weekend in durham

last weekend, we traveled to durham, north carolina to visit our friends ernie, samantha and sofia. it's hard to believe that i've known samantha for almost ten years already. we started grad school together in the fall of 1998. way back when, ernie and samantha's relationship was relatively new and i wouldn't even meet rob for another three years, a few months after s & e's wedding. a lot of wonderful things have happened over the past decade--we've both labored over intellectual babies (our dissertations) and labored with real babies (with another little girl on the way for samantha and ernie).
after some pesky travel delays, we finally arrived in NC on friday night...
...and on saturday morning, sofia was ready for a busy day, complete with the new pi t-shirt we brought for her. note the sun hat, water bottle, and totebag with baby toys for eleanor. she's definitely gearing up for big sister-hood!
we ate lunch at a great spot called elmo's in carrboro. samantha described it by saying "it's like the hamburg inn, but healthier." on our way back to durham, we stopped for bargain yarn shopping and some gourmet popsicles at locopops. mine was mojito flavored, rob had creamy lime and samantha's was pear almond. i'm jealous that there are no locopops locations in iowa city, but if there were, i'd have to eat them everyday, so maybe it's better that you can only get them halfway across the country.

she isn't even four yet, and sofia already knows how to rock a tiara and dangly earrings when she goes out for a pizza dinner. love it.

on sunday morning we went to duke gardens and got to drive around campus a bit, as well. the gardens are gorgeous and the duck pond was definitely a highlight.

here are the girls with their dads near the end of our stroll through the flowers.
that afternoon, samantha made a delicious blueberry peach buckle ("it's in the cobbler/buckle/ slump/grunt family of desserts") with some help from sofia.



the little ones had some fun on the swingset. sofia did a good job pushing, but note my nervous mom comment. yikes!

we got a little silly on monday morning and decided to put sofia's little mermaid wig on eleanor. normally the wig is worn only by cuddles, a teddy bear, which as you can see, is wise.

our visit was over all too quickly and i promised that next time we would stay longer. though blog posts, e-mails and phonecalls are all well and good, nothing beats seeing old friends live and in person. i miss them already! thanks, you three (and a half) for a wonderful weekend...