Back to School

Monday was the kids first day back to school, and Jenn's first day with her new 7th graders (Jenn actually had to go back last Wednesday). It's hard for me to fathom the fact that Kai is starting 6th grade. It seems like it was yesterday that she was just learning to pull herself up using one of the milk crate book shelves we had back then.

We spent the past week or two making sure we had everything we needed. Having spent the last few years getting low quality bookbags from Wally World, we decided to go high end this year and got L. L. Bean bags. They can survive a nuclear blast, and they are much cooler, or so I'm told.

Kai was stressed because she just had her hair cut over the weekend and wasn't sure she liked it. She was also heading to Big Bad Middle School, on a new bus without any friends. The only thing she had to look forward to was taking the bus home with Sheridan and staying at Sheri's house until Mommy was able to pick her up. It didn't help our nerves either when the wrong bus picked her up. (Turns out her bus wasn't working and another bus had to do two routes, making it very crowded, which also bothered Kai). But, in the end, everything was OK. None of her teachers ate her alive, she was able to sit with her friends from last year during lunch, and she is excited to start back up with the band on Wednesday.


Nicky is a big second grader this year. His teacher is one of the most experienced in the district, which is just fine by us. While he had trouble and didn't really like school last year, he has become determined to enjoy school this year and do well. I think Mommy's deal that he can have a kitten next summer if he gets good grades might have something to do with it, though.

Jenn is excited by the new year. Her school made adequate yearly progress according to No Child Left Behind (translated: Her kids last year did OK on the state test), and from what she can tell, she has a good group of kids coming up this year. She also has a couple new tricks up her sleeve (like a scrapbook her seventh graders have to do, and another great parody play for drama). It's hard getting back into the swing of things, though, having had some down time over the summer.

Back to School time even affects me. For the next month I'll have to deal with customers who waited too long to start scheduling their students, customers who have their attendance setups configured incorrectly, and customers who need to print the weirdest data on their report cards. It usually takes two years for a customer on my company's school software to get comfortable enough without needing hand holding. And unfortunately, we have a lot of new customers starting the use the software "live" (for real, instead of just setting up for next year) for the first time this year. It's not going to be a picnic. But at least this way I have job security. :)

Weekend with Grandma and Gordy

Grandma and Grandpa Gordy came down to the house this weekend. It was exciting for us because it was the first time they would see the house "finished" (ie: Almost finished). They had helped incredibly last year getting the kitchen and laundry room livable and cleaning up the rest of the house.

They arrived Friday evening, just in time for Nicky's second Tae Kwon Do graduation. Mrs. Periera has been impressed with how fast Nicky has been catching on with all the moves, and has said that she thinks that his years of dance helped with this. Nicky had just graduated to his Advanced White Belt in June, and graduated again on Friday to his Gold belt. Grandma, Gordy, Jenn, Kairi, and I all watched as the group of graduates performed forms and showed off some self defense techniques

Originally, Saturday was going to be spent gong to the Philadelphia Zoo and Longwood Gardens, but fate intervened earlier in the week when we found out that both Kairi and Nicky were going to be dancing with their groups from the spring in Saturday evening for Community Day. So we needed to be back in town by around 5PM. Fortunately, we were still able to get to the Philadelphia Zoo.

As Zoo members, we are invited to certain special events, and on Saturday the zoo opened early to allow members to watch the animal feedings and to get the first look at the 3 baby tigers that were born at the zoo three months back.

It's amazing to me how much they act like our house cats. The three of them scampered around, chasing each other, climbing trees, pouncing at nothing in particular. Kairi and I agreed that if it wasn't for the whole "man eater" thing, we would want to take one home. Alas, such are the dreams of cat happy people. We will just have to suffice with our two own Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cats. And the dumb dog.

Besides the tigers, it was nice getting to the park so early because most of the animals were out and more active, having just been fed. We got some nice close ups of the other cats as well, including the lions, who usually hide or stay as far away from all of the windows as possible. Saturday morning, however, they were a lot closer, and there was at least one lioness (to the left) moving around. She eventually plopped herself down right in front of Kai and Nick.

The lions are great, but I'd be more hesitant to take one of them home. I still want a tiger, though.

We had lunch at our normal spot in the zoo, rode the swan boats, and saw most if not all of the animals. Jenn and Kai didn't get a chance to go in the Zoo Balloon because there was too much wind, which was fine with me since I didn't really want to have to worry about them floating away. :) Grandma and Gordy had fun, especially in the bird house, which I avoided. Grandma loves birds and has several feeders in her back yard. Since I met Grandma, I have grown to appreciate birds and can more easily spot species that live around our house, but they still freak me out a little. They might be pretty, but I don't like them flying around my head in an enclosed space. Same with bats. Icky.

We got home just in time to have the kids change and come over to the park for their dance routines. Nicky's group was first to go, and all of the girls were there and ready when Nicky showed up. It was fun to see how excited they were when they found him. Only two other girls in Kairi's class showed up for practice or the performance, so the dance had to be changed a bit They still did a great job, though! Since we were so late, it was hard finding a place to sit. So while we did see both dances, we didn't stay for dinner or to hear the high school band perform. We ended up going home, but that way we had enough time for pinochle before bed.

Sunday was a downtime day, and before we knew it, it was Monday morning; I had to go back to work, and Grandma and Gordy had to head home. It was nice to see them, but we probably won't be seeing them again until Christmas.

The Average American Family Vacation Day 8

We were all ridiculously sad to end our time at the beach (although the pic above is from the FIRST day, not the last). We packed up our stuff, but headed down to play a bit more before we went. Unfortunately, the ocean was having a little temper tantrum too. After about 30 minutes of being tossed about by the waves, (Nicky yelled at the ocean, and sang the pirates theme over and over - he thought the waves were great - very "adventure on the high seas") we headed for the gentler waters of the pool.

I went in to change first, and then it was the work of an hour or more to get everyone out of the pool. No one wanted to leave and face reality again.

Eventually, though, we did get on the road. And then we sat still on the road. The traffic was very nasty, and our return trip took WAY longer than our trip here. We even got stopped on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge -Tunnel. (A personal phobia of mine is tunnels. Another is bridges. How much do you think I liked a 20+ mile bridge? How about when traffic stopped?)

We stuck the requisite OBX sticker on our car, and started trying to figure out when we should take another vacation here. As Scott said, leaving for work this morning, "Ah well, back to the grind."

The Average American Family Vacation Day 7

We took it very easy on our second full beach day. After breakfast, my sweet family indulged me in a photo session on the beach. I wanted to get some nice beach portraits for my scrapbooks and for my new beach themed bedroom. They were very nice about wasting 30 or 40 minutes of vacation time in picture taking. Here's some of my favorites:

We went back to the hotel pool and the kids swam and tried out the lazy river. Scott and I were reading and didn't feel like getting wet yet. We then headed to Corolla for some souvenir shopping. We ate lunch at a HORRIBLE restaurant called Smokey's that we will avoid like the plague in the future. The crab cakes were 95% breading, the kids' menu so blah the kids wouldn't order off it, the sweet potato sticks like fried baby food, and they charged us for refills on diet coke! Who still charges for refills?? We all wished we had gone across the mall to Sooey's again.

After lunch, I abandoned my camera since I'd already spent so much time with it that morning. Unfortunately, that means I don't have any shots of the awesome waves we had that day once we headed down to the beach. Not too rough, but steadily strong enough to let us board all the way to the shore. It was a beautiful afternoon of boarding and wading. Unfortunately, a sudden storm blew up, and everyone vanished from the beach. We hung around a few minutes, since it wasn't actually raining or thundering, but the wind was kicking up a lot of sand, so we went in to change for dinner.

For dinner, we found the best restaurant we ate at all week - a pizza place! It was called Tomato Patch, and we ordered four 10" specialty pizzas and split them all. Nicky's favorite was a bacon cheeseburger pizza. Scott, Kairi, and I were torn between the gyros pizza called "The Wright Choice" and a pesto pizza. Our usual favorite, white pizza with pepperoni came in last - and it was GOOD. It's just the other choices were AMAZING. Sadly, since it was our last night, the leftovers went to waste. Should have gone here first - we'll know that next time!

The sun was setting on a much cooler island by the time we got back to the hotel.
We tried another nighttime beach walk, but Nicky got too wigged out by the ghost crabs. So we went back to the indoor pool for more swimming, and eventually called it a night.

Average American Family Vacation Day 6

I was up at sunrise on our first full day at the beach. It sounds crazy, after the long day we put in on Wednesday, but how often do you get the chance to watch the sunrise over the Atlantic? Unfortunately, the haze kept it from being picture perfect, but it's still rather pretty.
I also made friends with the hotel cat, who liked to hang around the pool. She also liked to follow me around. I went back to the room to get her some deli turkey, which she enjoyed. (Judging from the number of bowls left around with food in them, she's spoiled rotten by hotel guests...) She seemed enamored of us though, and spent a lot of time on our patio, which was on the first floor. Her meowing woke up the family when I came back in that way after feeding her. We eventually "named" her Carolina, which seemed appropriate. Many of the shops we went into along the beach had cats that wandered freely. It's a bit odd, but in a fun way.





When the kids got up, the concierge at the desk told them about a man in a full, bushy, black beard who had arrived at the hotel around 3AM and insisted that he give Kairi and Nicky in room 132 a message. The message turned out to be a pirate treasure map! So Kairi figured out the code, Nicky found the X that marked the spot at the end of the directions, and they started digging.

Pretty soon they had uncovered a wooden box....
Full of pirate treasure! There was a pirate boat puzzle you build with cards, gold chocolate coins, candy necklaces, pirate stamps, and two Pirates of the Carribean coloring and sticker books.
Not to mention, these snazzy pirate hats! (Leave it to my kids to be worried that none of the other kids at the hotel breakfast seemed to be getting secret maps. *sigh*)
Then we grabbed our boards and sand toys and headed down for a morning at the beach. The kids had never used boogie boards before, so they were a bit hesitant at first.

But they got the idea quickly enough, and were soon having much more fun in the ocean than out. (Didn't hurt that being IN the water kept the nasty biting flies that were on shore away!)

Nicky and I did build a sand castle, but there's definitely been a shift since our last trip to the beach. Both kids are now MUCH more interested in watersports than sand play or collecting seashells. It's nice, because that's how Scott and I are as well. They still feel too young to be "too old for sandcastles" to me, though! And speaking of sand, can anyone identify this sand critter for us? We found it on the beach, but never got back to the wildlife center to ask what it was. It has multiple legs tucked under its body, and is "squishy".
We ate lunch in the room. By this time, the heat was killer, so we decided to drive down to Roanoke Island to the North Carolina Aquarium. It was free, since we are Philly Zoo members, which is pretty darn cool. We saw all sorts of cool fish (most of which were moving way too fast for my camera).
The kids and I enjoyed this close up view of a cottonmouth.... Scott just quoted Indiana Jones: "I hate snakes!"

But "Jaws" aside, no one could hate this really cool shark that we saw in the Graveyard of the Atlantic tank.
No one but me would touch the sting rays, urchins, and sea stars in the touch tank. They were cool to look at, though.
The many turtles, otters, aligators, and other critters on exhibit made the aquarium part zoo, as well. It was a nice, air conditioned way to spend the day.

We finished out the day with dinner at the Bad Bean Taqueria. The food was really tasty, but a bit pricey for what you got. Scott said the margarita was fabulous, but I'll take his word for it. We liked the one staff member's shirt : "Don't hassle me... I'm not a tourist" but when we mentioned that we were from a tourist town, too and loved the shirt, he was a bit derisive of Bethlehem, PA being anything like the shore. He obviously didn't have to fight his way through Musikfest a few days before! ;-)

By this time, it was threatening rain, so the kids spent some time in the indoor pool, and we headed to bed.

Average American Family Vacation Day 5

*yawn* We got up at 3AM on our first beach day, so that we could make the 8 hour drive, and still have time to play when we got there. We didn't actually get started until 4AM though, with all the last minute stuff we had to put in the car. (Including the sleeping children.) The drive was horrifyingly long, and the kids woke up at their usual time of 7AM, so they were awake for 5 hours of it. Ugh. I was hoping the WHOLE time that the Outer Banks were going to live up to billing and make it worth the trip.

We arrived at the hotel around 11:30, and I checked to see if our room was ready, knowing full well it wouldn't be. The very nice concierge promised to call us when the room was ready, and we gave her our cell number. We headed first to the Pine Island Diner for some lunch. (Mediocre food, prices not too bad, but we decided quickly not to bother going back. The diner was freaking adorable, though - chrome and black and white with cherry red booths - very retro.)

We then thought we'd walk down and say hello to the beach. We didn't want to bother changing in the public restrooms (since we wouldn't be able to shower off sticky wet sand in a bathroom) so we went down in the clothes we had on to just walk. Of course, then the kids ended up wading. And got wet. So we probably should have changed, but oh well. Fortunately (or unfortunately) it was insanely, fist-in-the-face hot. So hot it was hard to breathe hot. Walk three feet and need to lie down for an hour hot. The actual temps hit 106 while we were there, with 110+ heat indexes. So they dried off pretty darn quick.

Since our room wasn't ready yet (and let's not fault the hotel - we absolutely ADORED the hotel, and I wouldn't say a bad word about it - check in was SUPPOSED to be four, I just wanted to get started vacationing, lol!) we drove down to Corolla to check out the Currituck Light (and scope out dinner locations). We found the main shopping areas, and headed past them to the lighthouse. It was lovely, and we were tempted to climb it... but let me refer you back to the heat. The 106 degree, no air conditioning in the lighthouse, 186 steps to the top heat. Uh-uh, nothing doing. So instead, we went to the wildlife center. (Which has an official name I've forgotten - the Outer Banks Wildlife Center at Corolla or some such thing...) There was a nice tank of local fish, many displays of local flora and fauna, and a nice history of the area. There was a really interesting film about it, too - but Scott HAD been up since 4 AM so he kept falling asleep! We also found out that Nicky is a fish whiz - he took a quiz on a computer where you had to identify fish, and got them all right! Grandpa, have you been coaching him??

During the film, the hotel left voice mail that our room was ready, so after a quick stop in the gift shop, we planned to go back to the hotel. Except that while we were there, I asked about some of the center's programming. And while the crabbing session I wanted to get into wasn't available, there was a "Wild Nights" session available that night. (If you've never availed yourself of free nature tours from a state or national refuge, do so... they're ALWAYS worth the time.) I must confess, I wasn't really thrilled about adding to an already LONG day, but the staff member was so excited that a spot had "just opened up" for the program that would accomodate the family, I said yes.

That meant, though, that we didn't really have time for the beach. We headed back to the hotel, unpacked, and went to Sooey's BBQ in Corolla for dinner. It was seriously tasty. Scott and the kids had the ribs, I went for the fried chicken. Then, a quick stop at the grocery store for some basic provisions for the hotel room, and we were heading back to see what was "wild" about night on the beach.

Turns out, the topic of the night was ghost crabs. Everyone say "eeeewwwww". But surprisingly, they're really cool. We happened to have a flashlight with us, and everywhere we pointed it, there were hundreds of little crabs, running all over the sand. Nicky was a bit freaked out, but interested against his will. Kai was even brave enough to pet one of the crabs. Well, brave enough after Karen, our interpreter held it's claws so it couldn't pinch. Only two families showed up at the walk (although there were supposed to be four or five) so we got to ask lots of questions. We thought the little eyestalks on the crabs were the funniest things.On the walk back, we got to see the lighthouse we had visited lighting up the night, which delighted the kids. We finally headed to our beds around 10PM. It had been a VERY long day.

The Average American Family Vacation - Days 3 and 4

Our third vacation day was mostly consumed by errands and such - dropping the dog at the kennel, buying sunscreen, yada, yada. But we did hop over to training camp for a little while. We had a nice view of Akers practicing some field goals. But after that, thanks to the throng of people, we pretty much had views of the backs of other fans who were crowding the fence. So, we gave it up for a bad job, and headed home.
On Day Four, we went to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The kids and Scott hadn't seen the King Tut exhibit, so they were very interested. At least for a few rooms. Then, Scott was interested, Kai was trying to be, and Nick was WHINING. He was probably just too young to appreciate the age and significance of the artifacts we were seeing. He did enjoy posing with the fake sarcophagus outside the exhibit. No pictures inside, though, so I can't show you all the beautiful artwork from 3000+ years ago.Nicky was more interested once we got to the hands on portion of the museum. We made paper, and learned to write in hieroglyphics, and then headed into the electricity exhibit. (Bad pun alert...) Nicky really got a charge out of this exhibit. (Sorry, couldn't resist...)Another favorite with both kids was the sports challenge. The physics of various sports were demonstrated through exhibits that let the kids climb rock walls, race to start their engines in reaction time cars, spin like a figure skater, balance on a moving surfboard, and test their pitching speed.
Issac Newton's Loft, a room where you could use all kinds of simple machines, and explore physics through hands on exhibits was also a big hit, as was the Franklin Air Show where the kids got to fly paper airplanes, stand in a wind tunnel, board an air force jet, and much more. We all had a great time, and easily spent the entire day there without seeing everything. The Imax theater show was good, although we all agreed the opening Philadelphia travelogue took better advantange of the Imax format (letting us fly over the city, putting us in a fireworks show, etc) than the actual movie on mummies. The planetarium was also nice, although I would have liked to see more stars, and less movie about how the Egyptians used the stars. *shrug*

By the end of the day, we had all enjoyed the Philly/home half of our vacation, but were raring to get to the beach and start our "real" vacation!