Knee-deep in a massive two-week vacation… done now but still can’t catch up!! Some notes…
Saturday: soccer
Sunday: Dan and Bailey arrive from Florida, whee!
Monday:
Tuesday: soccer, park in the rain, bocce ball, wiffle ball, horton hears a who!, base tag, 4-of-us-against-3-computers age of empires
Wednesday: museum of life and science in durham – huge beetles, cockroaches, poison tree frogs, butterflies; pirates of the carribean, age of empires 3-on-3 with Dan
Thursday: picture management, juno, the story of stuff, open-source for small business debate, aoe 4-on-3
Saturday: see Dan and Bailey off as I rush to coach Wren’s soccer game; Wren and her team rip it up to win 4-1; clean up clean up for the Forbergers’ arrival; get a call that Vic underestimated the distance by 240 miles and won’t be in until the next day. :>
Sunday: church, plan by cell phone to meet for lunch afterwards; I call after church and they’ve arrived at our house! Off to meet them. Then out to the only Holly Springs restaurant for fajitas before Reiley has play practice and Wren has a soccer game – we all watch Wrenny’s team play a great game with Olivia showing up last-minute as our only sub against a team with a full bench. Back home for a spaghetti dinner, Horton Hears a Who!, and the first half of Before The Devil Knows You’re There.
Monday: off fairly early to Raven Rock with a packed picnic lunch of PBJ and tofurky sandwiches; hour drive went by fast; beautiful spring hike; a couple stray dogs tagged along, Andrea pulling 5 or more ticks off the friendly beagle mix; rain started up at the halfway mark, over a mile into the woods; that’s where we hit the cape fear river and found perfect shelter under “raven rock” itself; enjoyed our delicious lunch there, while the rain finished falling; hiked back in a light rain with thunder rumbling in the distance; found a dozen ticks between the peoples and Roxy and Lily. Reported the stray dogs to the rangers, they were very unimpressed with my suggestion to “call animal control”. back home to relax for a bit; Wren, Elsa and Savannah played; built a fire with Vic and Steph and Elsa helping; headed out to Wasabi for a great dinner with Vic buying sake and a nice pinoir noir; back home to finish The Devil movie and Vic forcing me to make it through a second round of Balls of Fury.
Wednesday: Slow start to going camping. Decide to go for it even though skies are gray. Vic and I make it out the door around 10:30am, head to Betty’s to pick up the boat, then out to the campsite to throw up the tent. There is NO ONE else around, sweet! I finally settle on E31?, our standard campsite right across from the island beach. We set up the tent, stuff it with our firewood, the boat, the second tent, then leave it after trying and failing to find a ranger to pay for the campsite (after we find the smelly dead fish stinking up the campsite – Vic threw it into the river). Vic and I pick up Taco bell, and back home, Andrea and Stephanie have fed the girls and have things ready to pack, and we head out. We unpack and settle in, setting up the second tent and inflating the raft, and jump in the boat! I row the girls around the sand island to the beach.
During the night, Roxy is fairly good – i have her attached to me by her leash to make sure she doesn’t wander over to vic/steph/anya’s side, and she only wakes me up a couple times. i took her for a short walk once. the jumping fish and croaking frogs kept her on edge – we need to get her into nature more often!
Thursday: we wake up a bit groggy but the sun is up and ready for us. Vic has coffee ready using his fancy propane water boiler, and i get the fire going – with a lot of pressure on me, i succumbed to using paper to kick off the wet firewood, rrr :> – and eventually we had toasted poptarts (along with bananas and toast with jam). We headed over to the playground and then got a game of bocce ball going – the kids beat us out in the end 13-12! everyone played. then we had another boat ride over to the beach, and played there for a good couple hours – another round of base tag, marco polo, and chasing dogs – betty had brought gracie, who kept running off. Back on the boat, wren gave elsa her boogie board and tried her hand at rowing. reiley then gave wren her board on the way back, so we all shared. anya was along for the ride too, so all the girls were crewmates.
Eventually we had to pack up and head home, somehow fitting all the gear from three car trips into both cars. at home i made the grain loaf and gravy and beans and rice for the kids, and of course another pot of coffee to get me through the unpacking. rei and mom gave the dogs a bath – rox had earned the name “fishhead” by then for all the rolling in dead fish she did. vic and steph ran out to get elsa some soccer gear, then met us back home. we discovered a fire ant invasion, and vic said “use grits”. This led elsa and wren to an intense researching on the best natural fire ant eradication methods, and i settled on boiling water poured into the mound. they were everywhere! but i was determined – i had three pots rotating through stovetop boiling. eventually i had to switch to dinner, and made stroghanoff, and vic poured us the resling he brought. delicious! then after getting the girls to bed and cleaning up, we caught jon steward, the latest ep of the office, and what vic was waiting for all week – a new Lost ep. and it was good!
