Emily's Graduation & Mother's Day

This past weekend, we flew to the Deep South to celebrate Sarah’s sister, Emily, graduating from Columbia College. Usually we try to fly out of Austin pretty early for vacations. This gives us an entire extra day of vacation-time. Plus, the flights are usually cheaper at the crack of dawn! So we woke up around 4:45 on Friday morning, sleepily got ready and finished packing our bags, and then headed to the airport. One of the bad things about leaving so early in the morning is that you usually forget something important. So being the planner Sarah is, she has started making spreadsheets of things to pack – and she knows, she’s a total nerd. Also, the past couple of times we have parked at the airport before 7AM, we have left the lights on in our car. We now have airport parking assistance on speed dial to help us jump-start our dead car. This time, we are proud to say that no lights were left on and nothing on our list was forgotten!

Once we reached Atlanta, we waited a couple of hours for Sarah’s grandparents (Liz and Matt), parents (Renee and Dave), and younger sister (Elizabeth) to fly in from Minnesota and El Paso. Once everyone was there, we rented a couple of cars and headed north to Columbia, SC.

South Carolina State Capital

We met up with Emily and went to dinner and then headed back to the hotel for a pool party. We played Phase 10 and then taught David and Sarah’s parents how to play Spoons. We only had 4 spoons so we had to use 1 fork too. Note: Spoons should NEVER be played with a fork – it’s extremely dangerous! There’s a reason the game is called Spoons! We’re lucky nobody lost an eye on this trip…. The next morning, we checked out of our hotel and headed over to Emily’s graduation. It went very well. The speakers did a great job and the new auditorium was beautiful.

After taking some family photos, we headed to Charleston. We checked into our 2nd hotel and then headed to Folly Beach with Dave and Elizabeth to hang out in the waves for about an hour.

Don’t we all love awkward family moments?? When we got back to the hotel, we only had about 20 minutes to get cleaned up before we were supposed to meet the rest of the group in Old Town for dinner. Sarah decided this was not enough time to take a shower or anything, so she would just throw her clothes back on. But David and Elizabeth really wanted to take showers, so Renee suggested that they just jump in the shower together (with their swimsuits on of course)! The elevator was completely silent for about 20 seconds before David mumbled, “Awkward.” Needless to say, David and Elizabeth did not take a shower together but we all made it in time! Old Town was beautiful – exactly as we imagined.

We had drinks and appetizers at a rooftop bar overlooking the city/harbor. It was a gorgeous sunset!

Afterwards, we headed to the old market to do some souvenir shopping. We love to collect Christmas ornaments when we travel, and we found a beautiful glass ornament with the 3 Charleston church steeples on it. We were not the best bargainers, though. Sarah kind of ruined it by telling David “It’s only $16!” right in front of the vendor. After grabbing some pizza to fill us up and stopping by the Moon Pie general store, we headed back to the hotel.

Sunday morning, we all got back in the cars and drove down to Savannah, GA - home of Paula Deen! We had Mother’s Day lunch at Paula’s restaurant, The Lady and Sons.

Horse-drawn carriage passing Paula Deen's

It was Deeeelicious! We enjoyed sweet tea with fried chicken, ham, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, collard greens, mac n cheese, cornbread pancakes, and cheesy biscuits. For dessert, we split a chocolate chip gooey butter cake. Sarah figured out that Neiman Marcus bars are the same thing as gooey butter cake! So good and buttery!!

We had to walk around a bit to burn off some of the butter we consumed before getting back in the cars for our drive back to the ATL.

Us in Johnson Square

Once back in Atlanta, we stopped by Sarah’s great-aunt and uncle’s home in Alpharetta.

The family in front of Bernie and Janet's

We visited for about an hour before dropping Emily off, returning the rental cars, and checking into our 3rd and final hotel. As you can probably tell by now, this vacation included A LOT of driving and hotels. Total driving time around GA and SC was about 11 hours! We were EXHAUSTED when we got home on Monday afternoon. But it was a GREAT vacation with lots of fun memories! We’re very proud of you, Emily, and wish you all the best in the future! And Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there! Mom, we’re so glad we were able to spend this holiday with you.