Vacation Post

Tried to keep in order!

Mark at Kill Devil Hills Beach, NC - obviously way out of order here, but beachy none the less.

1st Ferry to DE from NJ! Loads of sun and dolphins!

We hit the road Friday afternoon and headed for Atlantic City. Just the first of many stops. Saturday morning we left for Cape May and took the ferry to Delaware. This was the first of several dolphin sightings. Unfortunately for you dolphins in the wild are hard to photograph, but they were cool! After getting into Delaware we headed down towards the Outer Banks prepared to hit bad traffic like we did in Jersey on Friday and for some reason it was smooth sailing.

View of Wright Brother's Memorial from our hotel.
View from our room of the beach - turned a bit to the side to show the houses.
Mark on top of Wright Brother's hill with the beach behind.

Saturday and Sunday we stayed in Kill Devil Hills (and no we didn't make it to the Kill Devil Grill Julie - they aren't open on Sunday for dinner! boo, but Owen's was pretty good) More dolphins in front of the hotel we were at and lots of wide open beach. The water was cold and air mighty hot - like upper 80's.

Today we hit the road again and went farther down to Hatteras and Cedar Island and back onto solid land in NC. Spending the night in Wrightsville Beach just north of Wilmington. Very nice beach - better than Kill Devil we think and I actually saw more dolphins playing right in front of our hotel. Very playful and loud with their splashing. Water is much warmer here and people are actually in it.

One last ferry ride. One of the two today was free!

More on our next step - Myrtle Beach is up next!

spring fever

Now that we've had our taste of summer this past week it's now more springy and the cats seem to think so too - they are refusing to come in tonight and it's pretty dusky at this point. This past week the temps hit almost 90 for 3 days straight. Friday was quite cold and today we are back to 75ish. The flowers are in bloom - and I should have taken pictures this afternoon, but time got away from us. The new neighbors have the "yard fever" we had last year. They first dug up a section for a garden - that took a full weekend. Then they cleared out the back part of their yard making it 30% larger - so large in fact he is putting in football goal posts and also some tree's to line our property border. Now they did bring in some heavy earth equipment for part of it, but still they've been out there every weekend all weekend long. Us, we've gone for some nice walks and taken some naps and watched the Masters. No "yard fever "here this year - our yard is looking pretty good with not much to do yet! Cured.

I've mentioned how hard it is to dig holes here, but that has not dimmed their enthusiam. Next up is for them to finish installing their pool. This will give us a good idea if this is something we want too. Many around here have them because it can be a long hot summer starting in mid-May through the end of September. Above ground of course and we do have the perfect sloping spot for it. We'll see!

Cherry Blooms in DC

Took a little trip to DC this past weekend for a long weekend. Cherry tree's were just starting to bloom. We also hit the Natural History Museum for too short a visit. Let's just say it was mobbed by school children. We did hit two great places to eat out in Gaithersburg. Uncle Julio's had awesome Mexican food and Copper Canyon had great bbq! Good thing we don't live there. The plates of food were monsterous. In downtown DC we went to Georgia Browns - no not the chain - and had their fried chicken dinner. Very good chicken! Yummy cornbread too.

This was at the restaurant park. Mark thought he was cute. Now it's back to the real world and for me a short week at work! woohoo!

Sunday Hike

If you call it hiking when you are following the railroad track then that is what we did. Eddie is from around here and knows about the cool spots and this definitely ranks as cool and somewhat hard to get too. There is room to jump off on the side when a train comes and we did see one. We also saw a river monster! LOL!

Mark's Surprise!

I almost pulled it off! I've been eyeing flat screen tv's for a while and finally decided the time was right to surprise Mark. According to him I am awful at surprising him - if you've seen the Modern Family episode where she brings in a surprise musician for their anniversary I would say that is pretty accurate scenerio in our house. Let's just leave it at that please. We love Modern Family and I can't wait to watch it on our new TV!

So Monday I saw my dream TV drop in price a lot and then I noticed that they were clearing out last year's models and I just ordered it - didn't ask Mark because, ahem, this was a surprise. Last year was actually a good year at my company because we made so many changes with vendors and such that we came out ahead and I got a nice bonus along with everyone else. And then they upped the bonus so this was "found money" and I knew Mark would love the tv once it was here.

The spoiler alert.... Monday night I was late coming home from a work dinner and they called to confirm the order. Guess who heard it... yep. Mark heard the message. Now it was not overly detailed - thank goodness - but still he found out! It was here by Friday afternoon and set up Friday night. Even I set it up with no help from Mark. Well ok he did help me assemble it.

What do I love about this TV:

It's green - and LED model so low energy usage and that will save us money on electricity...

Sports are pretty cool - Nascar I'm sure is awesome honey...

Cartoons - absolutely amazing. (do not ask why I am watching cartoons - they are just "on" and I didn't turn the chanel fast enough and am now hooked on the graphics)

Wireless capabilities so we can do the internet widgets.

Netflicks will come right to our tv! Once I get my linky stick.

And finally... I was told to go buy drapes for the living room. Finally. Woohoo!

Happy Surprise Mark!

living in a small village

You know you live in a small village when the fire radio goes off and your husband has time to get to the fire station, get on the truck and then you watch it go by the house 5 minutes later. Of course I knew it was going by the house... thanks to the wake up call from the sqwauk box. And yes sqwuak is probably spelled wrong...
Even better is all the guys in the truck see you and tell your husband you are on the front porch - and yes I did brush my hair and put on a sweatshirt! Just in case they saw me!