is always fun.  From here we went to Lifeway Christian and found a few things too; I love Christmas shopping!  After shopping we went to the movie theatre and watched "Red."  It was a pretty good movie, and we really enjoyed going out to a movie; it's been way too long.  By this point, we were hungry and we couldn't resist the call of Dreamland.  As they say "Ain't nothing like 'em nowhere" and that is so true!  To finish the evening, we headed to Brookwood Mall to walk around and enjoy a Great American Cookie.  We ran into an old friend named Sam Duffy while we were there, so it was nice to catch up with him.  What a fun day!

On Saturday morning, we visited Ranch House for breakfast; this is always a favorite with us.  After breakfast, we went out to Patton Creek and looked around for awhile, then we went back to Liz's to watch some of the Florida game.  A little after noon we headed back up to Samford for Homecoming.  We walked around a bit until we came across Daniel and Courtney Cox.  Daniel and Ryan were fraternity brothers and Ryan and Courtney had grown up together.  We always have a lot of fun visiting with them, and they also had their precious son, Clayton, with them.  It was great to catch up with them.  While we were there, we also caught up with Amy Doblestein and a few other old acquaintances.  We hung out with Daniel through the first half of the Samford game and decided to head on out; it was really pretty chilly, and we wanted to see the Alabama versus LSU game.  We enjoyed hanging out with family while watching the game.  Towards the end of the game, Ryan and I went to Jackson's for dinner.  The best part of any meal there is always dessert; tonight we had s'mores which were awesome.  We did a little more Christmas shopping at The Summit afterwards and decided to call it a night.

This morning we enjoyed another relaxing morning, and then went to Shades Mountain Baptist for church.  Ryan grew up here, and we both attended during college, so it's always nice to go back here.  We were able to visit with our friend Emily for a bit afterwards which was great.  The girls had lots of fun in their Sunday School classes; Lily told me later she made a new friend in her class.  She couldn't remember her name, but she said she wore a pink dress and they played with the balls on the playground together.  After church we went to lunch at Baha Burgers which was a delicious treat (seriously, we ate our way through Birmingham this weekend!).  With the time change this weekend and going into Central time, the girls were really off schedule by this point, so we headed on back to Atlanta.  Both girls were asleep before we hit I-20, and they slept for about 2 hours of the 2.5 hour trip.

This was such a wonderful and fun weekend.  We really appreciate all the babysitting Liz did so Ryan and I could relax and enjoy time together as relived lots of fun memories.  I know the girls had a blast hanging out with Bama!  They went to parks, ponds, playgrounds, restaurants and shops together.  The girls love getting to see and try new things, so this was great for them.  We look forward to going back soon!