An Evening at the Beach

On Friday, we went to the beach after Kevin got off work. I packed a picnic for dinner. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry so I forgot to make sandwiches for the kids. They were perfectly happy to have chips and grapes for dinner, with the occasional nibble off our sandwiches. After we ate, Kevin got in the water with Maggie and Matthew. They were a lot braver than they have been at the beach in the past. It worried me after walking by the posters about how to get out of a rip current, but the waves were small and they didn't go too far in.

Andrew is still at that age where everything can be scary. Especially a big huge ocean. I tried to get him to put his feet in the water at one point, but once I let go of him, he ran all the way back to the dunes. Here he is sitting on the stairs that go over the dunes. It took some time to convince him to come back down.

A little while later some of our friends joined us. They have really gotten into fishing since moving here and brought their poles. When we first moved here, I couldn't believe that people really fish off the beach, but they do. Here is one of our friends setting up his poles.


The poles are huge and they anchor them into the sand. Kevin got to cast one out into the water. Then he stuck it back into its anchor to wait for a fish.


For bait, we caught sand fleas, which are just little crabs that burrow into the sand. I'd never actually seen one. Matthew especially got a kick out of them--he spent a couple of hours catching sand fleas and watching them dig back under. Here he is with one that he tried to corral by digging a ring around it (it still dug itself into the sand).

And here it is closer. Not so pretty, but kind of neat. . .

Here is Matthew with our one and only catch of the evening. It was a big, huge tank top that got hooked as we were reeling in the line.

The boys had lots of fun just getting sandy. I suppose all little boys have an affinity for dirt.

Our beaches do not have the nice white sand that the gulf coast beaches have. This sand is just ground up sea shells. The little, flat pieces stick really well to your skin. We tried to shower them off before going home, but it really didn't work so well because they were so thoroughly dirty. We had to give them baths at home and I think we still didn't get all the sand off. Here's Matthew wishing he lived in Utah where it snows (he thinks that Utah is the only place that it snows because we have baby pictures of Maggie in the snow there).

Walking

I started walking this week with another gal in my neighborhood. Oh, 6 am sure does come early. Having a buddy is a great motivation, though. I would never get out bed if without someone else to hold me accountable. Today was especially hard to get out of bed, because I didn't get much sleep the night before last. It's funny how lack of sleep always hits harder the second day. Once I got going and my blood started to move, I felt better (a little). It's nice to wake up and be able to think, instead of waking up to a toddler demanding breakfast. I always like to see the sun coming up, too. I think it's the prettiest, most peaceful time of day. Maybe sometime I will take a camera and take some pictures of the sunrise over a canal. We have no shortage of canals here. There are plenty of mosquitoes, too. When I got home this morning, I'd acquired a few more mosquito bites and I was drenched in sweat, even though it wasn't really hot. Out thermometer said it was 74 degrees and 83% humidity. Whew! That's why I have have to get up before the sun. I don't think I'd last more than a couple minutes with the sun baking me in this humidity (or would that be more of a braise?). But hey, at least I never have to wear lotion, and my throat rarely gets dry.

Mango

Right now is the exciting time of year for growing things in Florida. It has been raining almost every day for last few weeks. All the plants (and weeds) are growing like crazy. Later on in the summer everything (except the weeds) will start to die when the heat and humidity take their toll. Then I will be discouraged again.

We planted a little mango tree this spring and to our great surprise, it grew a mango! Here is our little mango. We go out and look at it almost everyday to make sure it's still there. If you have never shopped for mango trees, there are dozens of varieties. And they are all better than the ones you can buy at the grocery store. When I was trying to decide what kind of tree to buy, the guy at the garden center was answering all my questions about them and if this variety or that variety tasted good. Finally, he said, "You know, I never met a mango that I didn't like." Hopefully our little mango will make it to adulthood and we can enjoy it. It would be the first thing that our fruit trees have managed to produce (other than a couple of not-so-good tangerines that we picked last winter).

Andrew's Birthday

Today, Andrew had his 3rd birthday. He had a fun day. All day long, he kept asking, "is it still my birthday?" And when we said yes, he would get a big, huge smile on his face. We made some cinnamon rolls for breakfast that we had seen on Good Eats last night. Mmmm.
Then we blew up some big, caterpillar-shaped balloons for the kids to beat each other up with.

Since we have church in the afternoon right now, we let Andrew open his presents later in the morning so he could take some with him to church. You can see that his siblings were a great help in opening his presents. They didn't seem to think he could do a good job of ripping paper. His parents, on the other hand, know that he is very good at destroying things.


He got a baseball mitt ( he was the only one in the family who didn't already have one), a set of dragon toys, and some little superheroes.





Here he is making his dragons roar at each other. They roared all through church, so they will get to stay home in the future.







After dinner, we had cake. I was going to decorate it all fancy--he wanted a monster cake--but in the end I ran out of both energy for decorating and powdered sugar for frosting. So he got sprinkles, which he liked just as much. Here he is telling everyone how old he is. The ability to hold up two or three fingers is a new one for Andrew and he's rather proud of it. Up until recently, he could only hold one finger or all five. Hopefully, by next year, he will also master the ability to hold up 4 fingers.

Grandfather Mountain

We had our first real family vacation this month after Todd and Amanda's Wedding (Todd is Kevin's youngest brother). Since we were in SC, we decided to head up to the Blue Ridge Mountains in NC for some cool weather. We stayed in a cabin just outside of Boone NC for 3 days. It was wonderful, just not long enough!


Here is the view from our cabin's deck. This is Grandfather Mountain. You can see that it looks like an old, bearded grandfather taking a nap on top of the mountain.



Soon after arriving, the kids discovered that the cabin had a jacuzzi. Andrew was especially excited about this. He spent almost half an hour running around shouting, "We gonna go in the coozie!" It was hilarious.



On our first day full day of adventuring, we headed up to Grandfather Mountain to do some sight seeing. It was only 60 degrees out (cold for us Floridians) and the wind was gusting up to 40 mph at the top of the mountain, so we were pretty chilly in our sweatshirts.











We spent a couple of hours in the visitor's center hoping the weather would warm up. The highlight for our kids was the gift shop. They spent a long time trying to figure out how to get Mom and Dad to buy them something, anything. Here are Maggie and Matthew in front of that wonderland of useless trinkets.

After exhausting the possibilities of the Visitor's Center, we ventured outside to the animal habitats. Here they had some eagles, otters, deer, eastern mountain lions, bears, and goofy little boys.










We had a picnic lunch at a picnic area about halfway up the mountain. It was so windy that only Kevin and his brother Ryan stuck it out at the table. The rest of us just sat in the car. Then, we made our way up to the top of the mountain and the Mile High Swinging Bridge. I was too chicken to go across with the wind blowing. I was holding Matthew's hand and we only got about 10 feet onto it before I had to turn around.




Kevin and Maggie made it across, though. And they spent their time on the other side climbing rocks and taking pictures. I was really better off not seeing them take some of those pictures.

Maggie is really standing on another ledge--even her Daddy wouldn't let her hang off the side like that.

On our drive down the mountain we stopped to explore some more rocks. Maggie climbed up one called Sphinx Rock. It has a split down the middle of it and she started to climb down inside, but she got stuck, so I had to go in and rescue her.

After stopping to look at the rocks, we got in the car and started it up, but it immediately stalled. Kevin tried 6 or 7 more times, but it just kept stalling. Finally he and his brother, Ryan, got out and pushed the car out of the parking space. I got the car stated and could keep it going as long as I had my foot on the gas pedal. So I was trying to use the brake with my left foot while I kept the rpm's up with the gas. Needless to say, that didn't work very well. The brake pedal is not a clutch and I kept stomping on it like it was. I ended up coasting downhill once the engine died again. As I got to the first curve, I realized there was no power steering, and that was a little stressful, but ok as long as we went slow. By the time I got to the third curve I realized that we have power brakes and they weren't working! By this time I was telling Kevin through clenched teeth that he needed to say a prayer in our behalf. I made it into a parking lot and managed to stop just before hitting a tree. Then Kevin got in the driver's seat and revved up the engine really high for a few minutes. We figured there must have been something clogging the fuel pump because after that, the engine worked just fine.

On our second day, we spent the morning driving up to a little town that had the first Mast General Store. It's a fun little store with locations throughout Western NC and SC. We've gone shopping there before to get stocking stuffers and unique candies for the kids. This particular store was the original, built in the 1880's. It was fun to go and look at all the old-timey toys and kitchen supplies. They also had an annex to the store, which had a whole room full of candy barrels. Of course, we spent way more than we planned at "The Candy Barrel" I gave the kids a limit of 1/2 lb of candy each. Maggie was the only one who managed to keep under her limit. Kevin went way over his and so did Andrew, who was being supervised by Kevin.

That afternoon, we went to a trout farm to catch some fish for dinner. For the last several months, Matthew has been begging me to take him fishing. Every time we go to Wal-Mart he sees fishing rods in the sporting goods section and tells me we have to buy one. So this was their big chance. It was hot out, the worms were slimy and wriggly and so were the fish. Kevin hooked a couple of fish, then Andrew got one later on. We tried to get him to pose with his fish, but it was still alive and all the wiggling scared him, so he would have nothing to do with it. This picture is Matthew with Andrew's fish. Kevin and Maggie tried to catch a couple more fish, but they kept getting away after being hooked. Afterwards, Kevin asked Maggie if she ever wanted to go fishing again. She said, "Yeah. . . If somebody forced me."

For our final day of vacation, we checked out of the cabin, then took the scenic route back to SC. We got on the Blue Ridge Parkway and took it back to Asheville. It was just such a beautiful drive with lots of green trees having over the road and no billboards or commercial districts. We stopped at a place that displayed crafts by local artisans. There was lots of beautiful pottery, woodworking, and quilts that I wished I could afford to buy.

We kept on going down the road and spent the bulk of our afternoon at an orchard that was on the side of a mountain. They had more local crafts and jellies and we went on a hay ride where the owner of the orchard told stories of life in the area from the revolutionary war onward. It was really a fun trip and a good note to end on before coming home.