Road Trip to Wilmington

Last Saturday...the coldest day of the year (probably not a fact, but it was literally 18 degrees when I woke up)...Ashley, Candice and I..with little P...loaded up in Apex and made the drive to Wilmington, NC to visit our good friend and former Bible study member, Laura.  It was the most perfect day!  Despite the cold, it was sunny and not a cloud in the sky!  We had a great time catching up and despite the fact that our entire Saturday was packed, my weekend felt longer.  How is that possible?

We left Apex around 8:30am.  On a Saturday!  That's early for me!  With the help of some DD coffee and breakfast we hit the road and made great time!  We were in Wilmington by 11am.  The schedule actually worked out perfectly!  It was Paisley's nap time and the little angel slept the entire way!  We arrived at Laura's and spent some time just catching up before we headed out to lunch.

Lunch was at the Wilmington Tea Room. 

What a cute place!  I was a little skeptical at first.  I was pretty famished and I didn't think I could get full off of tea.  Man, was I wrong!  We were all stuffed to the brim and took some of our treats to go!  The tea room is on the waterfront (Cape Fear River) downtown, so we enjoyed great views while we ate. 

Okay, so this "tea" included actual tea.  We shared Monks Blend.  It was so smooth and relaxing!  Then we were all served seafood bisque, which was slap yo mama good!  I don't know what it was about the soup, but it had good size potatoes and corn and it was heavy and smooth and I can taste it now.  It was just wonderful!  Then, as we had all ordered the full tea, a tower of treats came out!

There were mini sandwiches and scones with jams and Devonshire cream and the whole top tier was little treats!  My favorites were the ham salad sandwiches on cinnamon raisin bread and the carrot cake with cream!  Amazing!  It reminded me of little Bettys, a tea room in York, England.  Oh memories! 

2008..wow time flies!


Like I said, we were stuffed, so now it was time to walk it off!  And Paisley was so good during lunch, but she was tired and it was nap time!  We snapped a quick picture on the deck of the tea room before we headed off down the riverwalk. 

It was a gorgeous afternoon and we just spent time walking and talking.  We stopped in the Cotton Exchange (a shopping area) just to peek and then it was more walking!  We did make our way down Market Street back to the riverfront and stopped in a cute store before going next door to Kilwins Chocolates.  We didn't purchase anything, but the aroma was enough to make me full again!  Back to the waterfront and we strolled back to our car at the tea room.

Then it was back to Laura's to drop her off and say our goodbyes before we hit the road back to Raleigh.  It was short and sweet, but really perfect!  

I just love her!  She's so cute!

The next day at church, we were wrapping up a sermon series called "Come Together".  It's about community and small groups and just being in community with people to do life together..a big push to get people plugged in to the new small groups that are rolling out.  Pastor Mike was encouraging folks that had never been in a group to join one and giving reasons why.  At one point he was talking about how once you reach a certain size, you need to split and make two new groups to make room for new people (which I know and am very familiar with, even if I don't always like it) and how there's no perfect small group.  And I turned to Kevin and said, "yes there is and I was in it!"  And I got a little teary eyed because that group was Laura and me and Ashley and Candice, Heather, Kaleena, Meredith, Christy, Nicole, and others that came and went over the 2.5 years I was in the group.  And then I started thinking about how much things change and how I wish I could just keep things, like our Bible study group, the same!  Of that group of 9 people, in the time that I was in the group, 3 of us got married (well really 2, I left to plan our wedding), 2 had babies (and since I've left another baby was born).  Laura moved to Wilmington, Ashley branched and started a new Bible study that I'm currently in (because our group was too big), Candice left to raise Paisley, Heather left to raise James, Kaleena took time off to do a study with her husband, Meredith was co-leading with Laura and has since taken the remaining group and newbies and run with it, and Christy and Nicole (as far as I know) are in the newly morphed group.  Lots of people going lots of directions and nothing will ever be the same.  But, Mike's right, we did life together and these are women whose lives I've learned about and whom I've grown with and we will be forever friends!  Even though my relationship with God is personal, it was never meant to be private (another nugget from Mike) and it was these women that I was in community with!  Even if we don't meet every week to study the Bible together, we can take weekend road trips to visit and catch up!  That period in our lives has changed, but the impact we made on each other has not!  Bittersweet!

Just a snapshot of our core Bible Study Group over the years!