the ussery life: NC is the Place to Be!

We've been NC bound over the past 3 weekends. First, the mountains. Secondly, the Piedmont. (Thank you, Mrs. Kinney, my wonderful 4th grade teacher, for teaching me so much about the state of North Carolina. You were the best!) Okay, so...here's what's been going on with the Ussery Jrs. during the Fall, y'all....

Brotherly Love....The boys are quickly becoming best friends. They really have no choice since they've learned that I'm not that much fun to play with sometimes and that Scout eventually grows weary and runs to our closet for some R&R. Doesn't the book A Tale of Two Cities start with "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times..." or something like that? Whatever it's that's from, it could accurately capture any given moment of Jack and Finn's relationship. But for this picture, it was the best of times.

Much like Jack did at this age, Finley is in the process of becoming a Daddy's boy. He'll sometimes cry for John when he goes to work, and he'll always ask for his Daddy. It's really cute and such a blessing to see Finn wanting to be with and LIKE his superhero Dad.

This picture was taken on our way up to Greensboro a few weekends ago. We stopped in Charlotte to hang with our buddy, Camden. The boys had so much fun together. It made me wish for the millionth time that they still lived close to us. And that we also had a Pottery Barn Kids, too.

More BL going on here. This picture was taken at none other than....THE HARDEEVILLE CATFISH FESTIVAL!!!!! (read that in your best car dealership announcer voice. It's fun.) Hardeeville is a tiny town close to Bluffton, but not tiny enough to ignore the beauty of a catfish festival. I would post other...ahem...cultural pictures from that day, but like I said, it's a tiny town next to our little town, and you never know whos related to whom who might read somebody's blog. We enjoyed the Denton's company and some funnel cake. A great Saturday if you ask me!

Onto Waynesville....We happened to catch this cute mountain town during a festival as well! We are into festivals I guess? While this one didn't have catfish nearby, it did have some awesome balloon animals, neat crafts, Native Americans playing wooden flutes, cloggers (only cool people clog), and funnel cake! (Count it...2 funnel cakes for the Usserys this month.) Here's our little viking man...

And here's EleFINN! Finn loved the festival and riding on his Dad's shoulders.

The Weavers and Galbreaths were with us on this trip, which was so great. We had quality time in a small cabin trying to get 3 hyper boys to fall asleep in the same room! They were all great and hung in there for the busy weekend. Here's a picture of Jason telling Jack and Carter a story about the first time someone ate a roasted marshmallow. I'm pretty sure their names were Indian Jack and Cowboy Carter. Hmmm....convenient?

Our Galbreath/Ussery/Weaver mountain trip is one we will definitely have to do again! Thanks for all the awesome memories!

Next stop....Greensboro! Usually we make the venture mainly to see family. This time was to see family AND friends! Friends from 10 years ago. That's right. It was 10 year reunion time for yours truly. Here's one shot of the gang from our Saturday evening function. The turnout was great, and everyone seemed to have a fun time catching up and hanging out. If your reunion is coming up, GO! Thanks to everyone who came! It was so nice seeing all of you.

After the reunion on Saturday was Melissa and Matt's Baby Shower. Look at my poor brother...staring at that piece of paper thinking, "What do I write down? What was that last thing that she just opened? It looked like a white bucket with a hole in the top, but did I hear someone say something about a Champ?" :) Melissa is due in early December. They're not finding out what the sex is, which is exciting. So far, the guesses are leaning towards girl. I figure SOMEONE has to have a girl, right? Either way, I can't wait to meet this baby. The shower went really well, and baby got tons of great stuff.

Another great thing about going home...friends from waaaaay back! Great seeing everyone! This is Lisa, my friend for forever.

As this picture shows, the weather was coooold for part of our stay. So cold that Matt brought out his Snuggie. He LOVES lounging in his Snuggie. Can you blame him? HAHA!!! I tried the Snuggie on for a while and I must say, Well Done, makers of Snuggie!

On Thursday we headed to the NC State Fair. Jamie came with us, thankfully. Otherwise I would have spent my afternoon at the Lost Child stand. We wore ourselves out at the fair....rides, slides, facepainting, eating...you name it. We did it. Or it felt like we did anyway. Here we are atop the ferris wheel. This was Finn's only ride of the day. But as Jack would tell you, "Finney was vewy, vewy bwave."

Here's Capt. Brave himself....

This one is a little crooked, but if you're a parent, you know this look. It's that 'Can we ______?!?!?!?!" Fill in the blank with "ride this ride again" "eat more pizza" "get another drink" "play that game" "buy that toy"....etc. This was what I saw most of the day, but can you blame them? It's the FAIR!

I guess the look worked some of the time...They played this fishing game. It was one of those 'everyone wins' games. And since I don't want my children facing failure at such early ages :) I let them play. We're now the proud owner of a knock off yellow Snoopy and itchy frog. Worth every penny. All 400 of them.

This is the slide that the kids cried over. They're used to playgrounds where you can slide an unlimited number of times for free. This wasn't that kind of place. But they enjoyed suiting up in their potato sacks and plummeting to the bottom. (So did I.)

And here's why most people come to the fair. Atherosclerosis! Any takers??? I had always heard the rumors about fair food...fried candy bars, fried butter, chocolate covered bacon and what not, but there was part of me that thought there was no way. Well, apparently, there is a way. I didn't see fried butter or the chocolate bacon thing, but pretty much everything else is available in fried fashion. We had to try something, so we went for the Snickers. We didn't even know what to expect, but it was basically a warm, gooey snickers wrapped with funnel cake (That's now the 3rd funnel cake reference in this post) and powdered sugar on a stick. Don't turn your nose up. Because it was good. We avoided heart attacks by splitting it among the 4 of us, but note that all 4 of us could have inhaled our own. Jack later told his Mimi that he really liked that chocolate corn dog that he had at the fair.

After the fair, we headed to NCSU to see Aunt Jackie. We stopped by her house long enough for the boys to work their magic on Jackie's roommates. It was so good to see these sweet girls and spend a few minutes with them. Oh, to be a college student again!