The 100K Club

Proving my point about how difficult it is to go on vacation without investing hours of work to prepare and hours of work when you get back, I have had no time to blog since we got back from D.C. - Have fun at Disney Liz, sell your soul to the Mouse for a few days of fun! Just joking, it will be worth it!

Of course I have HUGE news! My car finally turned to 100K miles! I have been anxiously awaiting this day since about 97K miles. What a cool thing right? I even have had the camera in the car waiting for this day. I was a little afraid that it might happen when I was on the highway but as luck would have it the big odometer turn happened in the parking lot at work! All it took was a few extra miles (which just so happened to be convenient to Starbucks!) a photo op and a Latte, what else could a girl ask for??

Speaking of 100K miles, Happy Birthday Papa! Oh come on, you know you laughed at that!!

Spring has sprung in NC and finally all is green. I will take some pictures tomorrow and post them. It is so great to sit in the family room and look out at all of the beautiful trees! Living in the enchanted forest is great in spring and fall!

We're Back......

What a whirlwind! There was so much to see I had to tone down the OCD and just decide we would not be able to get it all done. The weather was a little challenging, it was cold and rainy for our 2 full days but there was so much to do inside we made it work. Arlington was amazing, Connor loved the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (where they make the money!) and I think we all appreciated the tributes to Washington and Lincoln and the White House. D.C. is just a fascinating place. I am so glad we went!

Poor Chris, all he wanted to do was go somewhere warm for spring break.......

Nothing like vacation with the boys. After AJ kept us up rolling around in bed all night (the kid cannot be still!) we started calling him Big Bird. All that noise was like a bird making a nest! Connor also had a good one, AJ was telling him to not do something in the hotel room because of housekeeping and Connor said "We have a maid? Cool! Mom is our maid at home." Truer words have not been spoken.

The Lincoln Memorial was amazing, the detail was beyond what I expected.

Connor was the lucky one, his brother was nice enough to give him a ride. As Connor pointed out, his legs are not big and strong like ours! We must have walked 20 miles in 3 days. If I had not stopped at every Starbucks along the way for another Venti I may have actually lost a few pounds!

Happy Birthday Connor!

Before we left for Washington DC we celebrated Connor's 10th birthday! I cannot believe he is 10 already, what a blessing he has been to us.

We went to Fire and Sticks for his birthday dinner which is a Japanese Hibachi Steakhouse, Connor is a big fan of the shrimp there. He even got on the chair and did a little chicken dance with his chef hat!

Just a fews days to go...

We are pretty excited about our last minute spring break plans. For most of the winter Chris insisted we were going somewhere "warm" for spring break. We tossed around a lot of ideas but in the end decided we were going to go to Washington DC! It is only a 6 hour drive from here (yea, no airplane!) When we moved to the east coast we said we would take advantage of the rich history here so no time like the present. The hard part is the extra hours at work to get ready for vacation and then the extra hours when you get back to make up for vacation.

Playin' in the Dirt

And Baseball begins. We had our "official" opening day for Connor on Saturday and AJs team had their first tournament. The weather was in the low 70's all weekend, perfect baseball weather.

Connor again did a great job catching but his big news was an inside the park home run! He was so excited. You might not be surprised to find out that he came home from practice on Sunday with a $20 bill. This was apparently the incentive one of the coaches offered up for a HR this year. You had to know Connor would be the first to pull in the $20!

AJ's team won their tournament which was great since it was the first of the year. Way to come out strong boys! The championship game was interesting to say the very least but AJ did a great job catching and the boys were thrilled with the win.

I love that they are both catching, AJ still loves to pitch so this is a close second and Connor loves to play the hot corner but there is something about them behind the plate that I love to watch!

Dinosaur Skeletons and Dip n Dots

Hello everybody. As you all know, I went to Atlanta GA last week. Well now I'm back to tell you my story about my experience in the empire state of the south's (Georgia's) biggest city. We had to leave the house at 4:40 in the morning. The busses were supposed to leave at 5:30 but those busses are never on schedule and we ended up leaving at 5:40 due to late kids. I was excited cause I got to see South Carolina for the first time and I have to say there was 3 words that describe South Carolina, peaches, fireworks, and the Lord (however, the I soon found out Georgia was more about the peaches than South Carolina.) So we arrived in Atlanta around noon and went straight to the CNN tour. I learned a lot about how CNN works. I also got a Dale Earnhardt Jr. hat there. After the CNN tour we went to the hotel. We were so loud that within the first 20 minutes, someone checked out cause of the noise. It was bad, the teacher even threatened to make us sleep on the bus, I guess he didn't know that I wouldn't mind sleeping on the bus. Then we went to dinner at the CNN food court. So the next morning we had to wake up at 6:00 to get breakfast. Then we went to the Fern Bank Museum where I saw dinosaur skeletons and bought Dip n' Dots. Then we went to the Atlanta Aquarium. There were whales and otters but no large or smallmouth bass. What's up with that? However there was catfish, striped bass, and alligator gar. Then we went to the Coca-Cola Pavilion. There, I got to try Coke products from Italy, China, Japan and many more countries. I also got a collectible glass coke bottle. Then we went to the Cumberland Mall to get dinner and roam around. Then we went back to the hotel to go to sleep. Then we woke up the next morning to pack and get breakfast. When we got are stuff loaded on the bus, we headed of to the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. There wasn't much to see there besides MLK was buried there. Then we went to the Turner Field tour. This was insanely cool! we got to go in the dugout, see the museum and a lot of other cool stuff. I thought the tour guide was going to have a stroke. He was explaining how the grass worked and stuff and he was like the gr- gra grad grat grag he kept on slurring his speech. It was weird. So then we get on the bus to go home. It was long but it didn't seem that long probably cause we watched the Scorpion King and Transformers. We got to the school around 10 and got home about 10:30 it was fun and I'm glad I went.

Venti Wake Up Call

Our day started in this order.....

AJ apparently did not want to miss the bus for his trip so he did what all red-blooded 13 year old boys would do, he set his alarm. Set it for 3:30 am sharp, he did not have to leave until 4:40 so not sure what he needed 50 minutes for but glad he thought ahead. Anyway, Chris woke him up and all was well. What little AJ failed to do was to turn off the alarm so that 26 hours after he left we would not be reminded of him at 3:30 am! I woke up to Connor screaming "MOM!!!!" Thinking it was a bad dream or vomit I went running up the stairs. There stood Connor wearing only his boxers and his angry eyes pointing at AJs door. By that time my ears were bleeding because the alarm was so loud. Was this AJs gift for April Fools???

So because of that we have been highly Starbucks dependant today. Two Venti's before 3 pm.

On a more positive note, AJ is texting on a regular basis. He seems to be having fun. I will wait for him to come back to share the details of his day, I will share that his last text of the night was "they are taping our doors shut, I am not even kidding!" Those teachers have done this before and they are smart! Too bad Papa did not know that trick, he could have caught us sneaking out - or in Liz's case sneaking back in. Liz, did I portray that correctly??