Ted and Deb Visit

We had a nice visit from Jim's mom (Debbie) and his step-dad (Ted)!!! While Jim was at work one day, Colleen gave them a tour of town. She showed them NC State where she goes to school, she showed them North Hills near where we live, and other areas of town. She even cooked a great lunch for Ted, pesto pasta made from basil in Colleen's garden. Ted ate all of it, he really loved it! Then on Thursday night we went to North Hills to the Beach Music Festival that plays every Thursday night in the summer. Here we are sitting in our chairs in the crowd:

The band that week was a great entertaining group! They even danced out on the dance floor and they were really funny when they were talking to the crowd between songs. It was really hot that day, about 92 degrees, they had to be really hot in those cool outfits:

We danced for a little bit too, here are pictures of us dancing!

The next day we went to Cameron Village, a neat outdoot shopping area in the heart of the city not too far from downtown and NCSU. At an antique store we found a cool red flyer wagon that we bought for Julie's shower gift:

We all enjoyed shopping there and almost bought more kids toys! And we found some neat things at the Bargain Box, a thrift store that sells some nice higher end items! Then we had a tasty lunch at Noodles & Company in Cameron Village:

The next morning we had breakfast at a really fancy McDonalds. (yes we are dorks!) It has stone walls, granite counter tops at the register, and even touch screen games at the tables. We played trivia while we ate!

Then as a nice surprise, we were given a new grill by them for an early anniversary gift! Here we are with our new grill!!!

We used it the first night, we had all of our in-town cousins over. Colleen's cousins Christine and Charlene, and Jim's cousin Johnny and his wife Merideth. We grilled up and ate on our patio:
Then we got the fire pit going. It took two people to get the fire going, the wood in the backyard was all wet:

Eventually we got the fire going and we had some beers, s'mores, and enjoyed sitting out by the fire in out backyard!

Beach day!

Living here in Raleigh we are about 110 miles away from the beach that is a quick drive on I-40 the whole way there. We went to Wrightsville Beach near historic Wilmington.

The water in the ocean there was warm, unlike San Diego, and was a lot of fun to swim in. We were there on Friday July 3rd, which was really crowded from the holiday vacationers like us:

The water was blue-green and it reminded us of the ocean in the Florida Keys or bahamas because of the cool color and warm water temperature:
We even got a neat picture of Colleen with a sailboat right behind her:
After spending all day at the beach, we drove into downtown Wilmington (5 miles from the beach). Downtown Wilmington reminded us a lot of downtown Portsmouth, NH with lots of brick buildings having restaurants, shops, cafes, etc. There was also a river through town right at the coast, and they even have a lift bridge just like Portsmouth, the resemblance was amazing:
They have a boardwalk along the river and we were lucky enough to eat dinner on a deck right next to the water. Then we walked along the boardwalk back towards downtown:

One thing that was neat about driving out of Wilmington was on I-40. I-40 begins near the coast in Wilmington and goes west to Barstow, California. We have been on the beginning on of I-40 in Barstow, California in November when we were going canoeing on the Colorado River and we took this picture of a neat sign:

Well in Wilmington they have an identical sign! (We passed by it too quick for a picture, but later that night we found this pic on the web of that sign)
It was neat to know we've seen each sign in the last 8 months!

Julie's Shower! (and travel horror stories)

Colleen was supposed to fly to St Louis on Thursday evening to help Jen set up Julie's shower for Saturday. Well, it was quite an adventure getting there. Her flight was supposed to connect in Detroit. However, the weather was so bad in Detroit that they had to circle over Ohio for 2 hours. Then when there was no opening for them to land in Detroit, they had to divert to Waynesville, Indiana to re-fuel. After waiting for 2 hours in Waynesville, they continued on to Detroit. When she landed in Detroit she ran to her connecting gate to try and catch the flight to St Louis. The St Louis flight was delayed 2 hours so there was a chance she could make it....well they closed to the door to the gate a few seconds before she ran up. It was backing out when she got to the gate. Why they didn't hold the flight for connection is a mystery! So, she was stuck in Detroit for the night. There were no hotels taking reservations because the storms knocked out power for most of Detroit. Jim tried calling from home also, to no avail. No hotel was answering their phone! So she was stuck at the airport overnight with no carry-on bags. She couldn't lie down to sleep because she was wearing a skirt. By the time her 7am flight came, she was dead tired with blood shot eyes. When she landed in St Louis, they ultimate salt on the wound happened when they told her that her bags were in Madison Wisconsin. Julie was nice enough to drive over PJ's so she sould sleep for a few hours on Friday until her bags arrived later that night!

(Jim arrived Friday night with no issues!)

Anyway, it was still good to be in St Louis to see family. Jim's dad and step-mom from Vegas were there, as was all the St Louis family and some family from Illinois.

Julie and James are due to have a baby boy, here is the mom-to-be-Julie with Ted:

Here is Colleen with Jen before the shower started:

Here are pictures of some of the food and decorations before the shower started:

After the shower when all the guests left, the family stayed around to swim in Jen and Phil's pool:

After we got out of the pool, little Lauren wanted to dress just like her Aunt Colleen. It was really cute that Lauren wanted to dress just like her!

Then later Saturday night we had a birthday party for Jen's 34th birthday! We ordered lots of pizza for all of us and had a cake for Jen:

Before bed, Colleen read to the girls, they were all very in to the story!

We then flew back Sunday morning on a very un-eventful non-stop flight that was only 1 hour and 45 minutes long!

Bachelor Party

Jim is the best man for his friend Kevin's wedding in October. He planned a white water rafting trip in West Virginia on the New River for the bachelor party.

They had a cabin for Thursday night before they headed rafting:

They rafted on Friday, camped along the river Friday night, and rafted again on Saturday. The river was running at 3 times the volume as normal from lots of rain. The river was above flood stage and into the forest on the shore:

Here are some pictures of them rafting:

They stayed back in the cabin again on Saturday night after the 2-day white water rafting trip.

Near the cabin was a lake with all kinds of slides, zip lines, etc. Here is Mike Pozsgay going down a zip line into the lake:

Before they headed out on Sunday they drove to the New River Gorge Bridge, the highest vehicular bridge in the western hemisphere. (There is a pedestrian bridge in Colorado that is higher). The bridge is over 950 feet above the bottom of the gorge. Here are Jim and Kevin with the bridge in the background:

The old bridge can be seen in this photo down below. It consisted of 8 miles of winding switch-back roadways before the new bridge was built:

Another view of the gorge from near the bridge:

Colleen was so excited to see Jim come home because she missed him a lot. She made some nice cup cakes to welcome him back:

Surprise find near our house!

We were randomly driving through some of the historic neighborhoods about 2 miles from our house when we ran into a neat surprise! We turned into a little city park only to find out there was a small river with a old dam from a mill that use to exist 100 years ago! It was called Lassiter Mill. All that's left is the dam and some stone foundations from the mill:

The houses on the far side of the river had their own little docks and access to the pool above the dam and to the stream below the dam:

Notice in the picture above, the house backed up to the stream and there is an old bridge pier from a railroad that used to cross there. How cool is that!

The lower part below the dam is a mixture of rocks and sand. At one point the owner of the mill added a sandy beach for people to come visit his restaurant attached to the mill:

You can see the sand is starting to be replaced by the stream's rocks, but it is now part of the City Park and people can come down and relax to the sound of the waterfall and swim in the water or follow the greenway trail that parralles the stream downriver:

Here is Colleen walking along the lower stone wall below the dam:

It was a neat surprise to be only 2 miles from our house!

Then we came home and made a homemade pesto pizza! We made the pesto from scratch (using basil that Colleen grew in her garden!), grated the mozzerella cheese, sliced the tomatos, peeled the garlic cloves, and it was really tasty!