Friends are Family

When people get married, the spouse knows that he/ she inherits a new family. Yet, the newlywed does not always realize that friends are family. To many people, the term family seems synonymous only with terms such as mom, dad, grandmother, but not with friend.

I do have a wonderful family unit with awesome parents, aunts, and cousins. Yet, I also have a huge extended family; my friends from college are family. My husband had the chance to meet both of my families, who fell in love with him immediately. I, however, never had the chance to meet one of the closest members of Trae's friend family until our wedding day.

With Facebook and texting, I had met Niki in a cyber-sense, but never face to face. Wedding days are not a good day to meet and bond with new family members. Yet, Niki and her husband Paul found a lovely way to let me know that despite never really meeting and not having said my vows yet, I was family. The gesture was small in the big picture of life: but really, aren't the small things what matters most?

Niki and Paul bought my two bridesmaids and myself a delightful Chick-fila lunch. Sitting there, with fried chicken sandwiches, hugging a girl I knew by name and photos only is truly a special wedding memory. I loved being able to meet someone who was a huge part of Trae's life since high school. Niki was and is one of Trae's best friends, and before walking down the isle to my future, I loved seeing some of his past.

Niki and Meredith enjoying a wedding day feast! 

After the wedding, I did not get to see Niki and Paul again until yesterday. After a year of being Mrs. M, I got to finally bond with Trae's friend family. I won't lie; I was scared. I knew that both Niki and Paul were great and kind people, but i wanted to impress them. I wanted to show this family that their boy was taken care of. Those fears left the moment Niki hugged me.

Not even thirty minutes later, the four of us were laughing. Several hours after that, we entered Zombie-land, better know as the Burke County fair. The rides looked sad while spinning their bright colors, hopelessly longing for riders. Framed by over-sized stuff animals, unpopped balloons lazily waited for dart throwers. We ate carnival food of corn dogs and cheese fries as we took in the surreal scene. Horses bobbed on a carousel without riders; funnel cake friers didn't sizzle. The only sound was our laughter as we analyzed the site. Afterwards, we got to feed goats as well as pet cows and horses. I can safely say that the goats outnumbered the humans.

A few hours later, we were relaxing at the apartment before Clemson kick off. We strolled over to Harris Teeter and bought a deli cheese pizza that we made snazzier with Canadian bacon. The pizza was eaten between shouts and hollers as well as jumping and happy dancing. (After a heart pounding game, the Tigers won! GO TIGERS!) Two a.m. rolled around before these old married folks decided to go to bed. Stories were shared, memories were made, and new family members were bonded. 

This morning was lazy as we woke up early and make a hearty breakfast of bacon, toast and eggs. Sadly goodbyes were being exchanged too soon with promises of visiting them soon.

Not once over the weekend did we go to a restaurant and sit in comfy booths, or get tasty take-out. My whole relationship with Niki has never been based off comfy boothes; we are paper bag girls/ princesses who do not need fancy dresses and gussied up outfits*. We are ourselves and do not put on airs. Instead we have the comfort of family.

When you visit family, especially your parents' home, you are familiar with them and do not expect fancy meals. You are comfortable in their home and do not ask if you can get a soda out of the fridge. Since they are family, you are in essence at home. This comfort can extend to close family members as well, and this comfort was embraced by Niki and Paul. They did not ask where things were, but opened cabinets, and put dishes in the dishwasher. Our home was their home, and will be anytime they come to visit, because they are family.

*I wrote the paper bag line with "The Paper Bag Princess" book by Robert Munsch.

Disney Fun Review

I want to quickly share my Disney vacation photos from almost two months ago, before I launch into a new post. So please, enjoy the photos and quick commentary!

On August second, Trae and I literally spent the whole day at the Disney Hollywood Studios. I got to see Trae in true childhood form as we rode the Star Wars ride three times. (It started to rain and we got to ride the attraction two times back to back...no line! And I was the rebel spy! Trae sure was jealous!!)

We ate lunch with the awesome Disney Dining Plan at the 50s Prime Time Cafe. We loved it! It looked like a TV set from an I Love Lucy Show or The Dick Van Dyke Show. It was so much fun with waiters and waitresses telling you to eat your veggies and keep your elbows off the table!

 We got a snack of R2-D2 popcorn. Trae saws it feel wrong eating R2's inter-workings, but as this picture shows you, he didn't feel too wrong digging in!

 The back-lot tour provided nerdom heaven for Trae with lots of movie props!

On August third, we did a double feature of the Animal Kingdom and Epcot.

We ate at the Tusker House and it was honestly one of the top ten meals I have had in my life. The buffet was extensive and delicious, with the staff willing to answer any question you had about the food. I went to great lengths to find the Mango Chutney recipe that was available for the flat breads.We ate soo much and it was amazing. I honestly have been craving a return trip and have been plotting our next Disney vacation around the Tusker House.

 Epcot was wonderful a well.. We enjoyed the mulch-cultured food, but more importantly the friendship! I met up with my old Clemson buddy Beth and my old Clemson roomie Melissa and her hubby Thomas.

The funniest thing happened on the Imagination Ride with Figment; we got stuck!!We got stuck at this odd part with a giant butterfly in cage, and the lights went down for ten minutes. All we could hear was the rusty squeak of the butterfly. Beth sent us oddly encouraging text messages about being rescued by Disney cast members. We weren't. And we got off the ride just in tme to watch Captian E-O, Trae's most fond memory of his last trip to Disney.

Well, the old gang wondered around the countries, including the Troll ride in Norway, which Beth hates. We also enjoyed Mexico and had fun singing along with the Three Caballeros. We finished the night at a German restaurant were Thomas and Trae heard a multitude of old Clemson "tails."

The next day, August the fourth, was a day of the Magic Kingdom, and it started off with a character breakfast at the Crystal Palace. During the whole vacation planning, Trae kept telling me that he was humoring my desire for a character breakfast; yet, when Eeyore came to our table, he almost knocked over the table to hug the ol' gray donkey!! We had a wonderful time eating breakfast with Winnie the Pooh and friends! We also got an anniversary card from the gang!!

I felt like I was cheating on my dad a bit here; he was the only other person I had ever ridden the Dumbo ride with!

 Good bye Snow White ride! With the new expansion coming in 2012, the Snow White ride will be torn down. I was truly sad knowing this was my last time around on the Snow White ride! Bye Bye Doopey!

 Beth doesn't like to share the piano in the Haunted Mansion line!

 I survived Splash Mountain! It was mine and Trae's first time on the ride!! I also got to be the guest conductor on the real steam train and say "All abroad!" At one point, I even got to wear the conductor's hat!

We ended the night was a fireworks dessert party. We enjoyed our glasses of milk and platefuls of dessert!!

On August 5th, we were suppose to head home, but we had left over Disney dining points and met Beth back at Epcot! We ate at Morocco, and said Hello to some of our favorite Disney characters.

Just remember that fez are cool!

Belle is confused because my shirt says "I'm with the Beast!" and according to her, he isn't hairy enough to be the Beast!

Hope you enjoyed our mini-photo gallery!!! Disney better watch out in 2013, because the Murray family is coming back to the Kingdom then!!

Remember

I remember where I was on 9/11. I know a lot of people can remember where they were on 9/11. I know as I get older a new separator will be put into the generation gap: those who can remember and those who can't. I teach and most of my students were in third or fourth grade with a few being in the second grade when 9/11 happened. For the most part, these kids do not know a country without the lingering horror and saddness of 9/11.

I just hope amongst all the TV specials, documentaries, coffee table books that the students don't think of 9/11 as something that happened a long time ago, but instead realize how much our nation changed in less than 12 hours.

I know that as a freshman at Clemson University, I didn't know how much things were going to change and on that day, how much they had changed. I had stayed up almost all night studying for an astronomy exam and hadn't even gotten comfortable in skinny dorm room bed when the phone rang.

Mom: Hi honey! Just called to say good luck on your exam. And you need to turn on your TV.
Me: Uggh. Five more minutes. I have five more minutes before I have to get up.
Mom: Trust me, turn on your TV. It is important.
Me: Ok.(realizing it must be important because my mom never watches TV)
Click of the TV. A tiny screen propped up on the top of a microfridge unleashed scenes of horror.

I went to take my exam right as a plane hit the Pentagon. I answered C for all the questions and went back to the dorm room. My roommate and I sat the rest of the day...rest of our classes canceled...watching the TV. We knew our lives had changed, but we could never imagined how much they had changed.

Now, ten years later, I can think back to the dorm room, full of cheer with crazy colored posters on cinder block walls, text books haphazardly on a generic college-issued desk, and dark images surreal on a TV screen. An innocent girl, barely a month into college and living away from home: how could she comprehend two planes and two towers? How can she express to her students, children just as she was ten years ago, the importance of 9/11 when ten years ago she barely understood it herself? I don't know if I will ever be able to express the importance  of 9/11 or how the world she knew and expected to be there when she graduated from college changed, but I know I will and can try, because change doesn't happen when people forget.

Hogwarts, Hogwarts, hoggy warty Hogwarts

I am going to tell you a not so secret secret.....I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan. My love for Harry Potter is only rivaled by that of my love of all things Disney. I re-read the books constantly. When the last book came out, I did an eight hour marathon of reading in order to finish it in one day. The Newsstand at Clemson use to have midnight release parties and before the store closed, my mother and I would make Harry Potter themed cakes for the parties. We have made a golden snitch and Hogwarts out of cake. For the last Harry Potter movie, I went as a golden snitch and Trae wore Harry Potter glasses.

Don't you love the wings?
Trae made them! True love right there!

 
 My love of Harry Potter is no secret to Trae and he vowed for our one year anniversary that I would have a real butterbeer at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We had the crazy plan of driving all day, staying in a cheap hotel, spending a day at Universal with me waving to Disney, and then heading back the next day. Thanks to a wonderful friend, we ended up staying for a whole week and getting to go to Disney too!

We started the trip on our one year anniversary, and on August 1st, I was dragging my husband out of bed at a very early hour to make sure we were at Universal by the time the park opened. (We weren't, but we were only "late" by 30 minutes.) While Trae might have wanted to sedated me that morning, my excitement wore off on him.

 

The park felt like I had truly gone into the books or onto the movie set. Every detail was there, even in the bathrooms! When you walked into the bathrooms, you could hear Moaning Myrtle talking!! The Wizarding World, however, is small; the size meant we were able everything and not feel time crunched but also the lines were very very very long. We even did the other sections at the Universal Parks to let the crowds at the Wizarding World die down.

Since I read tips for visiting the Wizarding World, I knew a few tricks to avoiding some of the lines. Butterbeer, for example, is sold Hog's Head which is set up in the back of the Three Broomsticks and also has a back entrance. We did not have to wait in an unending line at a butterbeer cart to get butterbeer, and went back to Hog's Head each time we refilled our survivor mug. (A smart buy because it is ten bucks and butterbeer costs around six, so with the glass you get three dollar refills, and in some odd math way, evens out to the third butterbeer being free.)

Try making butterbeer at home with this recipe!

Instead of using store bought sauce, I made my own with this recipe. If you don't have dark brown sugar, use light brown sugar and just add maple syrup to the pot.

We (or I did as Trae keep kindly telling me to stop gawking and keep moving) also enjoyed the extensive line for the Forbidden Journey Ride; the whole ride queue is set up like the castle. We even walked through Professor Sprout's greenhouse and see mandrakes! I loved actually going to Hogwarts, and wanted to jump over the ropes and barriers and start taking classes! Even the Fat Lady was there and the pictures talked!

The hat even talked in rhyme to you!!

 We finished off our Hogwarts excursion with a trip to the The Tree Broom Sticks.  The food was wonderful! I had shepard's pie and Trae had chicken and ribs with roasted corn on the cob. Honestly, I was extremely surprised at how good everything was. The atmosphere was also enchanting. Shadows of owls dropping off the letters and the Daily Prophet or the Quibbler could be seen overhead. A huge fireplace was in the center of the restaurant. It was the perfect way to end our visit and the best way to enter into the first day of the second year of marriage!

See my necklace? It is a time-turner that Trae got me for an early birthday present!

Oops

I am so sorry for not posting in a long time. I am afraid I have gotten a bit behind with school starting and having a full load of classes to teach. I have also taken on a second job per say, where I get to write and not get paid! I am a Disney Wedding Blog mentor for the Disney Wedding Blog! If anyone has any questions about Epcot in Flordia, I am the girl to ask. You can read my blurb on the website here.

I am super excited about this position, because it gives me a chance to write about Disney and also get this blog out there. I really want to try to take this blog "to the next level" and into the professional realm. My goal is to go to the BlogHer conference next year.

Anyways, here is my promise to keep updating on a more regular base. I also promise to finish telling everyone about my vacation.

Thanks!

Be Our Guest! Be Our Guest!

I have officially been married for one year! And to celebrate this very adult milestone, my husband and I went to Disney with a jaunt to Hogwarts!! Thanks to the help from one of my wonderful friends, we managed to take a very budget-friendly week long trip. We rode and ate our way through the various theme parks complete with penny press scavenger hunts.

We started our drive on our wedding anniversary, July 31st and made it to Orlando late that night. We met up with my awesome friend, Beth, at her apartment and she gave us our room keys for the All Stars Music Hotel as well as snazzy anniversary buttons. (Disney has awesome buttons they give away for free that you write your name  written on in a sharpie and they indicate if you are celebrating something.) Exhausted, we went to our room, and found a great surprise. The ride had left us feeling blah and far from romantic or excited about cohabiting in marriage for a whole year. Opening our hotel door changed all of that.

Beth had me do online check in so she could pick up keys for us and this was the reason why she insisted I do so! She had gone into our room and decorated it in an Up theme in honor of our one year anniversary! Beth remembered that the last time I was there (minus the man), we had a love of Wall-E and for our first dance at the weddings was to "A Married Life" from Up. She went on a hunt for Up stuff and came up frustrated with the lack of Up merchandise so she made her own.

Beth decorated a white photo box like the Up Mailbox to store our Disney memorabilia and had Wall-e and Eva along with Carl and Dug pins in the box. She also got us snack goodies (the Disney chocolate chip cookies are awesome...I want one every day please). The clincher of the decorations were the super snazzy "balloons" she hung from the mirror. that was above the table Those balloons are now hanging in our entry way and make me smile whenever I walk through the door.

It is funny how sometimes it takes an outsider to remind you of the joy and happiness you have in your life. The night before, July 30, we were extremely aware of our love and devotion to each other, but a 14 hour car ride had put on us edge....not unloving, just too tired to have that emotional epiphany from the other night. Beth's surprise rejuvenated us and got us very excited for the first day of our second year of marriage. One thing was for sure, we were starting off the second year with adventure, because "adventure is out there" and we were going to find it in Orlando, FL!

The next couple of blog posts will be about our wonderful vacation complete with pictures of us, food, and fun!!

Slice of the Past

A little over a year ago, I married Bynum Edward Murray III. I could go on with the cliches that a person can say: he is my soul mate, my best friend, my companion. And they all would be true. I wish I could find some new and creative way to express how blessed I am to have Trae as my husband.

Taken by Woody Woodruff of Johnson City, TN

Trae and I should have met years ago. We can make a whole novel of our missed connections; he lived where my friend was an RA, worked with another close friend, went to the same small Italian town. Yet, God wasn't ready for us to meet. We met at a bar, Nick's Taproom, in Clemson; both of us agree that if someone told us "You will meet your soul mate at Nick's," we would have laughed at them. Yet, we did, and now a year later, I am the still in shock of how many times we did not meet.

The year has been amazing, and each day is a reminder of how Trae truly is my soul mate (Yes, even the days when we have arguments is a reminder how he is my soul mate: who else would let me eat ice cream while sitting on the kitchen floor crying at one am?)  On July 30, it was nice to sit down with our cake, wine, and video to recall that special day. (We did it a day early, because on July 31, we were driving to DISNEY!) Looking back with tangible reminders such as cake and wine helped transport us back to the day when we said I do, and made the vows seem a little more concrete a year later. Each day is a reminder of those vows because I wake up with Trae, tell him I love him, cook with him, kiss him, but it was still nice to sit down with year old cake and recall the words and meaning of our vows.

My husband helped our wedding cake designer, Old World Cakes of Greenville, SC, design our wedding cake. It was beautiful, elegant, tasty, and everything we wanted. (You can read about the symbolism of the cake in my post The Role of Food: Part One.)

You can read Old World Cake's blog post on the cake here

We cut the cake using the same knife my parents used at their wedding. From the right angle, when I am showing off the knife, it looks like I am cutting Trae's head off. Oops!

The large silver tin-foiled  box that protected our top tier spent majority of its life in my parent's freezer they had in their garage. Then my parents and I moved at the same time. The box moved with me and was the first thing (and for a long time, the only thing!) in our freezer.

 On July 30, we took the box in order to share the tradition year-old slice, and I didn't slice Trae's head off this year.  And...

It was good! We even ate another slice as we watched the wedding video and sipped wine (a bottle from the wedding) in our fancy crystal goblets from his grandmother.

One of the neat things we did was save five bottles of Orvieto Classico from the wedding; we will open one each anniversary for the next five years. So for at lest five years (now four), we will be able to have tangible reminders of our wedding to bring us back to that very day.

After watching the wedding video, we felt grateful for the year we had together and for the fabulous wedding my parents put on.  We went to bed  that  night, happy, ready for what the second year of marriage would bring.