I don’t know about you but I love the James Taylor song.  Love it.

So as you know if you follow me at all we spent a glorious week in North Carolina two weeks ago for vacation.  You might also know that we lived in North Carolina for four years while Matt was doing his residency at Wake Forest University and absolutely loved it.  There is the possibility that we might move back once we are all done here in Rhode Island, but that is still a ways off.  (However that doesn’t stop me from looking at real estate there.  Trust me, don’t look at real estate there, it will just depress you when you see what you can get for what you spent here.  Yeahhhh.  Just don’t do it.)  Anyways.  When we were there I was teaching Spanish at Page High School in Greensboro and I became super close with one of the Social Studies teachers, Nicole.  We hit it off immediately, which is good because I was a floating teacher, meaning I didn’t have my own room, and I was assigned her room as one of my classes.  At that point neither of us were engaged though we were with the men who would end up being our husbands.  We had many lunches, talks, get togethers, etc.

Now, nine years later, Nicole and James are married and have a five year old, an almost-two-year old and are expecting a third baby mid-June (which will necessitate another trip to NC yay!)  Whenever we do go back, which has been a few times now, we stay with them for our time there.  And it’s great!  Our kids play together, the guys golf, I get to talk to one of my best friends, it’s perfect.  So we did that for an entire week which was just heaven.  There were a few “firsts” this week as well – Nolan’s first movie in a theater (How To Train Your Dragon – boy’s trip), Layne’s first pigtails, Nolan’s first ice cream cone (I think)… I did some more “official” family photos of them but mostly we just had fun.  Here are a few of the shots from the week – mostly snapshots but a few nicer ones, too!  Enjoy 🙂