Thanksgiving Surprise!

Thanksgiving this year was looking to be a solo event, so we decided to surprise Nana and Pop-pop by driving down to Florida to spend it with them! On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we loaded up the car and brought the kids to their regular meetings of American Heritage Girls and Trail Life. They finished up around 8pm and we piled back in the Suburban and got on the road. 

We had toyed with the idea of just showing up at their door unannounced, but the community in which they live is gated, so we knew we'd have to get through that somehow. Rather than take the chance that they might be out somewhere in the morning, we called Nana and Pop-pop as we were leaving to see how they were doing. When we were about to hang up we put them on speakerphone and had the kids shout, "We'll see you in the morning!!!" Nana's reaction was priceless. She may have uttered a word or two that I won't repeat here, but their excitement was evident. With that out of the way, we got on the highway and drove through the night, arriving at their place around 9am the next morning. 

Their community is a 55-and-older community and everyone drives golf carts to get from house to house. This fascinated the kids to no end when they first heard about it and had been looking forward to learning to drive them, but more on that later.

Their neighborhood has a really cool natural area where you can take the carts through and see wildlife and various plants.

It's got a Jurassic Park vibe to it with all the Spanish moss and palm trees. We half expected to see a T-Rex wander past. 

We saw tree frogs,

 egrets,

a Sandhill Crane

 and, while not a dinosaur, it really is an alligator. If you zoom in on the picture, you can just spot 5 or 6 small striped baby gators hanging out on the band to the right of the culvert.

 Of all the plants, this one was the coolest. Yep. Wild coffee! I considered taking a cutting home with us for a personal supply,

 but then I picked a cherry and saw the size of the beans... you'd have to have a LOT of plants to just make a cup of coffee. Oh well...

This is the lake that their house sits on. This is actually taken from the opposite end of the lake looking back toward their house, which is the yellow on in the middle of the picture. From their porch, it's maybe 10 steps down to the water, but you don't want to go swimming... thar be gators in that thar water. The day we left to come home, just after we left, a big gator managed to catch one of the egrets right on the shore by their house. Just a shame we missed it!

 Of course, we couldn't pass up a trip to the beach, considering the Gulf is only a mile away.

 Even though it was late November, the weather was warm enough to swim, though the water was a little chilly. 

 The kids loved the waves. 

 There had been a storm the previous evening and the surf was unexpectedly high. And by high, I mean like a normal day at the Outer Banks. My previous experiences in the Gulf of Mexico were that on a nice day, there was almost no surf at all, but maybe that was just where I went...

 A very cool feature of the beach was what it was made of...

 Shells! Tons and tons of shells! If you dug down below the very thin (less than an inch) layer of sand, you just found layer upon layer of tiny shells and pieces of shell. 

 This is literally just a picture taken of the beach up close. I didn't dig for it or pile any up. 

 The boys decided to make use of the shells to make a design in the sand. (Look in the background... That's a ton of shells!)

After a while, they made a shell heart in the sand above the high-tide line so it would stay until someone covered it up.

In between all these things, we did have Thanksgiving dinner. The community had a big potluck dinner in the clubhouse by the pool for everyone who didn't go to visit family for the holiday. Somehow I thought this would be a small-ish gathering of maybe 20 or 30 people, but boy was I wrong! There had to be close to 150 people in the clubhouse and a whole lot of food! We brought food with us from home to make sure we were prepared, but considering how much there was, we probably could have shown up empty-handed and left full. 

Now, going back to the golf carts. Each of the older 3 kids got lessons from Pop-pop on how to drive. Emma wasn't really tall enough to reach the pedals and the steering wheel and Irene... Well. She's driven enough for the next few years... I did get a video of each of them driving, so enjoy!

Movie at the Park

Almost every week, Greensboro's LeBauer Park shows a movie on a big outdoor screen. We saw that they were showing Hidden Figures, which is about the black women mathematicians in the 1950s and 60s who overcame all manner of racial prejudice to help develop the math needed to launch the US space program. It was absolutely amazing and highly recommend everyone see it. 

They gave away free popcorn and we brought our dinner down to sit and eat while watching the movie. 

 We had a really fun time and can't wait to do it again!

Van Troubles

So... Irene had her first driving lesson and it did not go very well...

Let me start by saying that nobody got hurt, not even a scratch, thank God.

I was in the kitchen cooking dinner while the kids were outside playing. I could hear them hooting and hollering as they rode their bikes and scooters in the driveway. Next thing I hear is Emma come into the house and say, "Irene drove the car down to the street." She said it in such a nonchalant way that it took me a minute to process. "What?!" I asked. Emma just said it again. I went to the door and sure enough, the van wasn't where I'd left it.  I patted my pockets and my keys were there, so I knew it wasn't that I'd left them in it or something like that. Panic set in and I bolted out the door. No van in the driveway. No van down at the street. I freaked out and started running. I had the presence of mind to count the kids on my way down and they were all there... except for Irene.

Apparently what happened is that while they were playing in the driveway, Irene had climbed into the van on her own and leaned hard enough on the gear shift to knock it out of Park. From there, it rolled backward down our driveway and shot across the street into the park and down into the cedar trees. Irene was completely fine, except for being scared out of her mind. I can only imagine the image of the van flying down the driveway, bouncing across the street and then cruising its way through the park backwards with Irene at the wheel. 

It could have been so much worse. On the way down, the van squashed our two tricycles that were in the driveway behind it. Thank God everyone was out of the way and unhurt.

 The van, however...

 was not in such good shape.

 Like, really bad shape.

As in... Totaled. It's toast. We no longer have a van.

It turns out that there was a recall about 4 years ago on our van for exactly this problem. According to Toyota, they have a record of sending a notice to our address, but we never got it. Fortunately, our insurance is fantastic. We have GEICO (yes, it's supposed to be all caps. It's an acronym. I'm not shouting it) and they said they needed to work up a valuation on it so they could figure out how much to pay us for it. I was determined not to get raked over the coals and did my own research. I determined that it was worth around $7100-7200. After waiting a week, they finally got back to me and offered us... $6950. I have to say, I was surprised. I wasn't going to quibble over such a small difference between our values. It was impressive not to get jerked around.

Our plan now is to use the Suburban for our family car and look into replacing Rebecca's aging Mazda in the near future with something that's not falling apart and has working air conditioning!

Breakfast with Nana and Pop-pop

With the Fall coming on, Nana and Pop-pop ended their extended stay up North and headed their way back to Florida. We got to meet them for breakfast on their way through town. In the past, we've gone to places like Smith's and the Oakcrest  Family Restaurant, which are both excellent, but the kids were delighted when Nana suggested Chick Fil A instead. 

It was great to spend an hour or so with them and can't wait until we can spend more time, maybe in Florida!

Rebecca's Big Night!

It's official! Rebecca is one of The Great 100 Nurses of North Carolina! 

The Great 100 is a one-time award given to the top 100 nurses throughout North Carolina who exemplify the profession. Nurses are nominated by their peers and are chosen through a blind review process. The selection committee is made up of previous Great 100 winners and they only see each candidate's achievements and community service. 

 Not surprisingly, they read through Rebecca's and thought she deserved the award!

I don't think anyone can say that she isn't dedicated to her patients, coworkers and community and the Great 100 award serves as recognition for all her hard work and care.

 Not only that, but the banquet is a great excuse to get all dressed up! :)

And just to show that sometimes unexpected things can happen at big gala events...

We got evacuated in the middle of the keynote address! Fortunately, the building wasn't on fire, but you can bet that if it had been a medical emergency, folks would have been well cared for with a whole hall full of nurses! :)

Sukkot 2017

For the second year running, Valley of Blessing had their congregational Sukkot up at Higher Ground Christian Center in Virginia. 

 We decided to bring our camper up with us to stay in rather than pitching a tent for the ten days.

 If there's one thing we can count on at HG, it's beautiful sunrises.

 We did get a couple days of rain, but the weather was pretty nice, overall. 

We didn't plan nearly as many events as we did last year, so there was a lot of free time for just hanging out. That gave  Pastor Donna from spending a little time with the littles playing games. 

 We took a little side trip to Mabry Mill and walked around the old buildings and exhibits there. 

 The last night of Sukkot, we celebrated Simchat Torah, which is when we roll the whole Torah scroll back to Genesis 1:1. It's always so cool to see the Word of Adonai rolled out. 

This passage is the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy. It's divided to commemorate the dividing of the Red Sea during the Exodus.

While doing Sukkot at Higher Ground was good for two years, I think we've decided to go back to our previous tradition of camping on our own from now on. It's a lot less hassle and stress. 

Gabe's Birthday Surprise!

For Gabe's 9th birthday, we surprised them all by foregoing the usual birthday party for a night at the Great Wolf Lodge in Concord. We'd been to a GWL before in Williamsburg, but that was way back in 2012, when Emma was the only Little, though Irene was on her way. :) One of the nice things about the GWL is that you can get into the pool at 1pm on the day you check in and then can stay in the pool until they close on the day you check out. So even though we only stayed one night, they got a full day and a half in the pool. 

The kids were all super excited when we arrived because we didn't tell them ahead of time that we were doing this. We checked in and Rebecca took them all straight to the pool while I unloaded in the room and decorated it.

If you recall, Gabe had asked for a Minion birthday theme, so we obliged him further on this trip with balloons, a banner, confetti and a bunch of Minion themed snacks.

I even made a trail mix with blue and yellow M&Ms (yes, I had to pick them out of a huge bag!) Chex Mix, pretzel sticks and candy eyes.

While I was setting up the room, The kids were getting into action. The best part about the GWL is that the older 3 are all old enough to run off on their own and do whatever slides they want. I think there were only two slides that Gabe and Ezra were supposed to need an adult for, but we certainly didn't mind going with them. 

 The Littles weren't exactly hard to watch, tho. They loved the wave pool! It came on and off at 5 minute intervals, so they'd bang around in the waves for a few minutes and then when it stopped, they'd want to go over to the huge fort with two slides that they could ride on their own.

 They also liked the splash area around the fort, but they weren't big fans of the huge, 500-gallon bucket that dumped every 10 minutes or so.

We engaged in a few races on the track slides, which was fun. I went a couple of times and beat everyone else, but I think it's just because gravity pulls harder on me. ;) I didn't get a picture of him, but during the second day, Ezra and Gabe made a friend who spend most of that day riding the slides with us wherever we went.  

As a  treat on the second day, we got a massive bucket of ice cream that came with all manner of stuff in it like cookie bites, brownie chunks, whipped cream and chocolate syrup.

They made short work of it, tho. (Rebecca and I may have helped a little...)

At the end of the trip, we were all waterlogged and exhausted, but super happy that we had come. Of course, they all want to do it again as soon as possible and I certainly don't disagree!