Eno River Hike

Since we moved here, we've really wanted to hike / camp / canoe along the Eno River just north of Durham. Eno River State Park is a long park along the river with lots of canoe put-ins and take-outs. There are also miles of trails along the river and campgrounds.  We hiked the section along the river upstream from the canoe areas where there are lots of rocks and little or no other people.  It was about 5-6 miles roundtrip.

Here is the beginning of the trail we hiked, at the most upstream canoe put in.  (The trail across the creek can be reached by fording across the river.  The other side has campgrounds and additional trails) 

Here are some pictures of us along the trail

Ahh, refreshment on a hot day:

Here is Jim on a bridge over a side creek:

We saw some neat animals on the hike.  Here is a milipede:

And here is a neat turtle with his prize catch (the big insect)

We passed a "swinging bridge" and yes it really did swing!

We stopped to relax at some neat locations:

The water was very clear as you can see here:

Here is Colleen trying to climb up for a better view

Here is Colleen contemplat-ing her thoughts overlooking the river:

Here is a few more pictures of the river and trail:

Now that we have a canoe we can't wait to go back and go downstream where the river is canoeable.  We'll be able to camp and canoe along the river with our dog!

Kickball

We found a group that plays pick-up games of kickball at a local park near us.  We went straight from the Eno River hike to the park, and our legs were really tired.  But we had a lot of fun playing.  We all played two games to 15, it took a long time (about an hour per game!).

(The meet up group schedules the games online and posts picutres online.  We copied these pictures from the website.)

Colleen played great on offense (She got on base all but 1 time!)  Here is two action shots of her batting:

And Jim played awesome defense, he made some scatches in sliding / diving catches in centerfield, here he is sliding in to make the catch while trying to avoid colliding into another teammate:

Here is another sliding catch:

And here he is batting:

Here is Colleen on the sidelines

Here is the group, Colleen is in the middle holding the ball and the person behind her is giving her moose horns!

We had fun even though we were really tired, it reminded us of playing on the 5th grade playground!

1st Anniversary

So...we are officially not newleyweds anymore.  We had our first anniversary on August 9th.  We were up in New England for a funeral, so while not the best reason to celebrate, it did allow us to be near where we had our wedding last year.  And since we flew up for a funeral we didn't bring our camera, but once we knew we'd be spending one night/day celebrating our anniversary, we bought a disposable camera so the picture quality is very low on these!

It was a picture perfect day when we celebrated, you can see the blue skies as we stopped by the church first:

Here we were last year in front of the chruch after the wedding!

Then we stopped by Petey's, where we had our rehersal dinner.   The weather was much better this year compared to last year for the rehersal dinner!

We even ate up on the deck, the same loction where we had the dinner last year, here are some pictures from this year and last year

We then went to the park at Great Island Common to take some pictures, just like we did after the wedding, here are comparison pictures again

Because we hadn't planned on visiting New England that weekend, we had to find a hotel room at the last minute.  We literally found the last room in the Portsmouth area (we tried the internet, phone calls, etc), it was a smoking 2-double bed rooms (not even queen size) at the Comfort Inn.  The room stunk, and the bed was uncomfortable, but we were able to laugh it off as our high class anniversary night out!

The next morning we went to UNH to where Jim proposed to Colleen back in December of 2007.  Look at the difference between the snow in Dec 2007 and the green of Aug 2009.

We then had breakfast at The Bagelry near campus (our favorite in New England!), and headed back home on our flight after that. It wasn't a planned anniversary trip but we were at least happy to revisit some of the same locations one year later!

Our new house!!!

Hopefully if things go well in the next 3 weeks we'll be the proud owner of a new house, located at XXXXXXXXX Cary, NC.

We've been looking for a house for a long time. If anybody remembers our time in San Diego, we tried so hard to get a condo and/or a house and failed to get one after 2 years of trying. We have a wonderful agent who reminds us exactly of Colleen's mom, it's uncanny!

We wanted a two-story house. Jim has always lived in a one-story house and always wanted to go upstairs to go to bed. (Jim also loved dormers on houses too!) Colleen wanted brick and something that reminded her somewhat of a New England home. We really wanted to live in North Raleigh where we are now, but also considered Cary, a fast growing suburb near RTP with some of the best schools. We looked at a lot of nice houses over the last three months, here are some of them:

All of them had something or other that wasn't quite right. Either it backed up to a major road, didn't have a fenced yard, had a ground floor master bedroom, or outdated kitchens, major drainage problems in the yard, was next to major power transmission lines, etc. But we found a great one finally, and the winner.....

.....

.....

We chose this one!

It had just about everything we wanted. It had brick, a colonial New England look to it, it had a full walk up 3rd story/attic, walk in closets in every bedroom--including two in the master bedroom, a fenced yard, a wonderful neighborhood with great schools (Cary schools are possibly the best in the state!), walking trails to the greenway system, 0.5 miles from a nice town park with a lake, and even the dormers that Jim loves! We have signed the contract and we are set to close on Sept 15, here we are by the sign in the yard that says the house is under contract:

We can't wait for a "SOLD" sign that we can take our picture of!

Here are pics of the inside of the house:

And finally, here is our car in the driveway, it looks like home!

Wish us luck as we approach closing on Sept 15!