UNCW Girls Beach Week 2010

Once Ja and his fam dropped me off in Wilmington, I was ready to sit back and relax for the next week.  Riley had been hanging out with Deddy the week I was in Florida, so I was excited to get back to him and to be able to spend some time with the fam.  Mom and I were able to bop around on Monday and go shopping a bit and get stuff ready for the girls to arrive Monday night.

Since my UNCW girls and I had been together in March, we decided that it would be awesome if we could get together for more than a long weekend.  Since most of us are teachers, we started to plan a week in the summer that we could all come down to Wilmington and relive our college days.  Kelly, Katie, Michelle, Jenna, and Jenna's boyfriend, Scott, made it down!!!  No one lives in Gramps' house now, it was the perfect free location!  (Background on Gramps’ house - When my grandpa moved down to Wilmington with us my parents built a garage apartment behind their house.  It is the perfect place for someone to live.  It has a small kitchen and a bathroom and it just a big open room.  Perfect for about 6 air mattresses to be set up wall to wall for us to crash on!!

That week was AWESOME!!  We got up in the morning (progressively later as the week went on) and headed to the beach.  We knew we wanted to hit up all of our old eating spots, so we had to be diligent with our meals!  We needed to go to the Bagel Basket, Flaming Amy's, Trolly Stop, J. Michael's, Hieronymus, and I'm sure I'm leaving places out.  We had a lot of ground to cover and a limited number of meals.  So after beaching it all day every day, we ate at our places, and then hit up our favorite night spots!  Downtown Wilmington was kind of dead earlier in the week, but we got to see a GREAT band after much persuading (Bibbis Ellison) and we also got some good time at our favorite, Level 5. 

During that week I also got to see my best friend since the 5th grade, Maggie, and when Ja got down later in the week we were able to get some drinks with my good friends Carrie and Kim, and Carrie's husband, Matt. 

To me that was the perfect week.  Got to spend time with my fam, my very best friends, my husband, and the beach!!!  I am definitely a beach bum from way back.  I would like to die sitting in a beach chair at Wrightsville!

Some pictures from the week:

Michelle, Katie, Scott, Jenna, Kelly, and Maggie at Firebelly trying to decide if we are young enough to still be able to pull off a Baltimore Zoo.  The glass with the straws contains 11 different liquors and some Sprite, I think, and the goal is to drink that entire glass as someone pours the beer on top.  This used to be our go to drink because it was a cheap way to start the night off so you didn’t have to buy too many beers!

And we have success!  We are not too old!!  YAY!!!

Lyndsay and Kelly at The Whiskey.  Lyndsay is a good friend of ours from UNCW who invited us out to hear one of the best bands I’ve heard in a long time.  I linked to Bibis’ facebook page, but that is nothing like hearing her in real life.  That was a great night.  Thanks, Lynds!

Katie, Michelle, and Kelly.  Kelly was my roommate my freshman year of college and Katie and Michelle lived two doors down from us.  The four of us lived together the whole four years of college – in one arrangement or another!

Josh, Michelle, and Jenna.  Josh is another really good friend of ours from UNCW who still happens to be in Wilmington.  He will be packing up soon and heading to Duke to start PA school.  We were so glad we got to spend at least a little while with him!

Michelle, Katie, Jenna, Me, and Kelly.  A little later in the week we decided to have a nice dinner.  Since most of us were teachers, this was the night that we got paid!!  One of our favorite places to go when we wanted to celebrate something (and we never had a hard time finding something to celebrate!) was Hieronymus.  The have the BEST shecrab soup and cheddar bay biscuits.  Red Lobster ain’t got NOTHING on Hieronymus.  Since we were going kind of fancy, we all decided to rock our maxi dresses (or maxipad dresses as my husband calls them!).  All of the girls look BEAUTIFUL!

After our lovely evening at Hieronymus we headed downtown to our very fav – Level 5!  It is a rooftop bar right on the river in downtown Wilmington and was always our hot spot when we were back in college.  Lucky for us there was NO ONE there that night and it was Throw Back Night.  Usually having no one at a bar is boring, but when you have all of us, all we need is some awesome music, a dance floor, and an empty beer bottle.  We play Spin The Bottle – Bust A Move edition.  If the bottle stops on you, you HAVE to break it down.  The few people that were in the bar with us were great sports and played along.  And no – it is not embarrassing at all.  You look like a loser if you don’t play.

Jason got down to Wilmington Thursday night and he came out with us.  Since there wasn’t much going on but us, he was our official Protector of the Pocketbooks.  He graciously held the bar down while we were out jiving it up!

If that doesn’t look like a badass dance party, I don’t know what does.

This is 1036 Page Avenue.  This is where the girls (and I) lived our junior and senior years.  I technically lived at home in Gramps’ house those two years, but I did have my name on the bathroom door.  I was over there 87% of the time, so it counts!