A fun weekend!

We visited our good friends, Ed, Wendy, and Nora this weekend. They live about 4 hours away so we only get to see them about 3 times a year, but we always have a good time. It was even more fun this time because some other mutual friends, Trey and Susan, were also in town. David, Ed, Trey and another friend, Jay, were all roommates their senior year at Davidson.

The first night we were there, the kids had such fun that Nicholas fell asleep in Nora's closet!!










David loves to take the Megan and Nicholas back to Davidson's campus. It is a beautiful campus with lots of room to play.











This is how the children behave when Wendy is in charge.

And this is what they do when David is.









Actually, that is just a joke, because look what Wendy lets them do at HER house:


Yes, they are on the OUTSIDE of the railing!






Naturally our trip included a trip to the gift shop--er, I mean BOOKstore. Here's the textbook area (notice the sign at the top):
And here's, well, the rest of the store:



And, although I didn't take a picture of it, as predicted, I did find (but did not buy) a $75 sweatshirt with sewn-on letters.






The reason for the timing of this trip was to attend a Davidson basketball game, and especially, to see phenom, Stephen Curry.
He was amazing. I've seen him on TV but in person, you can really appreciate how good he is. However, he does have the most annoying habit of playing with his mouthguard in between plays. In fact, he apparently dropped it during the game, and, without hesitation, picked it up and put it back in his mouth! Yuck.
You can see it sticking out in this picture. The guy on the right is Max Paulhus Gosslin, who is David and Nicholas's favorite player.




This picture is to prove that we made it for warm ups, and (contrary to allegations made by parties who shall not be named), did NOT miss tip off!




The game was sold out, which is unusual for Davidson basketball (notice all the exclamation marks),

but very common this season!







Nicholas enjoyed seeing the guy climbing the catwalk prior to tip off.

We considered paying him to stay up there the whole game to entertain the kids, but settled for feeding them snacks whenever they got restless.











At the end of the game, we spotted another reason we are such Steph Curry fans: his dad, Dell Curry, used to play for the Charlotte Hornets AND for Virginia Tech! AND his mom, Sonya, started a Montessori school. You just can't get any better than that!






After the game, we visited a local sushi place for a delicious dinner.
Notice the Murray family dressed in their (loud) Davidson T-shirts. $27 for all 4 (and 3 free hats), including shipping. Notice none of us is wearing the aforementioned $75 sweatshirt. ;)









This is Susan, Nora, and Wendy (who is wearing a tasteful Davidson T-shirt :)






Here are Megan and Nicholas with Nora in front of the wildcat (a very popular photo op).









And the former roommates, David, Trey and Ed.

And I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ed and Wendy for their wonderful hospitality. Without fail, we are treated to good food, a comfortable place to rest, a very welcoming spirit, and always some interesting discussions. Usually involving corn. Our children have a great time playing with Nora (we frequently don't see or hear them until mealtimes) and we are often introduced to a new board game. This time it was Apples to Apples, which was a very amusing game indeed. Wendy, I hope you will accept this photo rich, entertaining, paperless, public blog post as a thank you note, 'cause this is probably all you're going to get! What can I say, I can't find a stamp;-D.