#1,815 Pancake Day + Hopey’s Dirty Thirty.

Another Pancake Day has come and gone, and every year I feel so spent! Maybe I’m just not caught up from the work week, but right now I’m barely propped up so I will let the pictures tell the tale. We joined everyone else in Laurel for pancakes bright and early this morning at 7:30 am. This activity, even the waiting in line, will never lose its childhood magic for me.

 Everyone you’ve ever known is there.

Even fathers of newborn babies drag out of the house to get a hot stack of pancakes before the parade:

I met Legend, who brought me seconds and is a daily blog reader!

We drove Alexis in the parade. First, we tried the Jeep because it was raining.

Then the rain stopped so we rushed home and went with the original plan, my car.

There vintage planes to kick off the start. 2 of the guys from Duck Dynasty were the grand marshalls, but we didn’t get to see them.

The best part about being in the parade is seeing every single person who came, and waving and hollering at them passing by. It’s like the receiving line at a wedding. “Hey Aunt Linda! I love your hair, Jana! William, you want to ride with us?”

That sweet John Walker was perched in the windows at my studio:

My yearbook instructor from college  (in purple) who is responsible for Ben and I meeting:

Jim, Mal, Lucy, Suellen, Tommy and Jane:

The Lewis family:

The Tuckers:

Afterward, Jim and Mallorie needed to get busy working on their house with continued decorating and yard work for the magazine shoot, so we took Lucy girl off their hands for a little while with a visit to Mammaw’s house for lunch. Lucy wanted to get on the lazy Susan, which Mammaw happily obliged. We also fed her all the pizza she wanted.

We got sweepy.

Then we got back on the table.

We made it back home for a (longish) nap, then got all gussied up for Hopey’s 30th birthday celebration at Browntstone’s. We had the whole upstairs for the night, and spent it taking photos, us high school friends, now big girls.

We texted my mama pictures like this one of us, “her girls”:

We assumed the standing arrangement that always was our thing for every photo taken of us together, best friends from 9th grade, and tried repeatedly to take a decent photo that was not blurred.

And I had the toughest, handsomest man on the planet for a date. I feel like a very lucky girl when I feel his arm around me.

Until next year, Pancake Day. You were swell!