2nd Wedding Weekend, Part One

I really need to blog about our trip before we get too far away from it and then I don't remember details! So...after my brother's wedding in North Carolina, and after spending a few days with my parents in Ohio, I flew (with my friend Katie) to St. Louis. There were two major events going on in St. Louis that weekend. The main event, really, was the wedding of my friend Shannon. The other event was a reunion of the Hydra! For a full explanation of the Hydra, read this post from last summer. Basically, there are five of us girls (me, Katie, Rachel, Jane, and Shannon) who were best friends in college and are now spread out all over the country.

Anyways...Katie and I flew in to St. Louis on Thursday. While checking in to my hotel room, I learned that Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson had both died. Rest assured that MJ "tributes" and references abounded all weekend long. Then Katie and I headed over to Shannon's parents' house for a HUGE family/out-of-town-friends barbeque. Jane and Shannon were both there, so the Hydra was almost complete! I had planned to leave at some point to pick up Rachel and her husband from the airport...but the poor things missed their connecting flight and had to spend the night in Memphis. Regardless, Thursday night was a great time to start catching up with my friends (and their family members) that I hadn't seen in awhile.

On Friday morning, I eventually was able to pick up Shawn from the airport. He was kind enough to take another overnight flight so that he'd be able to spend time with my friends and me on Friday. Unfortunately, he was without a cell phone (long story), so I spent 45 minutes circling the St. Louis airport waiting for him to come out, while he spent 45 minutes sitting at baggage claim waiting for me to come in! Turns out, I took him over to Jane's house (where all the girls and assorted children were going to have brunch) and only had about 4o minutes until I needed to go back to the airport to pick up Rachel and Phil.

So two weeks ago today, the Hydra was together* for the first time since we graduated from college 9 years ago!! It was so nice to be able to spend time with all of the girls. I think Shawn was a little overwhelmed at first (my friends can be LOUD), but he settled in pretty quickly and held his own. :) We spent the rest of the day at Jane's house, just chatting and eating. When everyone needed to head off to the wedding rehearsal and dinner, Shawn and I relaxed at the hotel until it was time to find dinner (I introduced him to Bob Evans restaurant). Then we saw Transformers 2 (on opening weekend).

This picture was actually taken at the wedding on Saturday (obviously), but I think it's the only one we got of all the girls. I'll make another post about the actual wedding day. Left to right, this is Katie, Jane (8 months pregnant with Lucy...and her son Joey hugging her), me, Shannon, and Rachel.

*If you didn't read the original Hydra post, I feel obligated to mention that there was originally a 6th member of the Hydra. However, none of us has seen her or heard from her in over 3 years...so we consider this get-together to be a complete reunion. No offense to her, should she happen to stumble across this blog. :)