Beach Weekend!

Well, for the first time since we have been married, we took a vacation that had no other purpose than just getting away. We went to Va Beach. Not to check out a school. Not to see family (not that we don't want to). Not for a special get together. But just to get away for us. And it was great. Sound selfish? It was. We had a blast. We were unsure whether or not to go for a bit, because the weather looked like it was going to suck the whole time. But we said "why the heck not." And the weather was beautiful.
We went to the beach on Friday and stayed for a few hours. We tried to get Abby to go into the water, and it was cool for a bit, then when I tried to go further into the waves, she would say "Abby don't like that!" She would go down into the water some, then run screaming when a wave came. It was funny. She at least loved playing in the sand.
That night we walked out on a pier and watched a bunch of people fishing. We also got to see dolphins swimming around. Every now and then they would poke their fins out and Abby would get all excited. And the sunset was gorgeous.
Saturday was another great beach day. And Abby was a lot braver. Not only was she not scared. but she would go charging into the waves and want me to take her out into the deeper water so she could "swim"(kick her legs and flail her arms while I hold her up). When I would tire out and suggest we go in, she would get upset. She had so much fun. And we built sand castles, played on a playground, walked the boardwalk, drank the seawater, got tumbled by waves - everything.






Luckily, Abby was able to take a nap in her stroller during lunch so that we could stay at the beach and not worry about what to do for a nap.



On Sunday, we went to a huge park near the beach called Mt Trashmore. Oscar the grouch would love the name but hate the place - they beautified and built a park over what was a landfill. It had the biggest playground I have ever seen, along with a huge hill (full of garbage, presumably) and a pond with ducks.



Some of the ducks were very friendly, and quite gentle, too.


Abby was stoked. Unfortunately, we didn't see the sign on the other side of the fence that said, in big letters, DO NOT FEED THE DUCKS AND GEESE. Oops. Heh, sorry, we're from out of town. Jerk tourists.
The only problem with the weekend was the fact that I am a white boy. We shlackered Abby up with sunscreen, but applied only a minimal amount on me, because I'm no sissy boy. But, like a stupid tourist visiting the beach, I paid no attention to warnings and am now paying the price. I am pretty crispy all over. But that is a small price to pay for a wonderful weekend with my family.
So Abby started daycare today, while Jodi worked and I went downtown to test the buses and see how my commute was going to be. And she loved it. When I woke her up this morning, she was rolling away from me and grunting, then I said we were going to her new school. She popped up immediately and said, "oh, we have to bring my elephant and blanket!" (for nap time). Then she quickly cooperated in getting ready, only to be disappointed that she had to eat breakfast and wait for us to get ready. She was so excited to go. It was hard to leave her there - we kept asking "are we doing the right thing?" But I think we are, and either way, she was not turning back. And she had a really good day - didn't give them a hard time at all, got along great with the other kids, danced and sang, and just really enjoyed herself. She had such a good time that she didn't want to leave. But I let her know we would be going back and it went over okay. What? I have to convince my kid to leave daycare to come home with me? That doesn't sound right. Am I doing something wrong? We'll see how this goes. If nothing else, I am a little disappointed to know that my free time with Abby is going to be severely slashed. Maybe I'm the one getting separation anxiety.

Blackberries for all!

So we found a little treasure trove here at our place. There is a huge area covered in blackberry bushes. And they are definitely in season. We can't get to most of them, because the growth is just too thick and the thorns just hurt too much. But there are still more than we can handle on our own (and that is after the birds have had their share)






Abby loves picking and eating them. And we get tons. So if anyone comes down in the next few weeks, and you like blackberries, you can have as many as you want. We're going to look into making jam with them, so anyone out there who knows how to do that let us know your secrets.

Richmond has a zoo about 30 miles out of town, and we went to check it out the other day. Abby had a blast. There is a little petting zoo area that she loved.









These little squirrel monkeys were so cute - they would take little pieces of food right out of your hand if you get close enough. I jumped Abby over the fence so that she could reach them, but she was just a little too scared to let them eat right out of her hand.



We had bought some food to feed the animals in the petting area, and she would give them like two or three pieces at a time, and was pretty stingy with it. I was trying to explain to her that one little pellet for a camel was not quite enough, but she wouldn't give it anymore. Eventually, it became obvious why she was holding on to it all - on the way in, we passed a moat with a bunch of fish that people were feeding. She wanted to feed the fish. I tried to explain that we could go to Petsmart and feed fish, but this was the only place we could feed a baby zebra. She wasn't buying it. Oh well, she had a really good time.
Jodi's job is going well - she is working 3 12s a week, that have been turning into 14s. They are long days, but she is learning a lot and doing great things for the patients there. There are some good people working there (and a few that are not so great, but you'll get that anywhere you work). She has to be in some sort of class this week, and she is not looking forward to it, but it's all part of this process known as the Bon Secours orientation process from hell. She'll get through it eventually, we hope.
So I was looking at the calendar today, and I realized that we are halfway through July. When we got here, I told myself I have 2 months until school starts. Then MCV planned this little optional prep week (which I am going to). So I realized that I have very little time before I start. I'm getting a little scared - do I really know what I am getting myself into? Nope. Let's be honest. But I am optimistic that I might figure it out at some point.
Oh, and Jodi got sustained today as Laurel advisor. She is pretty excited about the new calling, as she should be. She sat in with the young women today and said it went well. she is happy that she will now only be teaching a few young women as opposed to most of the women in the ward. They tell me that they have a calling for me too, they just need to get in together. He said the same thing last week. What does that mean? For now, I'm just giving a talk next week. We dodged having to speak before leaving Charlottesville, and somehow Jodi dodged speaking here on arrival. Not that she is complaining - she has gone quite some time without speaking; ask her the last time she had the privilege.

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Happy 4th!!!

Okay, okay, today is not the 4th. But I started this blog a bit ago, and was trying to finish it yesterday and was expecting to post it, and since Abby did this little pose for me I just had to post the pic. And it only makes sense yesterday. So...whatever.

Sorry for the lapse in posts here. I am still trying to get adjusted to things here, and wanted to be able to put pictures up but just haven't really been taking any. Then I had to figure out how to get them onto our laptop. We haven't found a way to set up our desktop in such a way as to not clutter up one of the rooms too much, so we are just going to use our laptop here. And since Bill Gates, in his infinite personal financial wisdom keeps coming out with new versions of windows, has made it so that only Vista is available, this laptop runs off of Vista. And our camera software was for XP. And I couldn't find help on any website, Microsoft or Canon, to fix it. So me, being the computer savvy guy that I am, went to the best website for getting answers: google. And I found a way to make it work. So we have pictures now!! Here is our apartment.

Front room

Kitchen/dining

Abby's Room

Mom and Dad's room

That's the basics of it. The wood floors came out really nice after we scrubbed them and polished them. And we've been able to get everything placed in such a way in all of the rooms so that they look pretty good. The best thing by far in the house is in the kitchen - two little things we like to call a washer and dryer. Well, not that little - they take up a good amount of space - but they are totally worth it. In 6 years of marriage, for the first time we can do laundry in our own home. That is pretty awesome. So when Abby wakes up in the morning with blood everywhere from the night time beatings, her comforter, blankets and pillowcases can be done without us having to get dressed and worry about whether or not we have 3 bucks worth of quarters lying around (just kidding - she was bleeding because that dang finger of hers seems to be magnetically attracted to her nostril. It's obviously reached a breaking point - when the kid wakes up with blood everywhere, something has to change. If anyone has any suggestions, we're open to them).

We really want to catch and squish one of these bunnies. Abby gets so excited to see them, and they are less afraid of us than the squirrels around here (though that is maybe because Abby will run after the squirrels and tiptoe around the bunnies). The other day we were talking to some neighbors (a really cool younger couple, it'll be nice to have them around as friends) and a rabbit was eating some clovers about 10 feet away, when it suddenly realized that it wanted to go to the other side of us. Instead of running around us all, it cautiously hopped between us. And I'm not kidding when I say that we were maybe 5 feet apart. It was crazy to watch.

From our back steps:

From the front porch:

And a few with Abby

Abby is enjoying herself down here. She will still ask about her friends in Charlottesville when we talk about church and nursery, but I think that she realizes that they don't live here. I just can't wait for us to make new friends with kids her age so that she can have some playmates. She will start up with daycare at the end of this month the week before I start up with school, and is so excited about it. We went and saw the place last week to talk with the people and check it out, and when we told Abby that we were going to go see her new school, she said happily "Go see my new school!! Woo-hoo!!" And now she asks frequently if she will go to her new school tomorrow. She can't wait to start.

She is really getting into coloring - and is getting pretty good. She sat down and colored Goofy pink the other day, and stayed in the lines really well. She gets the artistic side from Jodi. And she likes singing songs, too - the ones she likes and kind of knows now are her ABCs, Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. She doesn't know all the words, but will frequently be heard trying to sing them. At the end of Sunbeam, she does the Rowlett-y "doo-doo!" (you all know what I mean). The other day in the car, she was singing it in the back seat and couldn't get all the words and would stumble around a bit. After some time, she just went "doo doo!" to signify that she had finished so we could clap for her. It was way cute.

Jodi's job is going pretty well so far - the first week of orientation was, well, awfully boring and mostly pointless. She is on the floor now doing patient care, and it is going better. I;ll let her post more on that when she has time (or I will when I get more time). That's all for now, I'll try to do better with my posting this month. But there's just so much to do and see here, so we'll see what happens.