Tourists for a Day part 2

The 1st place we went in Beaufort was to the Maritime Museum. Here are the guys engrossed in one of the exhibits. I do have to admit though it is pretty cool that they believe the infamous pirate, Black Beard's ship was recovered in my husband's home town.
The other touristy thing we did in Beaufort besides walk along the harbor waterfront was get old fashioned ice cream at the general store...Mmmm, Mmmm, that was good....


Beaufort is such a pretty, quaint town. Here are a couple of picures at the harbor.

From there we drove back over the bridge to Atlantic Beach again and took a tour of Fort Macon. As with all the other places we went that day, I had been there before as well, but not in a long time because they had added lots more to the fort also. Of course the same structure remained, but they had renovated some more of the old living quarters and added exhibits that showed more of how the soldier's life was in the fort back then. Here are some pictures of us exploring the fort. David said that when he was younger in the winter when there were no tourists, he and some friends would play hide and seek at this fort...Now that's a pretty sweet place to play as a kid.

It was after 5pm when we finished our tourist activities of the day and I convinced David and Bill that since it was probably the only really nice day we would have all weekend that we should go for a walk on the beach as well since we were at the beach and all. Well, it worked out really well that David's brother, Doug, had just arrived with his dog, Jake, and since Jake had been cooped up all day, he needed a walk. I volunteered to take him, and off we all went again - me, Jake, David and Bill. David had the camera this time since I had the dog, and he took some great pictures too.

After our walk, we got cleaned up and went over to David's mom's house for dinner. As I have probably mentioned before, they have an AWESOME view from their back porch of the entire sound - not to mention gorgeous sunsets. Here are some pictures taken on their back porch.

Well, that about wraps up the pictures. On Easter Sunday, it was much cooler and windier, so we stayed inside most of the time and had a very lazy day. Overall, it was one of the most fun trips I have had to the beach for Easter.

Tourists for a Day part 1

This Easter David and I went down to visit his family in Atlantic Beach, NC. We try to make it down there for at least Easter and Christmas every year (although we didn't get to go last Easter) This time, we brought a friend of ours, Bill, who was going to be all alone for Easter. Since he had never been to the coast of North Carolina before and it was going to be a nice day on Saturday, we decided we would all be tourists for the day. Now since we went to all the touristy places and did all the touristy things, I am warning you - I took TONS of pictures. I have tried to narrow them down to the best ones, but this is a warning, there will still be lots. So many, in fact, that I will have to make this a 2 part post. Here is the first part...

Ok, so the first place we went to is the North Carolina Pine Knoll Shores Aquarium. Now I have been there before, but it was long ago before they totally renovated the place. If you have never been, it is really nice now, and worth a trip if you are out that way sometime. However, this time because it was Easter, there was an Easter egg hunt going on at the aquarium. The staff had hidden little plastic eggs inside the tanks with the aquatic life, and the kids had to go around and find as many as they could to get a prize. I thought it was a very cute idea, but we didn't participate. We did, however each get our picture taken as the face of a giant hermit crab - a very touristy thing to do, but lots of fun too : ) Here are the best pics from the aquarium.

From there we went to a local dive, the Beach Tavern for a lunch of the best pizza around before heading into Beaufort to do the touristy things there.

See part 2 (above) for a recap and pictures of the second half of our day as tourists.

A few 1st's and a Home Tour

We have recently just had a few 1st's in our new place. Last weekend was the first time we made a fire in our real fireplace. I also lit the hurricane candles to add more to the ambiance. It was so nice and cozy and really pretty. Here's a picture so you can also enjoy it. : )
Also last weekend the ACC Basketball tournament was on with the biggest rivals in NC - UNC (Carolina) and Duke. We have a few friends that really wanted to see the game, but since it was only on ESPN, and we have cable now in this new place, we had a few of our friends over. Then we found out that some of our other friends accross the street were trying to figure out a way to see the game too, so we invited them over. There were more people than I expected, but it's always fun to have a big group over - it was like a little party. I love having company. Anyway, we had 10 adults (including David and me) and 1 kid. It was a full house, but since we have so much more space here, it actually didn't feel too crowded. Here are a couple of pictures of the ACC fans at our place.

Another 1st we had was our very first overnight guests! This is the 1st time we have actually had a guest bedroom, and this past Monday night was the 1st time we had someone to stay in it.

The couple that came is a couple we support in a college athletic ministry. They are being relocated in their ministry postion to NC State, but they were flying out of here very early Tuesday morning, so we invited them to stay with us since we are so close to the airport now.

Unfortunately at this time I do not have any pictures of these 1st time guests, but I did take pictures of the place all cleaned up right before they got here. Here's the guest room where they stayed.

And here's our guest bathroom that I have decorated in a palm tree theme. Also I think this is really cool picture utilizing the mirror to see more angles of the bathroom.

Here is our bedroom. (Nice, new comforter set - courtesy of my Mom and Dad as an early Birthday present). And you can't see it but to the right is a sliding glass door that opens up to our spacious porch.

The rest of the place is rather open, but still visibly divided. Basically if you walk through the front door, there is little hallway with a coat closet on the left and the guest bedroom and bathroom on the right. Then it opens up into the living room on the right (that goes on into our sun-room which we use as our office) and the kitchen (with a laundry room and pantry) and dining room area on the left. And if you go straight back, you walk right into our bedroom. You can tell what I mean by these pictures.

Well that's about it for the 1st's and the virtual tour of our new place. I hope you enjoyed it : ) Coming soon - a post about our upcoming Easter trip and my Birthday celebration. I can't wait!

David's trip

While David is sitting in the other room watching the Golf channel, I thought it would be a good time to catch you up on his most recent trip and the events from last weekend.

David had a few business appointments set up in his home town at the beach, so he went down to do a little business, spend a little time with his family there, and of course play a little golf. Business went great and he had really good time with his family, but the highlight of the weekend was who he got a chance to play golf with. Now if you are as golf illiterate as I am, I will include a wikipedia link to who this person is so you can see how cool it was that he actually played with one of the best golfers in the world from the 1980's, Curtis Strange.

David has a friend who is the club pro there at the beach, and Curtis now lives there as well. So David's friend called him up and asked if he wanted to play a foursome with him, Curtis, and 1 other guy. Of course he said he would love to play and was very excited to have that rare opportunity. As soon as I found out he would be playing with someone as famous as this guy was, I told him he had to take some pictures, but of course it was just all about golf and no pictures were taken, so you'll just have to settle for this old picture of Curtis Strange I got from the internet.

Dodge...ouch...ball...'08

We have just had the 1st and probably last Dodge Bowl 2008 Championship with friends on our business team. We rented a gym, split up in 2 rather large teams, and each had jerseys made. We were the red team. Here's a great group shot of our team. I'm on the bottom left and David is right behind me.

After a little "giving of the jerseys" ceremony, the referee's lined the balls up in the middle and when the whistle blew, a few players from each team ran for the ball. I was never one of those people. My strategy was to stay behind someone and avoid all balls. Then only if one came by me, I would throw it or give it to a bigger, stronger guy to throw. That strategy worked well in the beginning, but... Never mind, I'm getting ahead of myself.

So here are the teams getting ready to run for the balls in the middle.

And here are a couple of action shots. (I'm # 2)

Here we are in full force, beating the other team. Notice, they only have 1 guy left.

Well, we were actually pretty evenly matched since we each won 4 games and had to end the match on a tie due to official injury. And guess who sustained that official injury? Yep, you guess it. ME! So my little strategy wasn't so effective when I was the only one left facing several highly competitive, strong guys on the opposing team.

We were all having a good time and I was doing great, dodging the ball like a pro, when it happened. All I remember is seeing this bright yellow ball come rocketing across the gym aiming directly for my face, and I couldn't throw my hands up or duck quick enough before, WHAM!!! It hit me smack in the middle of the face and I just cupped my hands over my face and fell to the ground. I won't go into all the details, but I did have a bloody nose and rather swollen lips. I had to spend the rest of the night icing my face on and off, and even some today as well. But hey, at least I didn't have to pay a fortune to get full, sexy lips for a few days :)

Here I am recovering. I am pleased to tell you that I am doing just fine - no broken nose or busted lips, just nice plump, fuller lips (and it doesn't even hurt anymore!)

Apart from the official injury that ended the game in a tie, we did have fun, and who knows, maybe there will be a tie breaker some other time, but I will be sitting in the stands for that one and cheering the red team on to a sure victory!

Falling Behind and Catching Up...

Wow! I just noticed that it has been over a month today since my last post. But there is a good reason, I promise.

We have had SOO much going on recently, that I just haven't had the time or felt like I could take the time to sit down and blog. And I still have so much to do now, but I know that if I don't go ahead and catch up, then I'll be too far behind to do it later.

I actually have several things to catch up on here, and the biggest one being....drum roll, please....WE'VE MOVED!!! This is actually the 1st move since we have been married. We spent some of last week packing, and then made the big move (30 mins closer into town)on Saturday. Then we have spent some of this week unpacking. But like I said, there is still more to do...See?

You can't really tell what the place looks like from these pictures. Once it is all set up, I will take some good pictures and you will be able to see how nice it is. Actually we really only have 2 rooms to unpack still. It is very livable in all the other areas. Anyway, the reason we moved is to actually live in the city that we live our life in, instead of driving 30 minutes away just to sleep at our place. So even though we have only been here 1 week. It is sooo nice having everything so close. It is also going to be really nice to have a guest room with a bed for anyone who comes to visit. But just give us another week or so, because the 1st picture is of that room. The second picture is me taking a break in the sunroom/office. So it's a little bigger than where we were before, and it has a very nice, open floor plan. There are also some other great features like walk-in closets in both the rooms (I get the one in the master bedroom and David gets the one in the guest room), a separate laundry room instead of a laundry closet, a coat closet, a pantry, a linen closet, a wood burning fireplace, and a roomy balcony with a sliding glass door off the master bedroom. And that's just inside the place. We are also in a complex that has great amenities - lighted tennis and basketball courts (which the guys will take full advantage of when it's a little warmer) a fitness center with a raquetball court (which I'm excited about brushing up my skills on and getting exercise) a beach volleyball court, and a nice sized pool off the clubhouse (those are going to be great in the summer!) We also have a little pond with a fountain and picnic tables around it, and just across the street is a great walking trail. I have a feeling that I am going to LOVE living here for a while.

Ok, enough about that big news. Also on Saturday another milestone was celebrated. My little brother's 21st Birthday Party!!! Can you believe it?!? Michael turned 21 on Sunday!!! That sure makes me feel old. Anyway, my parents threw him a little party on Saturday night, so we moved all day then went to the party that night. We were exhausted after that, but we had a good time.

Here are some pictures taken at his party. The venue was the youth center at my parent's church, and most of the guests were Michael's friends from working with the youth. We all had pizza and wings and then this cake with ice cream. Most of the time we just stood around chatting, but we also watched a really funny comedian (actually David's favorite), Brian Regan, on the big screen. It was a fun birthday celebration.

And speaking of celebrations, this last section catches me up to the present. We are not typically very much into making a really big deal about Valentine's Day, but we do take advantage of the time to spend some good quality time together and remind each other how much we love each other. So we had a really nice time last night. We went out shopping 1st to get a few things we still needed for our place, then David cooked a gourmet dinner for me and wrote me a nice poem in my card (He's so sweet!) We had almond crusted salmon and sweet potatoes with steamed vegetables. And he didn't know it at the time, but I was providing the dessert. I surprised him with an enormous heart shaped chocolate chip cookie that I decorated like a valentine. I wanted to do something to surprise him, and since we had just moved, there wasn't much I could do. But I had a big tub of cookie dough in the fridge and I just bought a few little icing tubes on a whim the other day, so that was perfect. I smushed the dough down onto a large cookie sheet, then shaped it into a heart by hand and baked it for about 20 mins. Once it was completely cool, I decorated it. It turned out really well and David really liked it.

Then we spent the rest of the night putting some things together in the house, and just hanging out in our new place.

So that pretty much catches me up to the present. Coming soon (after we get completely situated) pictures of the new place!