So we finished off the last leg of the journey down to NC today. But apparently we couldn't actually start the trip without stopping by Starbucks. It's really sad, but the kids have become addicted to Starbucks. Last night after the racing and boats at the Putt Putt place, both kids were whining about how thirsty they were and that they "needed" to by Starbucks. To heck with that, I told them they could just hang on until we got to the restaurant.
Once we were on the road the trip took about three hours driving, a total of almost four hours if you include the time we stopped off to grab a bite to eat for lunch. There was no traffic to speak of, and we didn't even slow down on I64 before the exit for the tunnel road (in the past usually that backs up 5 to 10 miles). The only place we ran into a backup was picking up the key at the rental management place, but even that wasn't too long. In fact, the worst thing about the whole trip was the sheer number of kid songs we ended up hearing over the course of the trip.
The house is more than adequate and much larger than what we need for just the four of us. There are four bedrooms in the main part of the house with a total of five beds, then another bedroom in the 'addition' with 2 sets of bunk beds. Now the 'addition' is just odd. The whole basement of the house (which consists of a bed room, living room with a TV, refrigerator, microwave, sink, washing machine and dryer and a bathroom) is completely separate from the rest of the house. The only way to get to it is to go outside and then into the door into that area. It's very odd and the first house I've ever stayed in down here that has anything like that. And it's more than a bit annoying since that's where I would have liked to have set up the Wii, but since it's completely separate we wouldn't feel comfortable having the kids down there where we couldn't hear them. So for the most part we're just not going to use that whole section of the house (except the washer and dryer). So if anyone wants to come hang out, there's room we aren't using.
Anyway, once we were all unpacked we headed up to Harris Teeter to grab some food for the coming week. And man did we spend a lot at the store. I'm convinced that Harris Teeter is one of these upscale grocery stores where you pay more for not a lot of extra thrills. Wegman's is a much better value in my opinion (Wegman's has really won me over since they showed up in the DC area). Alas, there's no Wegman's down where. Just Food Lion and now Harris Teeter. And we figured Food Lion wouldn't carry some of the specialty stuff we wanted to get for Catherine (I should add that Harris Teeter didn't end up carrying it either). But after this visit I think Harris Teeter much be one of the world's most expensive grocery stores. Orange juice is a full $1.50 higher priced than it is at Wegmans back home. In fact, just about everything seemed to be at least a $1 higher priced.
Once we returned from grocery shopping, we decided to hit the pool since we didn't think we would have time to go to the beach and get back and have dinner at a reasonable time. Luckily the house has a pool and a hot tub (or a hot pool as the kids refer to it). The pool is advertised on the web site as (and I'm not making this up) "Large swimming pool: It is much larger than the majority of private pools on the island." Now after having seen this pool, I have to wonder how that phrase can be spun to be true. Much larger than the majority doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. Don't get me wrong, the pool size is fine for what we plan on using it for. I mean, we have a pool at home, we didn't come to the beach based on the idea of having a pool. But still, as you can see from the photo, you can actually stand up in the 'deep' end (I think it's 5 and a half feet deep in the middle of the deep section).
I tried going and getting a sunset shot tonight, but nature wasn't cooperating. Lots of low clouds on the horizon killed any chance of getting decent picture. But then the jet trails going across the sky wouldn't have helped even if the weather had been accommodating.
So the house we're in a fair distance from the actual ocean, but the house has no bikes. Last year we were able to get into a routine of driving the kids down to the beach, then I would drive back to the house and bike to the beach (and reverse the process to come home). Guess we're all hoofin' it this year though.
Behold my persona if I were to exist in the Simpsons world. I used the avatar creator over on the Simpson movie website to whip up this guy. Not a completely accurate representation, but you work with what they have available.
We drove down to Richmond this morning so that tomorrow we won't have to drive as far to the beach. We left a little before lunch and were stuck in traffic for a good while. Took us about 90 minutes to go about 30 miles. It finally started clearing up some after that and eventually we were able to cruise normal speed the rest of the way down, but overall the trip was easily an hour longer than it should have been. Funny how we left today for Richmond so we wouldn't have to spend as long in the car tomorrow and then we end up spending significantly more time than we had planned in the car anyway. And by funny I mean not so much.
Once we got to Richmond, the kids were off to play video games with their Uncle JJ for a while. I only let Quinn play if he tried some new foods though, and I got him to lick a pineapple about five times. This may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but trust me, it is. And here's the positive aspect of it, when he does the licking thing, most of the time he doesn't have the automatic gag reflex that he does when he tries eating it. So my new theory is going to be introduce stuff by having him lick it and get used to the taste for a while, then slowly introduce the concept of actually eating it. Not sure at this point though how long of a transition period I should be shooting for though. I'm thinking maybe a week of trying something everyday should be good enough to acclimate his taste buds to it before trying to press on to the eating aspect.
Before we headed off to dinner, we stopped by the Putt Putt Golf and Games. The reason? The go-karts. Quinn had been here to play mini golf the last time he was down visiting Grammy and Pop Pop and really wanted to do the go-karts. On the way there we did have a discussion in the car about whether it's miniature golf, mini golf, or simply putt putt. The general consensus being what you think is correct is probably based on the region you're from. So once we got there and acquired ticket we waited in line for a little over 20 minutes before we got our turn at 8 minutes of racing. We weren't the fastest, but we weren't the slowest either (I'm fairly positive that the total weight the cart is carrying plays into how fast it can go). Ginger was the photographer, but she didn't get any shots of the lap times which were displayed on a score board as you zipped around the track so I don't know how we did in that aspect.
Catherine initially wanted to go too, but sometime in the 20 minutes we were waiting to ride and us getting off, Catherine changed her mind and wanted to do the water boats instead. This caused a minor meltdown initially with Quinn since he wasn't going to get to go on them. So Catherine and I waiting in line for a good while and finally got to take a boat out on the water. We sprayed Quinn who was standing on the sidelines from the boat (we == me) thinking that would be funny, but that was really the wrong thing to do since he went into major meltdown mode at that point. So Catherine and I focused on trying to spray Grammy instead. Now I'm not positive, but they probably only want you trying to spray people inside the pool area in other boats, but none of the staff complained. I let Catherine try and drive the boat for a bit, and I think she got a bit frustrated it wasn't doing what she wanted, so then she decided she didn't want to go for the full time, so I dropped her off and they let me take Quinn out for the remaining two minutes (which calmed him down some too, even though he really didn't have enough time out to do anything).
After we finished up racing and boating, we headed to dinner at Brickhouse. And it was probably only two minutes after we arrived that everyone was already tired of me singing "She's a brick..... house....". This was my first time to Brickhouse. It's a nice little restaurant that has good sized portions for a good price. And the food is good too (always a plus). If you're in Richmond and in the area you should try it out.
Quinn had some stomach bug or something this morning, but he seems to have rebounded as the day has gone on. Quinn and I both got haircuts today in preparation for our upcoming beach trip. And me? I've decided I think I'm stressed. I've left all my packing till the last minute. The good news is that because of this we're not taking nearly as much stuff on vacation as we have in the past. Typically I've ended up bringing a lot of stuff that ideally I would like to do and use, but never do (Rollerblades, bikes, kid toys, etc). So this year since I've waited until the last minute, I'm only taking the stuff I think I need versus the stuff I think I might want. The essentials are several cameras, the Wii, and a wallet (oh yea, and clothes, I'm guessing no one wants to see me naked on the beach). I figure anything I've forgotten I can just purchase once we're there (provided I don't forget something really big like the car or something).
Since we're going to be leaving soon though, we decided to out for dinner versus making something and having to toss the leftovers (we'll probably be tossing a fair number of leftover as it is anyway). We hit up Red Robin. The service was kind of slow, but they did recognize that fact and gave us a $20 gift certificate for our next visit. That almost made up for the fact that my Chicken Tortilla soup was suffering from a deficiency of chicken and merely lukewarm by the time I got it.
Tonight's pictures are simply some random animals from the yard today. For the past three or four night just as dusk is approaching, a couple of wild rabbits have been going through our front yard munching away. They're pretty bold and don't even run away unless you actively move towards them and get within about ten feet. The kids and I got this picture right before we left for dinner. When we got back, he was still in the yard chowing down.
The kids had their swimming lessons again today. Ginger said Quinn showed a lot of improvement. He's really been wanting to learn how to tread water, and I think the lessons are helping. Hopefully we'll be able to work on the basics with him over the next couple of weeks.
For dinner we went over to Perry and Drew's house. Cece cooked us up some official Korean food for dinner. They even gave me some kimchi to try (I really don't know the officially way to spell it, and from the wiki page it looks like there are several variations as well). I will say this, it definitely had a bit of a kick to it. They even gave me some of the history of it which seems to have been accurate from what I've seen referenced on the wiki page itself. Overall dinner was very tasty.
There was a period for a bit while we were eating that the kids were playing with two Nintendo DSes, but luckily they were only playing with that for a little bit. Catherine was occasionally a bit left out at times, but she would play with things once the others had moved on to the next thing. The kids had a blast playing because the rules are different at Perry's house. You can play ball inside, ride scooters inside, there's even a moon bounce inside. So the kids just go nuts playing with all the stuff plus from their perspective it's a whole new set of toys to try. And before anyone comments on the lower quality of the pictures of the kids playing, those were taken with the small point and shoot Nikon.
Finally, it's nice to see I'm able send some work my cousin's way through my blog. It's even better to find out they were happy with the results. So all 10 to 15 of you people that are reading this (10 of which I'm betting are related to me), go see Marz Artistry for all your airbrushing needs! Now I'll just have to get Will to hook me up with a percentage of all the bank he makes from these referrals (so far, one and counting).
I know there's currently a shortage of Wii systems out there, but when I read articles like this one where Nintendo officials are saying there 'may' be a shortage at Christmas and if you see a system you should just buy it. That comes across as an attempt to create even more demand artificially (which given the current demand, I don't think they need to do). It especially comes across that way when that same official is the senior vice president of marketing of corporate communications for Nintendo of America. Speaking of the Wii, we bought two more controllers so now we have a total of 4. This will let all of us play when we head down to the beach on vacation next week. Although now I'm thinking I may need to buy stock in a battery company since the controllers eat up batteries pretty quickly. Mario Party seems to be the game everyone likes (I like Zelda myself), even Ginger plays it once the kids have gone to bed. Ginger already regrets having bought the Monkey Ball Banana Blitz game. While Quinn loved the Monkey Ball games on the Gamecube, he just hasn't taken to the one on the Wii. I actually think he liked Monkey Ball on the Gamecube for the mini games it had more than the actual game play, which probably explains why he likes Mario Party so much since it's almost nothing buy mini games. Zelda is pretty well done, with puzzles that are entertaining, but not overly challenging. The only thing I've noticed is at times you can tell what you need to do, but finding that one area you need to get to in order to proceed can be tough sometimes. It took me a long time to find the last room to rescue that 4th Monkey so I could get across the broken bridge. Which leads to a lot of frustration sometimes as you're there going "Where's the *#&$# monkey?"
The kids had swimming lessons today, and after that they went bowling in the after noon with Perry and Drew. I don't know if Cece or Ginger bowled, but I suspect not. Ginger didn't take any pictures of the lessons or the bowling, so you're stuck with some flower photos I took at Frying Pan Park back on the 4th.
I watched Æon Flux a while ago. I really wasn't expecting it to be very good at all, and I wasn't overly disappointed in that regard. I will say the underlying plot was much better than I was expecting, but the crazy super powers people seemed to exhibit and the over the top crazy technology that defied any rational explanation were more than enough to drag the plot's premise down. The movie is flashy and colorful, and has almost no resemblance to the same named animation that aired on MTV other than the main character is named Æon (although I don't know for sure that we ever knew that Æon Flux was the name of the character in the animated shorts on MTV, just that was the name of animation) and that she seems to have a thing for dressing up in tight black leather. And while that's entertaining the first time you see it (if you like that sort of thing), it quickly loses any luster it had as you're constantly bludgeoned with it. The special effects are maybe slightly better than average, but aren't even anything really unique. It's all stuff you've seen before (and better I might add) in other movies. Overall the film is pretty, but lacking any substance.
I think I made a mistake. A while back in an effort to try and get the kids to finish eating lunch a bit faster I invented a new 'game'. And I use the quotes around game because there's no real winning or losing. Here's how it works. I check the kids plates and then I don't watch as they take a bite, then try and figure out where the food has gone. Sounds stupid right? It's simplistic, but the kids think this is great fun and send me all over the place looking for the sandwich or chicken or whatever it is that has 'disappeared'. Their favorite thing at one point was to make me look for it in the oven, which I then pretend is on and hot. And overall the game worked great. The kids actually ate their food and the lunch was probably an hour shorter than it would have been. The problem is it seems like this was such fun that during every meal now the kids will want to me search for the "thief" taking the food. We have grape thieves, muffin thieves and every other variety (no food is apparently safe from these varmints). Meals are now filled with Quinn distracting me saying something like "Daddy, look over there" as he chomps down some food. And then there's Catherine, who doesn't do subtle, just saying "Daddy, don't look" or "Don't look Daddy" and then taking a bite as I turn away for a second. From there it's all a big game as I search their hands, behind their ears and what not looking for the missing food. And it was amusing the first couple of times, and maybe even for the first week or so, but as we head into week three, it's less and less entertaining (for me anyway, I think the kids still enjoy it). But even though it's becoming a bit tedious, as long as it makes the dinners go faster, I'm all for it. The problem now is the kids have started trying to rat each other out whispering to me that they saw the other one each the food. Guess I should have seen that coming. For now though, the thieves are still around and continue to elude me, but one day I will nab the ever elusive sandwich thief and chicken thief.
The heat we've been having the for past couple of days has been absolutely brutal on the hydrangeas out front. I've tried giving them some water at night and it seems to help a bit, but by the end of the day you can see how the entire plant is dropping from the heat. The one bloom up above I thought was neat because it can't seem to decide which color it's going to end up. This particular bush usually starts out with yellow blooms initially then settles into blue or a light purple color, this one seems to have traces of yellow, blue and purple.
Catherine returned to the fold today. It was a long trip back from what I hear since Ginger and Quinn went to pick her up, but didn't get back home until close to five. When I got home from work I went downstairs to see the kids and found them playing together (and getting along, maybe they missed each other). They were playing "baby chicken". And when I asked what that was Quinn told me they were both baby chickens and they were looking for someone to take care of them because a hunter had come and killed the Mommy chicken. And at this point I'm thinking to myself, "My, isn't that just a lovely game." I was immediately drafted into playtime and became the "Daddy chicken" (and even after I tried explaining that male chickens are roosters, that didn't seem to change my designation in the slightest).
Not much to report today. We did end up going bowling, but it was a disaster (I won't even comment on my score it was so bad, but I will say I let Quinn bowl my last two frames, and the total score wasn't over 100). Evidently when bowling is cheap (it was only $1.99 a game) it brings in a crowd of people that aren't familiar with bowling etiquette. I mean I figured the people next to me weren't going to actually wait on me to finish bowling or respect the whole informal rule of don't bowl when someone is bowling on either lane beside you, but I really thought they would at least stay in their own lane versus actually coming into my lane so they they could launch the ball as hard as they could spinning the ball without even putting their fingers in the finger holes. I mean I had been getting ready to bowl, then the guy ignores that fact, gets up and walks over and steps on me in my lane where he's trying to go so far over to the side. Pretty sure these guys were trying to impress the girls they were with. Lesson learned, don't go during the middle of the day on a weekend. Got it.
So it was one game for Ginger and myself and we were done (although Quinn had his own lane, so he got 2 games in while Ginger and I bowled our one and then he finished up the last couple of frames on our game). Quinn bowled all his games without gutter guards. He would be doing really good if he would just work on throwing the ball straight, but he puts this insanely wicked spin on it so that he usually ends up over at the 7 pin. After that we took Quinn to Friendly's (his choice) since this is the last day we'll be able to visit restaurants like that for a while since Catherine is coming back home tomorrow. And while we were there we got him to try a piece of a Chicken Quesadillas. Now he wouldn't eat a piece with actual chicken in it, but he ate a pretty decent sized piece full of cheese. And while he kept claiming he didn't want to eat it, he didn't go into his gag mode when he was trying it, so that's really promising as something we can work on in the future now. I tell you, this whole money and Wii play time for trying new stuff has him really motivated (he really likes playing Mario Party). The bad thing we realized though is now that JJ's gone, we only have 2 Wii remotes (JJ had brought his two Wii remotes up when he was here, so we could have four of us playing), so if we want everyone to play when we take it on vacation, we're going to have to look into getting additional remotes.
Didn't really take any pictures today (well, I did, but it was with the handheld Nikon, so there's really nothing that was good enough to post). So you get this fountain image I took on the night I was out and about taking Batbrick pictures.
Wasn't today the big 777 day? 7/7/07 or something. Did it feel different to anyone else? I must have missed what all the excitement was about.
Since Catherine is visiting Grammy and Pop Pop down in Richmond we decided to try and work on getting Quinn to try some new foods. And I know if you read all the strategies they say let the child decide on their own, don't bribe them, yada yada. Yea, to heck with that. 
Quinn's been saving up his money for about two months now to get a Playmobile crane. This thing is huge. It's almost as tall as Quinn. We went ahead and bought it couple days ago because Quinn had saved up $60 so far. As an incentive to try some new food, we offered him money off the item for trying some new foods. Ginger started him off at $2 per new food he tries. I personally thought if he was smart, the kid was going to bankrupt us by the end of the day. But yesterday he tried a grape. I had suggested putting it on a fork and letting him lick a bunch of times before trying it. He had no issues licking it, but did end up making a face and stifling a gag when he finally ate it. But he tried a couple of things last night, so we saw that as a progress. And this morning he even suggested he wanted to try some new stuff since he was only a couple of dollars away from getting the crane. So he tried some dried cherries or something (and he actually liked those, so that's a win) and that was enough to get him enough money for the crane. So he spent most of the morning playing with that. I've also decide to bribe him with Wii play time. Each new thing he tries accumulates 15 minutes of play time on the Wii. So he's been at least open to trying stuff now.
We also tried to do some stuff with Quinn today that we wouldn't be able to do with Catherine around. One of those being going to IHOP for breakfast (since the food there can contain peanuts, Catherine can't go). And for dinner we went to Joe's Crab Shack (which they recommend Catherine not have sea food yet since she's under 5). I'm please to report that at the Crab Shack Quinn ate some popcorn shrimp and some fried clams (the kid apparently likes fried food). And he didn't gag or anything on either of them, in fact he was wolfing down the clams. After that we headed to Dairy Queen so he could have a treat for dessert (another place Catherine can't go because of the whole peanut thing).
Other entertainment today consisted of going mini golfing. Which we foolishly did at right around noon and it was about 93 or more degrees out. Quinn did pretty good for the first seven holes, then you could tell he got a bit bored, and was trying find balls in the water, watching other people, climbing over the obstacles, generally being distracted and not really caring about playing that much anymore. So we quickly finished up that and I think Ginger might have won, but I don't know for sure. I know I was leading for a while, but then I got bored near the end myself and stopped trying as hard (yea, I'll use that as the excuse for losing). I'm kind of surprised that Quinn hasn't suggested going bowling as an activity yet. The lanes down the street have a special of $1.99 a game before 6 PM, so now would be the time to go.
So after sweating doing that we came home and switched into bathing suits and headed to the pool to cool off. All in all a pretty long day. Quinn got to bed a bit late, but was literally asleep within five minutes of lights out.
Today was the last day of gymnastics for the kids. Today was also the last day of JJ's visit as he returned to Richmond. But he wasn't the only one that went to Richmond, Catherine has gone down to visit Grammy and Pop Pop for the weekend.
We actually had a really nice (and needed) rain yesterday and last night that left lots of picture taking opportunities.
So last night JJ and I watched Fearless. It's the latest, and if you believe the marketing, last Jet Li martial arts film. As always with Jet Li films the fight scenes are a thing of beauty. The story isn't the strongest I've ever seen, but it's a vehicle for fight scenes. For the most part the fights are realistic (meaning no people with mystical superpowers flying around like in Crouching Tiger or Iron Monkey). I won't bore you with the plot, but it involves a fair amount of hubris and it's eventual toll and the self discovery journey back. What I found much more interesting was the undertone of the movie. It's a set in China around 1900 and the "West" is depicted as expanding their influence and power into China. Now as I was watching it I was disturbed to notice a couple of scenes that had throwaway lines that were almost completely unrelated to the plot of the movie. The lines were driving home a theme about how the West was without honor and unduly expanding their influence. None of which is overly surprising in today's day and age I suppose, but during those couple of scenes they would actually comment on how China is it's own worst enemy, but they can be triumphant over the West if they learn from them and country unites to use the West's own tactics against them. It felt more than a bit like propaganda to me. Kind of scary stuff when you consider some the moves China has been making in the global arena recently. Anyway, overall the movie was pretty good, but it had a typical Chinese film ending (meaning much like the ending to Crouching Tiger, I have no idea what happened or what they were trying to get at, but it's an ending). Overall, good martial arts movie if you like that sort of thing.
