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Category Archives: Travel

Snow, turtles, and seahorses, oh my!

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http://www.ncaquariums.com/fort-fisher

Tom had today off, so we all went to The North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher. Owen didn’t have the longest attention span (so we spent longer driving there and back than we did at the aquarium) but we still had fun.

The first exhibit area was freshwater fish, turtles, frogs, crocodiles (or alligators or both—I will never remember the difference), and snakes…nothing really noticable in and of itself…except they had misters that went off every five minutes or so and Owen thought it was snow and just loved it and kept asking for/saying “Snow! Snow! Snow!” 🙂

Between exhibition areas, you pass through a little room where you get your pictures taken on a green screen (and will, of course, later have the chance to purchase them) and amazingly, Owen did well with the instruction to hold his arms out so it would look like he was surfing:

Then we got instructions to look scared by putting our hands up to our faces…which we all have done…except Owen, who looked scared by hiding his face! 🙂

Then, a normal group photo.

It was a fairly speedy trip through the rest of the aquarium, but Owen did like the sting rays, seahorses, and playing in the crab:

Looking at fish with Gram:

Then Owen got a treat from the gift store…which he played with on the final walk outside.

We stopped to look at turtles on a log…

And birds in a field…

Jump kick with the dragon!

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lE-stbxT-NQ

Owen is a great road tripper, but he was finally getting a little restless around Raleigh, so we decided to stop at a local park we’d been to before. He had a blast running around on the play ground, and then went over to run around the dragon (which was closed the last time we were there). He had watched an older girl jump up and kick the dragon, so he was attempting to do the same…

Great eyesight!

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Owen really does have great eyesight…he’s constantly seeing things and pointing them out to us. For example, on the road trip, he constantly points out “towers!” and sometimes, we have to really look to see what he’s seeing.

So we were just getting on the road this morning when he starts saying “An arrow! Arrow!” from the back seat, so we’re looking around outside not seeing any arrow. Since his eyes are really good we really thought we were just missing it.

It turns out he was talking about the tiny arrow on the GPS screen!

FAIL! x 3

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Fail #1

We had made plans to go visit friends overnight in Raleigh on Wednesday. So we got up early this morning, packed up the car, and set off. Five minutes down the road I remembered we forgot Owen’s bed. In the driveway it hit me that it was Tuesday. Ugh. Tom had even asked last night “Are we going tomorrow?” And I said yes, because I thought it was Tuesday at the time. And I even had the dog sitter neighbors set up a day early because I thought the days were off (well, I had them set to come on the right days, but I gave them the keys a day early since my days were off). It wasn’t a big deal (and I’m really glad we were only five minutes down the road) but it was frustrating. :meh:

Fail #2

Since Owen was excited about the car ride we’d told him about…and since we were already all dressed and breakfasted and in the car…we decided to take him to the local elementary school playground, thinking it would be a big treat since we no longer have a park down the street. Yay, right? Nope. He hated it. It was all sand and I guess maybe that freaked him out to start with, but even with Tom carrying him over it and setting him ON the structure, he wanted nothing to do with it. :**:

Fail #3

Once we were back home 10 minutes later, I thought we’d play outside in his water table since we haven’t done it for awhile and the temps were still cool…and he threw a tantrum. |-|

All this by 8am.

Moving dates–finally!

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The packers will be here Monday, June 27. The movers will be here Tuesday, June 28.

The carpet cleaners will be here Tuesday evening. We hope to do the checkout with the landlords (so we can see exactly what they see and be here to fight anything they might come up with—we don’t trust them to do it without us) Tuesday night as well.

If all goes well, our two-car caravan will leave sometime on Wednesday the 29th after we get the U-Haul packed. (We are still waiting to see what my mom’s schedule is, as she wants to come down to North Carolina to help watch Owen while our stuff is delivered, we unpack, and paint some rooms in the house. She’ll get there one way or another, we’re just waiting on final details. So, we MAY leave on Thursday the 30th.)

Whenever we leave, we’ll end up in Jacksonville the following day. I would love to do the drive in one day, but it’s just not going to happen. It was a 14-hour day when I did it by myself, stopping for quick bathroom breaks and take-out food—stuff not possible traveling with a U-Haul, a toddler, a dog, and two cats. Unfortunately, that also means we get to deal with a toddler, a dog, and two cats in a hotel room.

WISH US LUCK!

Scheduling nightmares.

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The moving company that’s been assigned to us? Ugh.

Tom went in to set up the move a few weeks ago, and came home with packing dates of June 20-21, a loading date of June 22, and delivery on July 6. The packing and loading dates corresponded with when my mom could come down to help, but I was surprised that the delivery date was so far out (we normally get our stuff a few days later)—so I was under the impression that’s when they could first do it. (Come to find out later, Tom has a function at his job that he can’t miss…on the 28th!…which he never told me about…which is why he scheduled delivery for when he did. I wasn’t happy about having to live at the house with no stuff for a week, but whatever, we’d make it work.)

Fast forward a week or so, when I get a call from the moving company out of the blue. This surprised me because Tom was the one dealing with it all. So I had to deal with her questions about the house, which was fine. And then talked to her about dates, because she mentioned that they could deliver earlier than July 6. (At this point, I still didn’t know about Tom’s function on the 28th.) So we had a conversation about possibly changing dates to whatever we needed to TO AVOID WAREHOUSING because we wanted to avoid that at all costs (warehousing means they come load the truck, unload the truck at a warehouse while we get where we’re going, then they RE-load the truck and deliver it). That just leads to more opportunity for loss and damage, so I told her we’d schedule something so we didn’t have to do that. She said she had to check the driver’s schedule and said she’d get back with us the next day. Two days later and nothing. Then Tom forgot to call until this afternoon.

Now, keep in mind no one has talked to us since that lady called me a week ago when dates were still up in the air…so Tom called and about had a heart attack when they said our delivery was scheduled for 6/23. HUH? What? JUNE 23? We never authorized that!! And apparently they didn’t think it was necessary to let us know?!?

We told them in no uncertain terms that June 23 was NOT possible since Tom would still be working…though we could alter our dates somewhat. Come to find out, they assigned us that delivery date because their driver has a pickup IN Jacksonville on the 24th. Sorry, not our problem. We discussed potential dates and they said they’d have to get back to us.

Ugh. We have never had this many issues with scheduling a move…EVER.

If we get what we want, we will have packing on June 23-24, loading on June 27, and delivery on July 1. My mom won’t likely be able to be here to assist (dang jury duty!), but it’s not as critical as I thought it would be since Tom will be able to be here for everything (unlike all past times when I had to do most of it by myself).

But I just don’t have a good feeling about this. I have a pit in my stomach thinking I will end up having to drive to NC in a rush (to meet our stuff), by myself, with Owen and the animals, while Tom stays behind to finish up at work and check out of the rental.

Please keep your fingers crossed for us on this one.

Pool fun!

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My mom has a group of friends that meet every Wednesday night for dinner. Tonight’s happened to be at the Ramada Inn where one out-of-town couple was staying, so we were invited to come early and use the pool. Of course, we knew Owen would LOVE it—and since we don’t typically pack swimsuits and swim diapers for a winter trip to Grayling, it was off to Kmart.

Needless to say, Owen LOVED the kiddie pool. He stayed and played for over TWO hours, and I know he would have stayed longer except it was time to eat (which, as an aside, he didn’t care about at all since we were right next to a ping pong table and he was obsessed with watching the ball and trying to catch it).

Oh noooooo!!!!

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GUESS WHO CLIMBED OUT OF HIS PACK AND PLAY THIS MORNING?!?! 😮 :no:

I heard him making noises (through the wall—I’m in the bedroom next to his) but then it was quiet again so I thought I’d just let him lay there. He’s always been pretty good about laying quietly once he gets up, so I didn’t bother to turn the video monitor on. But then I heard him chattering again so I went in there. 

And imagine my total shock and surprise to see him standing at the end of the bed, as if he just slid off (the PnP is between the bed and the closet door with barely any space on the sides…so my guess is that he somehow got out onto the bed and didn’t just go over the end of the PnP). 

Oh. My. 

He hasn’t ever tried to escape before, so I think he was just trying to get his B (blanket) which he had chucked over the edge. At least I hope that’s all it was, because I am not prepared to deal with this right now (away from home).

Hoo boy. 

Nashville –> Philly Fun

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I didn’t get a direct flight home from Nashville, so I had to get home by way of Philly. Yeah, a total PITA. But I did have fun…

You never know who you’re going to end up sitting by on the plane, right? So imagine you’re exhausted after not sleeping all night, you’ve been up since 4, it’s 7:15am, and this somewhat loud and crazy guy stops next to you and says that’s his seat.

Lordy.

Except there was something about this guy that didn’t scream OBNOXIOUS like you might think. At least to me. 🙂

We shared a few small bits of small talk (he told me right off the bat that he’d had a few drinks because that was the only way he’d be able to stay awake since he’d been up for like 36 hours) and long story short, I could tell right away I liked him. And he said he was glad to be sitting by someone cool…so it was a good start. That said, I thought that would be that and I could try to get some sleep. But we kept chatting. And we were laughing. Yes, me…the one who generally doesn’t chat with strangers.

He asked why I was in Nashville and I said I was coming home from the Garth concert, which got us onto the topic of music and he asked if I had heard of a few country acts and I said yes. He asked if I knew Rascal Flatts and I said of course (Bless This Broken Road is one of my FAVORITE songs ever). So then he said he had something he’d like me to listen to to get my thoughts. So we plugged in to his iPod and I listened to a really great song called Endlessly. It was totally my kind of song—one I could see being a new song for me and Tom.

Of course I was wondering how this guy was related to Rascal Flatts—a producer or songwriter or something? We hadn’t even introduced ourselves at that point—but even if we had, there’s no way I’d recognize a producer or songwriter’s name (hell, I wouldn’t even recognize a band member’s name). Then I thought maybe it was his own music—but I wondered why he hadn’t said anything. So we talked about what I thought, then he had me listen to two more songs—both of which I also liked quite a bit. But then, I am a big country fan.

I asked who the artist was and he said “Taylor somebody” and I asked if the song could be purchased somewhere and he said yes. So I got out my phone and made a note of the song name and Taylor. And that was that. We finally introduced ourselves (his name was Brian) and he excused himself to the restroom. When he got back, I asked what his last name was and he said Taylor. And I said “So it IS you!” Yeah, I had caught him off guard. 🙂 So then we talked about the music and I made him promise to send me his CD (signed, of course!) and I took two pictures so I could have a memento (and I’d have proof that I knew him before he was famous!).

Overall we just had a really fun (nice) time. So much, in fact, that since we both had long layovers in Philly, we decided to eat lunch together. He gave me the website to buy his music and I Friended him on Facebook.

When I got home, of course I had to Google him, and I found this blog post on CMT…so he really WAS for real (not that I didn’t believe him, lol).

So, definitely an interesting end to a fun overnight trip!

Garth Brooks Rocks!

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Through a bizarre set of circumstances, I ended up flying to Nashville to attend a Garth Brooks charity concert.

And wow. Just…wow.

He was AMAZING. A. MA. ZING. He did a 2-hour show which included (I think) three or four encores.

It was an awesome experience. Especially since I haven’t gone to many concerts in my time… But to hear ~16,000 people singing every word to every song just blew me away. And his energy? Holy crap. I was exhausted just standing, singing, screaming, and applauding for two hours…he had to be dead. But he just kept going and going and going. As I said in my Facebook post, he was “balls to the wall for two straight hours.”

It was just pure awesome, and I am very thankful to how everything worked out in a matter of hours…and how things all came together in the end!

  1. Seeing Garth on Oprah and thinking how I’d love to see his acoustic concert in Vegas.
  2. Me tweeting that if anyone wanted to know what to get me for Christmas, it was “Garth Brooks Vegas.”
  3. A friend of mine from Alabama, Jen, posted a reply that she had an extra ticket for one of his Nashville shows if I wanted to fly down.
  4. My dad and stepmom were planning on being here anyway on that date, so they would be able to babysit (Tom had to work).
  5. Tom agreed I could spend the money—Merry Christmas to me!
  6. A week later I tweeted that I arrived in Nashville—and my friend who lives in Nashville (Laurie, who I graduated high school with) called me to say “I didn’t know you were coming to see Garth HERE! We have to get together!”
  7. My friend with the extra ticket had another extra ticket for MY friend…so we all went together!

Everything was apparently meant to be. And I am a very, VERY happy woman!

His new thing.

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He loooooooves this bucket now. I keep all his balls in it, and he’ll come down from his nap, toss out every single ball, then hop in and just sit there, or watch TV from there. Thanks, Grandma Marsha!

He also likes getting pulled around the floor in it…and then Tom picked him up and carried him around, then gave him a bumpy ride!

Stupid USPS

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/sarcasm on

I’m sooooo glad we used the online form to stop our mail while we were on vacation for two weeks.

/sarcasm off

Yeah, that didn’t work at all. Even though I got a confirmation number and everything, the mail never stopped. Thankfully our neighbor knew we were on vacation (and was checking for packages) so she picked up all the mail, too.

99,999…100,000!

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My 2001 Toyota Highlander rolled over 100,000 miles on the last leg of our 2700+ mile road trip today! We knew it would happen on this trip, so were keeping an eye on it—to get a picture, of course! I had my iPhone camera at the ready when Tom made the 5-mile announcement…and right as it turned 99,999 (which I also wanted a picture of), my phone rebooted! 88| Thankfully there was a turnpike convenience center a half mile down the road, so we pulled in! (We also needed gas!) So I got my picture!

Since we were obviously only a half mile from 100,000, I wanted Tom to drive around the convenience center, but he said no. 😐 So the picture for 100,000 is a bit blurry since I was taking it while he was driving.

Splash park (again) and Owen’s first time in the ocean

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Owen’s first experience with the ocean…he liked playing in the shallow water of the surf, but did NOT like the water rushing up to him (so look to see him running away from the surf).

Running away from the surf!

One of my favorite pictures of the day:

And then some fun at the community condo pool (where it was a bit chilly, so this is as much playing as we did):