Happy new year! I hoped yours started off swimmingly!
I ushered in the new year with a group of 6 in Charlotte: my boyfriend, my sister, our friend Colette, and both of the girls’ boys. We ate an incredible meal at Vivace, where my sister and I split grilled bisteca with collard greens and fingerling potatoes and pumpkin risotto with seared scallops- they were both incredible. I’m excited to visit Vivace in Raleigh now! We then attended an open bar event at VBGB Beer Hall and Garden and trekked to an after-party at a high-rise apartment building in Uptown with a pretty sick view of the city skyline. This morning, we grabbed Starbucks and McDonald’s and drove to Hollymead to visit Sue and Larry.
It was all of the boys’ first times meeting Sue and Larry, so Larry put them through the ringer with a written exam that they had to pass in order to keep dating us.
Boys taking the exam
Hilarious! After lunch at the farm, we went to a party with our other cruise friends at their beautiful house on a lake. Such a fun afternoon filled with cruise talk and laughter- as per usual 
Anddd speaking of the 6 of us and cruises: the other week, we all celebrated Chrismukkah, the now famous holiday that mixes Christmas and Hanukkah Perfect for our motley little friend crew!
It started out as a fun little party- we put up Christmas and Hanukkah themed decorations, drank eggnog and Shelton Vineyard wine, and ate buffalo crack dip and latkes. Halfway through the evening, the boys demanded that the three girls stand near the Christmas tree for what I assumed was a holiday picture. My boyfriend kept instructing my sister to look in the branches of the tree, but since we’re loud giggly girls, it took about 5 minutes before that actually happened. My sister finally pulled out a small card and we looked in confusion toward the camera that was apparently recording us, not taking photos. We were so excited when we opened it up to reveal a scavenger hunt hint!
I won’t bore you with all of the details of the hunt (confusion, going back and forth from room to room, a lot of funny comments) but the last clue instructed as to look at the first letter of each clue for our surprise (for the record, just doing a scavenger hunt made us happy. We’re pretty easy to please!).
Being the bad instruction followers that we are, we failed to keep the cards together as we had been told. After a few minutes of running about to collect them, we began reading the first letter of each.
C (“Cristina!”). R. (“Cristina!”). U (Inappropriate comment). I (“CRUISE?!!!”) It was me that shouted “CRUISE!” but my sister and our friend told me to not get ahead of myself and keep going. S. E.
And then we stood in the kitchen in shock…obviously the boys hadn’t bought us a cruise, right?! It took about 10 minutes of convincing, but yup- the 6 of us will be going on a cruise to the Bahamas and Key West in just under a month!
Best gift I’ve ever received! Well done, boys, well done!
You rock, by the way.”
