Happy Anniversary...

To my BLOG!!! It's hard to believe that it's been a year of blog posting for me now - not an extremely consistent year, I must confess, but a year none the less. I haven't even blogged as many as one post a week, but I definitely have posted more than once a month, so that's good. It averages out to a little more than 3 times a month. But that's not what's important. The important thing is that I have hit a major milestone, and I have stuck with it for a whole year now, and I intend to continue with it for more years to come and hopefully post more than 46 times in 1 year :) However, I have a really good feeling about this upcoming year and I'm sure there will be lots of great events to blog about as I continue my journey...

Happy Birthday Wishes & Opa!!

On Saturday my friend, Rachel's daugher, Emma, was having a 2yr old birthday celebration at their house and I was invited! She was so cute and just loved all her gifts.

Also Rachel went all out decorating the house for her party. She's so creative. Look at what a beautiful decorating job she did just in this little corner of the house.

We first opened presents, then had dinner and after that we sang happy birthday and she blew out her candles. She loves to blow, and it was so cute watching her. This is the best picture I could get of her blowing out her candles.

Here she is with her 4 yr old brother, Collin, playing with some of her new toys.

What a sweet little 2 yr old birthday girl.

After the party, I met up with David and we went somewhere entirely different. The local Greek Orthodox Church was having it's annual Greek Festival, and we had never been, so we decided we'd go check it out this time. It was actually a lot of fun. We tried all different kinds of Greek food and pastries. Some were really good and others I wouldn't get again. But the best part besides the fun atmosphere were the Greek dancers. They were doing the Opa! dance and were very good. Then this very old man came out with a cane and a foot brace and threw the cane down to pick up a wine goblet filled with wine and balance it on his head while dancing. It was amazing! He actually danced better than he walked. Anyway, we had a fun saturday with both celebrations.

Lazy Lake Dayz

After all our summer beach trips a few weeks ago we went down to Robert & Kim's lake house for a family reunion with all the family on David's mom's side of the family (Mostly her husband, Everett's family) Robert is his son, and he and his wife, Kim have built a big, beautiful vacation house out on a lake near Southern Pines. You know it's a big house when you have 12 adults, 6 kids and 1 dog all staying together and not even feeling over crowded! The 12 adults consisted of me and David, David's mom, Jane, her husband, Everett, his 2 sons Robert, and Jule and their respective wives, Kim and Tara, Everett's sister-in-law, Kathy, and her husband, Ian, Everett's, sister, Linda, and their mom, Margaret. The 6 kids ranged from age 10 or 11 to 4 months (that's right, 2 of those kids were tiny babies!) That was fun to spend the weekend getting to hold the babies too. We had a wonderful time, just hanging out with family and relaxing with the peaceful lake just out the back door. Here are some of the pictures of us hanging out in the house.

The laughing picture and the picture around the fire were activities that Everett's sister, Linda, came up with. She is a psychiatrist, so she was pretending to hypnotize the 3 people in the chair, but she had really put black stuff on the bottom of the bottles they're holding and they were unknowingly rubbing it on their faces! It was so funny. Then she took the kids outside and we had a little Indian ceremony around the fire.

It was good practice for David to hold the baby since he hasn't spent much time around babies at all. I think he's a natural, don't you? ;)

While the guys played golf on Saturday afternoon, us girls went shopping. In the next picture of me and David together, you'll see the new pants I got.

Most of the following day it rained, so we stayed in and took these pictures.

When it finally did stop raining we were able to go out in the boat for a while before going home. Robert and Kim and Tara and all the kids (including the babies) and Kathy and the dog and David and I all went out on the boat for spin on the lake to see the houses and for some of us to ride on the "Hot Dog". I wasn't going to pass up a turn to be pulled behind the boat on the hot dog float, so the oldest girl, Morgan, and I rode on it after all the other kids had had a turn.

We had so much fun spending the weekend at the lake and very much appreciate Robert and Kim's generous hospitality.

The Beach Pictures Slide Show

Yay! I did it! My 1st slide show. It wasn't hard at all!

Here are the pictures that go with the post below. They should show up in order of the beach trips I talked about. Some of them have captions so just mouse over the picture if you want to see the caption, or you can click anywhere in the slide show and it will take you to another window where you can see them easier. Enjoy!
P.S. - Helpful Hint - if you are done looking at the slide show and want to stop the music so you can hear any other videos on this blog, you can just click on the little speaker symbol at the top right.

Nearing Summer's End

Well, my intention was to write this post on Labor day since that really marks the unofficial end of summer - even though as of now I think we have a couple more weeks officially. Anyway, that's not the point of this post. I wanted to use this one post to incorporate all our summer beach trips. David's family lives at Atlantic beach, so whenever we go to the beach, that's where we go.
This year we actually got to go 3 times (the most in the summer we've been since we got married). Usually we are too busy to get down there much when it's so crowded in the summer, but this year, we made the time, and it was great!

The 1st summer beach trip we took was on the 4th of July. We stayed with David's mom this time and went down to the harbor to watch fireworks. Then the day after the fourth, our friends Marty and Amanda came down to stay with us for a couple of days as well. It was so great to have them there, even though that was the weekend they broke the news to us that they were moving to Michigan in 2 weeks! (We have gotten a chance to see them since then - they came down to visit us in August) Anyway we had a wonderful time with them and since they love sailing, we went down to the harbor at Beaufort to walk around and look at all the HUGE boats. It was a very special time spent with them.

Then the next beach trip was actually just me and my family. My parents have a friend who let us stay in his beach condo (which just happens to be right down the road from David's dad at the same beach). Now staying in a condo right on the beach has a much different feel to me than staying at either one of David's parent's places since they both overlook the sound, not the ocean.
It was a really nice change to stay somewhere for a few days where you could just sit on the balcony and hear the waves crashing and watch the seagulls circling above. That was a very enjoyable time too. Kind of like when we were kids and used to take family vacations all together - My brother and I bunking in the same room on twin beds and my parents in the other room, but all sharing 1 shower. We were able to spend some precious family time together that we really haven't had in years. I'm so glad it worked out for both my brother and I to be able to go on this beach trip with my parents. Aside from the time spent on the beach, swimming, sun tanning, throwing frisbee and just walking, we also had the opportunity to do another really cool thing that none of us had ever done before. Dad chartered a boat and we took half the day on Monday to go deep sea fishing! Since we only went for half a day we just went 5 miles out, but that was far enough to catch 45 lbs of spanish and king mackerel! The boat we went on was called the Beagle because the captain breeds beagles and always brings one on board with him. We had an awesome 1st mate, Davis, who helped us catch tons of fish, and we also invited David's dad to come with us. The 5 of us had a blast! The 1st hour and half we were reeling in fish left and right, but then the rest of the time they just stopped biting. I think we only got 3 in the last 3 hours. But it was fun regardless. We brought back a lot of fish and have still been enjoying them even now a month later.

The last summer beach trip we took was a couple of weeks ago - Labor Day weekend. That wasn't as packed a trip as the one I went on with my family, so I got a lot more relaxing in then. That was really nice too. Also David had a great time because he got to get out on the golf course every day we were there. I even went with him and his dad 1 time and rode in the cart for 9 holes at a newish course in Beaufort. It was actually a really pretty course and I saw lots of wildlife while we were out there (well, mostly birds - but they were big birds, cranes and herons, I think) Anyway, I have pictures of the guys, the course and the birds.

We are going to go back in several weeks again (but that will technically not be summer anymore although it will still be warm) David is going to be playing in a golf tournament for the annual Seafood Festival in the beginning of October. It's actually the second largest festival in the state of North Carolina, and I've never been. So I am really looking forward to seeing, smelling and tasting all that this festival has to offer as well as cheering David on in the tournament.
But more on all that after the event. This post was about recapping summer beach trips only, so I guess that about wraps it up.

I really took too many pictures of all these trips to be able to put here in this one post, so I think I'll just put them into a slide show and try to make a new post with the slides soon. I've never done a photo slide show, but people do them all the time so it can't be too hard. I know you want to see the photos, so I'll work on getting it up...wish me luck :)