What a weekend! The Kentucky Derby, UK graduation, and Mother’s Day. Wow.
We’ll begin with Saturday. Eric and I always try to sleep in on Saturdays. This usually results in us waking up at 7. Woo. So we headed to Magee’s, bright and early, where we ordered the usual from the usual woman, who, as usual, didn’t remember us. She usually has some really awesome old school sweaters, so Eric was hoping she would have an awesome Derby sweater for us. We were a little disappointed to see a regular shirt. I suggested anonymously sending her a crazy Derby sweater, in hopes that she’ll wear it next year. But that seemed creepy.
Anywho, I guess we didn’t exactly order ‘the usual’ because I added a chocolate cake donut to my usual blueberry muffin. I was extra hungry on Saturday morning for some reason, and I’m afraid i took out the whole giant donut (covered in chocolate frosting, by the way) in about 8 seconds. Although it tasted marvelous, I will never order a donut again. Too much. Too good. Too fat. But it did inspire me to try my hand at donut making sometime soon. Stay tuned for what I’m sure will be a huge disaster.
After breakfast, it was off to the farmer’s market. We’re going to have to eat breakfast there sometime because there are so many wonderful smelling creations happening there. This time, we just picked up some tomatoes, strawberries, asparagus (the most beautiful asparagus I’ve ever seen), and spinach. We’ve already eaten most of the strawberries, and the tomato has made for some awesome bruschetta the past few days.
I can’t remember if I’ve written about this or not, but Eric and I have a new apartment to move into in a month and a half, and it’s about 4 times the size of our current place. We’re super pumped about it, but have also realized that our living room furniture consists of a loveseat and a TV. So I think we’re going to have to add some additional seating and a coffee table (hooray!). Since we’re not made of money or anything, we’ve decided to search thrift stores and such. We started with a trip to the Peddler’s Mall on Saturday morning. If you’ll recall, we’ve been there before and had a blast looking at all of the ridiculous things people try to sell. This time, however, we were a little bummed with the lack of real, usable furniture. So if any of you know where we could find some used, non-horrible stuff, please share! In the meantime, I’ll just drool over the Pottery Barn catalog.
After our failed furniture hunt, we headed back downtown for Mayfest. I’m not really sure what Mayfest is all about, but it reminded me a bit of Oldham County Day at home. It was basically a bunch of booths with local artists and food. We walked around all of the booths and admired the artwork and smelled the delicious aromas of oven-baked pizza and homemade gyros. The whole thing took place in Gratz Park, which is one of my favorite little areas of downtown Lexington. It’s pretty and historic and relatively quiet, compared to the siren-filled streets around campus. Anyway, the most exciting part of Mayfest was the petting zoo! I have no idea where these animals were from, but there were chickens, goats, llamas, and a baby cow! All of these little daredevil children were letting the animals eat right out of their hands. I’m not quite that comfortable with animals with large teeth. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to bring my camera, so I took some terrible photos with my cell phone. The animals were so gosh darn cute that I’ll have to post them for you all to see.
Since we were already downtown, Eric and I took a walk down Second Street, one of my favorite historic streets in Lexington. It’s full of enormous houses and beautiful trees. Since the weather was pretty much perfect, we strolled down to Wine + Market to buy a fresh baguette. I’ve seen this place a few times, but had never been inside. I’m so glad we finally ventured in! Aside from the baguette, we also picked up some local whole wheat flour, grown in Shelby County! We were super pumped to discover another way to eat locally, especially since this place is just a short walk from our future apartment!
A few hours later, we went to watch the Kentucky Derby at Sarah and Carlo’s house. Sarah’s mom, Barbara, was also in town, so the 5 of us enjoyed a delicious dinner as we watched all of our horse picks lose the Derby race. I don’t believe I’ve ever chosen the winning horse. Oh well. I’m not much of a gambler anyway. In the spirit of the Derby, I made a Derby Pie (or whatever you want to call it because the name ‘Derby Pie’ is trademarked or something) and some horse-shaped and KY-shaped sugar cookies to decorate. Everyone decorated their own cookies with their colors and sprinkles of choice. I had high hopes that this would be the day I become an awesome cookie froster, but I’m afraid I fell short. Maybe next year.
After our Derby celebration, the fun just kept on coming. I went to a F2 (Freshmen Focus) reunion with some of my favorite friends from college. Some of us are graduating, some are going to grad school, some are getting big kid jobs, and some still have a little school left. But we had a grand ol’ time eating, playing games, and catching up on one another’s lives.
And then came Sunday. Graduation day. UK made the interesting choice of only having 2 big undergraduate ceremonies this year, rather than small ones for individual colleges. So that made the ceremony last about 2 1/2 hours so that everyone could walk across the stage and get handed a fake diploma. It wasn’t too exciting until the very end, when they shot off fireworks from the ceiling of Rupp Arena, surely giving several people heart attacks. That, and Dr. Todd referring to us as the ‘Class of 2001,’ were the most memorable portions of the ceremony.
Afterward, the Smiths and Ringers enjoyed a celebratory dinner at Hall’s on the River. We got to sit in this little area that was almost like a tree house, overlooking the creek. It was lovely, aside from the bees that kept attacking us. If you ever go there, please get the beer cheese appetizer. It is seriously delicious. I ate so much of it that I could only eat about half of my meal.
Continuing our weekend exploration of Kentucky, we also took our families down to the beach a few minutes from Hall’s. Even though it was only about 65 degrees, there were crazy people swimming in the river! No thanks.
We soon headed back to our apartment to enjoy some Derby pie and cookies before our families headed back home.
All-in-all, it was a lovely Kentucky weekend spent with some lovely Kentucky friends and family.
Hope you enjoyed the weather and something local this weekend!
-Ally
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