alice and i left chicago together on a us airways flight to charlotte and then met tara at the charlotte airport where we boarded our itty bitty plane - still a jet, no prop, thankfully! and we took our short hopper flight to new bern airport which is in eastern NC. we de-planed on to the tarmac down the plane stairs which tara and alice found hilarious b/c they'd never done that before... i guess i've just been to my fair share of itty bitty airports! and at long beach, jetblue boards on the tarmac too. anyways... we get off the plane and it is truly a very small airport... and we begin to wonder just where the heck we were! susan met us at the airport and we began our hour-ish drive back to her and jeff's house in beaufort. their place is super cute! a pretty two story white house in a cute subdivision. that night we just hung out and had some fun.
at the new bern airport... tara and alice and i wait for susan to come rescue us!
on saturday, we got up and went in to downtown historic beaufort which is known for its pirates. it's one of the oldest towns in the US. so we wandered around the waterfront and then headed to atlantic city beach (i think this is what it was called!) where it was too chilly to actually spend much time there, but we got to see it and walk around on the beach for a bit. then we headed to this novelty store called merv's or if you are a local, perv's. we had some good laughs and then headed to the pumpkin patch. well, ok... not so much a patch as the front of a church that was selling pumpkins. i refused to get pumpkins from the store. i'd have preferred a hayride or something, but whatever...picking out pumpkins from the church yard seemed to be good enough. after many many minutes of walking around and looking for the perfect pumpkin, we each found one for ourselves and susan also got one for jeff. that evening, we put on our finest for beaufort or maybe the surrounding down just over the bridge - we had dinner at shef's 105 or something along those lines. it was a really yummy dinner! then we headed back downtown for a few drinks at the wine bar. it was a fun evening!
inside the general store, alice and i played dress up!
the beaufort general store!
on the beaufort boardwalk
at the beach... tara, me, susan and alice
me and susan
brrrrrr...it's kinda chilly!
susan told us to be funny... but what the heck am i doing?!
our pumpkin selections!
at dinner, jeff was one very very lucky man!
obligatory photo in front of the fireplace!
alice and i loved this sign - it says civil war trails... her dad is the biggest civil war fan and one year dragged us from IN to New Orleans and along the way we stopped at every single civil war battle site...ever!
then on sunday, we decided we should go to the havelock chili cook off. havelock is just by the base and so we headed over. it's about 30 mins or so from susan's house. we got there and then met up with susan's friend, kate. we then drove around for awhile looking for said cookoff. which we couldn't find. but we did see some signs and a place where it looked like the chili cook off could have been, but we didn't understand where it was now. until someone brought up the date and it turns out the cook off was fri-sat...not sat-sun like we thought. gosh danggit!!! btw folks, havelock is NOT a big town... there are not that many parks and grassy areas for the chili cook off to have been. ummmm... yeah... we all felt real smart so we headed over to diesel which is a restaurant/bar in havelock to have a drink or two and some food and to hang out with kate. bummer! no chili!! that evening susan and jeff's friends came over - rachael and her husband, john. they were adorable and we had a great dinner and drink time with them.
ummmm, this is where the chili cook off should be....
but it wasn't b/c we were there on sunday the 18TH!!!
two thumbs down for being dumb and having it on a fri/sat and not sat/sun!!! boooo!!!!
bo-han-glays... this was the joke all weekend. from alice declaring it to be her favorite place to susan declaring she would never ever go there to jeff and susan calling it bo-han-glays instead of bo-jang-les b/c of an inside joke. they had a friend who say the fast food joint and asked about it and called it bo-jang-lays like they would say in mexico... maybe you had to be there, but it is the funniest thing ever. i promise. and then they have endless and i mean endless commercials on the radio for bo-han-glays. crazy!
on monday, jeff took us to the base where we met up with susan who worked that morning. susan took us to lunch on base and then showed us around her work. and then! then the fun!! jeff took us to his part of the base and showed us the flight school area and his plane, the harrier. until i met jeff, i had no freaking clue what the heck a harrier was. no i know lots. mainly b/c i grilled him. probably to death. i am probably the question girl to him... but i couldn't help it! i was so curious... and fascinated!! after our tour, jeff took us up to the old air tower and we got to watch a bunch of harriers and other aircraft (but mostly harriers) take off and land and do their practice drills. jeff is the guy that gets to teach/train the new guys to be harrier pilots. so. freaking. cool. these are the pics that are on alice's camera b/c my camera died. and they might just be the coolest ones ever. the thing about the harrier is that it can land and take off by hovering. the thing hovers. like a ufo. so cool to watch. they are so fast. and so loud! i just can't even describe how cool it was. if you guys have a chance, definitely go see them! it was like being at the air show, but better! after a lot of time up in the old control tower, jeff had to get back to work so we went to go to rachael who works in one of the units. she gave us more of a tour which was really cool. we got to see where they do maintenance on the planes which happens after like every flight. crazy.
how cool is this plane?!
another view of the harrier. unfortunately, i didn't take either one of these cool photos, but they will have to do until susan and or alice gets me the real pictures we took that day!!
from there, the other part of the exciting day was that we went over to taberna which is a sub division in new bern where my childhood friend, kenzie and her family live. kenzie had literally just had baby emma on the thursday before... so i got to meet the newest family member! then we were able to just catch up. it had been ages since i'd seen her or really even talked to her and it was so so so good to catch up with her!!! we met in the 4th grade when she, her brother, tanner, and their mom moved in down the block. we met at school and became instant best friends doing everything together! and i mean everything: gymnastics, lemonaid stands, selling crap door to door.... we even got our first and only dog from them when they adopted two labs but could only keep one. goldy was the best! anyways... she had sent her husband and two other kids out to play so that we could talk, but they came back just in time for me to meet them and they were just as adorable in person as they were in person. so freaking cute!!!! we only had about an hour... i wish we'd had more!! but, the fun wasn't over! later that evening, rachael came over and the four of us drank wine, ate yummy chili and crappy (ie yummy) cookies and other treats and carved our pumpkins.
kenzie and me... can you believe she had a baby literally 4.5 days before this picture?! so not fair... she looks amazing!!
here are her beyond adorable kids - peyton and davis. they couldn't be cuter!!!
here are me and kenzie with peyton, baby emma, and davis... seriously, how cute are they?!!?!? look as those smiles!! sorry patrick (their daddy), but they are total mini me's of kenzie... patrick has dark dark hair! he's a harrier pilot too.
carving pumpkins. i hadn't done this in years. and by years, i don't think since i was a kid. i really can't remember. but susan had gone all out and bought stencils. so we duked it out for the more popular ones and got to work on gutting them. this took a lot of work!! so did the actual carving. so much harder than we all thought! good thing we had loud music and loads of wine!! after the carving was done, we cleaned up and pulled out the booze. since there aren't many bars to go to in beaufort, esp on a mon night... we made our own party. and somehow the costumes came out and well... just see the pics! we had fun :)
holy knife alice!!! be careful with that thing!!
i'd like to point out the stencil on my pumpkin accompanied by lovely red wine glass and susan's stellar scooping out pumpkin guts skills!
after pumpkin carving was done, it became the table o' booze.
ohhhhh, the wine has started to kick in!!!
jeff is a 'mile high pilot'... he came home late from work and joined the party like such a good trooper. he even took a shot or two with alice who kept swearing she was sober... three ways to tell alice is wasted: 1. she claims she is perfectly sober 2. she starts dancing and 3. she sings! btw, i think every night we were there we got her to do all three!!!
really!? did i really post this?! yes, yes i did. and yes, i was wearing a coconut bra! perhaps this should be my new fb pic!? haaha, i think no.
tara's awesome wig... we tried to play table tennis on the dining room table and we played some other game on the hallway floor that susan had waxed reaaaaaaaally well. so well that almost every single one of us almost slipped and fell!!
our awesome pumpkins on the front porch of casa poe: my cat, rachael's witch, tara's bat, susan's ghost, and alice's drunky drunk pumpkin creation!
on tues, it was time to say goodbye... we all piled in susan's car and took off for the tiny beaufort airport....eventually boarded our plane and headed home... such a fun trip!!
4 comments:
may I just say how impressed I am with your pumpkin carving skills! those look totally professional!!!
what a fun trip!!!
looks like such a fun weekend.
i was trying to ask the boys this weekend about herring jets, and got made major fun of for confusing harriers with a kind of fish. whoooops!
looks like a super fun weekend. please post the coconut bra photo as your facebook picture!
haha, devs that is so funny!
catherine... they were stencils. it was hard to go too wrong :)
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