Beach Trip 2009

We took Brind'Amour on his first vacation to the beach last week and had an absolute riot. He loved the ocean and the sand and we also spent some quality time in the pool. He's really loving swimming these days...I think he thinks he can do it all himself now because he pushes you away if you try to snuggle him on your shoulder...he only wants you to hold him on his belly in front of you so he can kick and paddle! Too cute.

We also celebrated Ted's 40th birthday while we were there. It was so nice to have a long relaxing family vacation together. Our first and only before we become a family of 4! Gah!

Brind'Amour is doing more and more every day. He can climb the stairs by himself without a problem. He's cutting his first tooth. He prefers the same food Ted and I are having for dinner rather than pureed baby food. He's babbling constantly and gesturing. You can tell he's trying so hard to communicate with us. His vocabularly consists of Da Da, Na Na (that's me), Kitty Cat, Oh my Goodness, Uh oh, Oh, and Oh God. It's hilarious. I think he tried to say chicken last night too, which was funny. He's not walking on his own, but loves to tool around with some assistance. He's preferring that to crawling these days. I'm looking forward to when he can walk unassisted...my back!

He just gets cuter and cute and more and more fun. We're having a blast with him.

The Getaway

When we found out I was pregnant in December we started planning our last getaway as a couple before the baby comes and ruins everything. Ted has been dying to take me to Pensacola, Florida because he used to live there and really loved it. We decided to take a long weekend trip and had been looking forward to it for months. Time was taken off from work, bags were packed, the gas tank was filled. I was just waiting for Ted to get home and throw his stuff in the back so we could head out. As we did a double check of the cats, we realized Mortimer hadn't been around in an hour or so. I saw him when I got home from work, but hadn't seen him since I had packed up the car. We started the house search, as he usually gets himself locked in a closet or hides under a bed. He was nowhere to be found. I had been closing the door as I went in and out packing the car, or so I thought. We checked the back yard, his usual hangout. No Morty. We tore the house apart. We drove around the neighborhood. We went into the woods in the back yard calling for him. We got the neighborhood kids involved. Still nothing. We had hoped to get on the road by 6pm with dreams of making it to Atlanta for the night. Around 8pm it was starting to get dark and we had no idea what else to do. After posting on the neighborhood web group that he was lost, calling the animal shelter, and leaving some provisions and instructions with our neighbors, we left town. I was really sad and felt so horrible knowing that it was me who left the door open enough for him to escape. Poor Ethel was crying for him when we left.

We made it to Atlanta at 2am, checked into a hotel, and got some shut eye. We both woke up with Morty on the brain but figured all we could do was wait. Just as we were getting on the road we got a call that he was found: he had made his way back home and was staring at Ethel through the back door window crying. Our neighbors scooped him up and returned him to his sister. We were so happy he was found and that we could stop worrying about the big lug.

Anyway, the point of my story? When we were in Pensacola we went to a book sale and found ourselves in the children's section. I picked up a random book to flip through it, and guess what page it opened up to?!



How hilarious is that? We cracked up.

Anyway, Pensacola! It was fabulous. We had such a great time hanging out together and just enjoying a little time away. We stayed at a gorgeous Victorian Bed & Breakfast, which I highly recommend if you are taking a trip like this sometime. We always stay in hotels and, though they are fine, there was something so much more satisfying and fun about staying at a B&B. The woman in charge was super nice and made a mean breakfast.



We kept ourselves busy the few days we were there: we went to the Naval Aviation Museum, the beach, a crawfish festival, out to lunch and dinner, a flea market, a book sale, took a walk on the pier and watched the fishermen, walked around downtown, met up with some of Ted's friends, and saw a movie. It was a really great trip. I'll leave you with some pictures:



Ted enjoys 3 pounds of crawfish. For real.

Sorry for the gross kissing picture, I just think this is so cute.

We loved this old school Pensacola Beach sign that greets you

For those of you bugging me for pregnant pictures, here's a "not so embarrassing" one. :)

T Bone on the beach

Baby Goodness.

We met our new niece Bryn this weekend and she is a bundle of adorableness! Congrats Dria and John!






Dr. Byrnes examines his newest patient

Everything looks in order and she gets the "all clear."

They aren't kidding about flight delays.

We spent too many hours to count in airports on Sunday trying to get home. Flights were delayed and cancelled all day and ours kept getting pushed further and further back. But they weren't cancelled completely and we really needed to get home, so we stuck it out. In the Syracuse airport we found out at 4pm that our 5:15 flight was very much delayed. They gave us a "wheels up" time of 9:15pm. But you weren't allowed to leave the terminal, because if they got an earlier time they would leave without you. So everyone just sat there. For hours. They closed all of the eateries around 6pm, so you couldn't even get a beverage or some food. It was BORING. And, of course, we didn't leave until after 9:10pm. Ugh. We made it home in the very early hours of the morning. I guess we can be glad we made it home, but still. We were exhausted.

At any rate, Ted had a good time at his reunion and I had a riot hanging with the fam. It was gorgeous weather--perfect for hanging out poolside. I also got my trial hair run taken care of for the wedding and it came out a billion times better than I had imagined! So, that was cool.

Here's some highlights of my portion of the weekend:


I came home for lunch the other day and went inside my closet to change. Mortimer was sitting in this basket on the higest shelf in there...just looking at me like "What?"

A cute one of Mindy and Teaguer

Teague and Friends

Bella showing off, and quite possibly traumatizing, a frog she found

G.B. Dub basking in the glow of everyone together for the weekend

Pushin' Forty.

We went to Myrtle Beach this weekend for Ted's birthday and had a blast despite the crazy weather. I don't know what it is with us and the beach, but we are destined to be rained upon whenever we go. It's been boiling here for the past 2 months and we've been in a drought. As soon as Ted and I get within view of the ocean, however, a tropical windstorm rolls through.

We got to the beach around 10pm on Friday night and after a slight debacle with our hotel involving not being able to find the check-in area, getting a room with no towels, no working phones, and beds that felt like sheets of plywood, we settled in with some much needed cable and a not-so-plywood-resembling bed. Deadliest Catch was on, so all of our previous frustrations about our arrival melted away as we watched the Time Bandit and friends navigate through Dutch Harbor.


View from our delightful replacement room




Saturday brought more hot and humid weather, for awhile anyway. We went down to the "strip" to replace my boogie board (a casualty in the beach camping disaster of 2007) and check out the junk in the stores. We then grabbed some breakfast at a pancake house just in time to see the rain, thunder, and lightning roll in. I was bummed, as I had been planning on "beaching it" the majority of the day. We watched the lightning hit the ocean from a parking lot and soon the weather began to break and the sun came out. We spent some time on the beach waiting for the all clear to go swimming, and then ran back to the hotel to get our gear.



It may not look it, but it was perfect beach weather. The sun wasn't beating down on you, but it was plenty warm, and the ocean was the perfect temperature.


T-Bone enjoys the surf

We ended up having great weather on the beach for a few hours, and had just started packing up when it began to rain again. This time there was some minor flooding as the rain cascaded down. It was so bad out that we decided to forego a nice dinner out and possible drenched bar hopping for some pizza and beer in the hotel room. We were both exhausted from the overdose of sun and salt and welcomed a night of just lounging around the hotel room and watching TV.


Ready for our wild night on the town

Sunday brought the sun again and we made a bee line for South of the Border so Ted could get his fireworks fix.


The happiest place on earth?

Ted's Graceland

The purchases

We also had some fun in the hat store.






True story: As we are getting ready to head to the car, a couple is standing near us looking baffled. They were your stereotypical yuppie-type couple. I think they were driving a Mini Cooper and had sweaters tied around their necks. Anyway, the guy looks at us all serious and says "This place is really cheesy, huh?" as if they had pulled off the interstate expecting to see Starbucks and a JCrew outlet. Instead they found "Fort Pedro Fireworks" and "Pedro's T-Shirt Shop," and it wreaked of urine and cheap hot dogs. Ted and I exclaimed "Yeah!" and sort of looked at them like "Were you expecting anything else?" They just looked really confused and got in their car and left.


It was a good trip.

"Philadelphia is a dump!"

That became the phrase of the trip after I exclaimed it on the streets our first day there. We were all excited to visit Chinatown after our awesome experience last year in San Francisco:


Pretty!

Ted contemplates growing his locks.

Ted dons the cultural head gear and quickly checks his wallet for enough Yen to purchase it.

We were instead greeted with wafts of indescribable stank and a few shoe-box size stores with cheap crap piled high in every nook and cranny available. In one store they even hung mobiles for sale from the ceiling in the middle of the aisle so you couldn't even walk by to the next section of the store. The dead ducks in the window were cobwebbed and crusty. The restaurants projected an eerie feeling that their food was not well cooked and possibly included "cat." We did not like it in this Chinatown. Not one bit. We beat feet out of there and vowed never to return, even to the outskirts, the rest of the vacation.


Seriously. This is a still from some video we took in Chinatown. You don't get the full experience with this picture, but trust me: A DUMP.

We spent a lot of time checking out Ted's 'ol stompin' grounds our first day there, which was probably the highlight of my trip. Ted's family lived in Philly for a summer while they searched for a house in the suburbs. He's talked about it quite a bit since I've known him and when I told him my conference was in Philly this year he was all about a trip down memory lane. Watching Ted reminisce and tell stories about getting baseball cards from a store with his brother or visiting "The Fruit Lady" down the street was neat. We found Front Street right away and then Ted got on the horn with his father to get the correct address. We happened to be only a block away and Ted says it looks just like he remembers it, minus the iron gate on the front stoop.


402 Front Street

The lot where Newmarket Center used to stand. Teddy recalls walking through the courtyard with his father and getting a firetruck for his birthday that he had been eyeing in a store window. Apparently Will Smith bought this lot with plans for a hotel, but never did anything with it because it couldn't house a hotel with the ginormous suites he wanted to make in it. Poor baby.

A view of the townhouse from across the street...pretty mod!

A cute one of Ted checking out the view.

We spent quite a bit of time staring at the old townhouse and checking out the adorable neighborhood it is in.

Then we played some darts.


I won!

The obligatory self portraits by the dartboard that you can't see because of our giant melons.

We also spent a lot of time during the trip learning about that crazy cat Ben Franklin and admiring the neat old buildings in the city, while also lamenting about how they are getting all run down and are in smelly neighborhoods.


Ted enjoys a root beer by the site of an old post office founded by your friend and mine, Mr. Ben Franklin.



Chillin' like a villian by Betsy Ross's digs

We also spent a lot of time trying on hats and getting all "Colonial." Or something.




This one is so classic that it deserves a re-post.

Despite the wretched Chinatown and the frequent funky smells, there were some pretty things in Philly:





And believe it or not, we actually got dolled up once or twice for dinner.



Overall, we had a riot and a half on our trip. It was nice to get away for a little adventure and vacation, but we were also glad to get back home to our little house and crazy cats.

Oh, and when we got home we found that the siding company had fixed the broken siding and our Frigidaire check had come in the mail! Yay! Happy days are here again!