Granny Gen

We had our first visit with Granny Gen last weekend.  She was able to get a flight from Trenton (far easier and closer to her than Newark) and was able to spend four days with us.  We did a ton of stuff, including the planetarium and the Botanical Gardens in Chapel Hill.  It was nice to have a family visit and Kevin and I both found this house to be good for guests (which is odd, as it is exactly the same size as the old house, but the guest room is over the garage, giving guests some additional privacy).
I didn't take as many photos as I should have (possibly because it rained nearly constantly the entire trip), but I did get a couple of nice moments at the Botanical Gardens.

My kids really can't get enough of sand.  I spend hours in the stuff on regular basis.  

Gwen got an unexpected face of sand when she tried to taste the sifter.

The garden has a life sized chess board.  

Jordan Lake

Jordan Lake is fairly close to our house, and has a playground, grills, and sand (which was clearly shipped in, as if you dig 4 inches, you hit pure clay).  It makes for a fun swim, castle-building, hot dog eating Saturday afternoon, all in a twenty minute drive.  We tried to get down to the actual beach the third weekend in September, but apparently we were not alone with that plan, and there were no hotel rooms available in the area we wanted to go (not to mention I didn't really feel like taking another longish road trip 5 days after I got back from Virginia).  Stephanie didn't care that we didn't get to the ocean (which I suspect is because she has never actually been to the ocean and finds the lake to be plenty sandy) so we settled on the lake.  I refuse to relocate to the East Coast and not get some sort of beach type photos my first year, so here they are.

The first road trip to VA

A couple of weekends ago, the girls and I made the trek to Virginia to see Alaina.  Since I had Thursday off and I haven't seen my family nearly as much as I would like since we moved here, I headed there for Thursday and Friday, and then planned to head to Alaina's Friday late afternoon.  Sadly, it took us 3 hours and 45 minutes (no stops) to get to Tappahannock, which was about 45 minutes longer than I had hoped and about 20 minutes longer than I had expected.  But we made it and had a fun 25 hours visiting everyone, including both of my sisters.  We actually stayed 26 hours, but the last hour involved searching the house and all of our bags for our lost keys.  Jared finally showed up and found them ten minutes later... in a place that we had all looked more than once (the recliner that I had taken a ten minute nap in the night before... that little sleep cost me a lost of stress and time!).  I apparently never broke out the camera in that first 25 hours, but I finally did at Alaina's house (which was only minimally impacted from an unfortunate sump pump/clogged sewer main, By the time I got there, you hardly knew that her bedroom and bathroom had been inches under water the night before we arrived, or so she claimed as she had miraculously handled it literally hours before we arrived).  We had a packed weekend-  a really fun brunch at her house with some of her friends that I really enjoyed, a park/splash pad visit, a day seeing what it means when Alaina is the on call doctor (that seriously is a rough schedule), a soccer game (Alaina's), and a winery (where we authorized Stephanie free use of the camera, thus the reason all but one pic is from the winery).  Anyway, great great weekend, and so happy we live so close now!

After the splashing part of the park

We encouraged Stephanie to enjoy taking photos of the garden while we enjoyed the wine.  There were some lovely pictures!

So Alaina and I totally staged the chairs and the mountains, but Gwen's photobomb really made this shot.

 

Museum of Life and Science

As new members of the Museum of Life and Science, I would like to inform you all that it is awesome!  Stephanie's pre-school teacher, Patty, from Kansas, was out visiting her daughter and granddaughter that live here locally, and we met up with them there.  We had great company and a great time at the museum.  We liked it enough to commit to the year long membership, and will likely be going back often, so there will be more posts and more descriptions, but tonight, I am just going with mostly pictures:

First Stop- Train ride!

Notice what is going on on the left hand side.

And success climbing onto the bench!

Super cool flowers in the butterfly habitat

Stephanie actually listed this plant (which she referred to as the umbrella plant) among her favorite things she saw at the museum

No time for pictures, Mom, gotta go find some plants to maul...

And this was on Stephanie's list as the top attraction of the Museum.

With Stephanie as the photographer

See my knees?  I was told to hide and help Buzzy Bee sit on the saddle.  But check out Gwen trying to figure out what her people are doing!

All remaining photos by Stephanie in the car (waiting to pick up Kevin from the bus)