Summer Side Trips

We decided to make a long weekend trip to Washington DC on one of the weekends I was in North Carolina.  It is less than a 6 hour drive from Wilmington and I wanted to visit my brother and his family along with my sister who also lives there.  We happened to coordinate the trip the weekend after 4th of July and it would be the same time my mom would be visiting, so it was great to get to see so much family.  Since my brother lives right in the heart of DC, we thought we could get the tourist thing down and take the metro everywhere!  We did great going from red line to blue line to orange line, etc--but it was once we got off and had to navigate the streets that we didn't do to well!!  We where there during the crazy heat wave and power outages, so I found it ironic that it was hotter in DC than in was in Phoenix!

Nick in front of the post office (at this rate in a few more years, those probably won't even exist anymore--so had to document this)!

I loved all the flowering trees

One of my favorite things of the DC trip was seeing Henrik!  He is always smiling and happy and is getting so big.  You have no idea, how much convincing had to go in to this picture to get Nick to hold him!  hahah, one day he will grow out of the fear of babies.  Nick's face says it all!

Not so strong after all??!!

Random sparkly balls at a metro stop

When Nick was a small kid he and his family lives in Silver Springs, Maryland.  Nick always remembers his favorite pizza being Jerry's.  We looked it up, and saw that it was about 15 minutes from my brothers house so we went!!  Nick was sooo excited he could hardly contain himself.  He ate and ate and ate-not that anyone would be surprised.  None of us thought the pizza was that great, so we all laughed about how we viewed things so differently as kids.  So glad Nick could relive this memory though.

Here is that baby Henrik, the king charmer of the District of Columbia :)

One morning my mom and I went and did sealings at the Washington, DC LDS temple.  It was beautiful, and a great day with my mom.

Now on to the next side trip:  Denver!  Nick had to go to Denver for some work training at the beginning of August.  His company's headquarters are in Colorado, so when he found out he was going to be there for a week I knew I wanted to go up and play too.  Our best friends TJ and Michelle live right outside Denver, so we went the weekend before Nick's training started to stay with them and to catch up.

We were in town a few days before Michelle's 30th birthday, so it was great to celebrate with them!

Lastly, a summer side trip wouldn't be complete without a visit to see these crazies!!  Can you recognize them, because I barely could.  I don't think I saw the wear anything else for 4 days!  I flew to KY for a long weekend, and to try to break up the month long stretch of not seeing Nick.  As always so great to be around family.  My parents just finished redoing their house and backyard, so it was fun to enjoy it. My mom and I went shopping, out to lunch, stayed up late watching food network, and of course had to teach her more about her mac computer!  I even squeezed in seeing a few friends and got to babysit these three cute kids.  Liam and Bennett are obsessed with all things superhero currently, and Tess is just busy being so stinkin' cute!!  Love being an auntie to these kiddos.

In between all of the trips if you can believe it, I still found time to work an insane crazy schedule and somehow keep my house clean!  I did finally hire someone to do my yard for me, as I just couldn't find  time to push a lawn mower around.

North Carolina Summer

What is a summer like in a beach city if you aren't at the beach just about every day??!!  We have had a great summer in Wilmington and have spent a lot of time at Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach, and Kure Beach.  I'm trying to think which beach I like the best, and I just can't choose!  Wrightsville Beach is the closest, so we probably spend most of our time enjoying it.

Our first time checking out the neigborhood!

Watching the rain out in the ocean

A typical Saturday

Enjoying the beach to ourselves---and the 85 degree weather!

The "locals" told us about this donut shop on the boardwalk of Carolina Beach that was voted the 2nd best small town donut shop in America.  It's teeny tiny, but oh so worth the 20-30 minute wait for a hot glazed donut!  Seriously, sooo good.  They are only open 5 months out of the year in the summer time and are 80 cents a piece.  Nothing like buying your dozen donuts and finding a bench on the beach to sit down and enjoy!  Can't wait for them to reopen next summer.

Trying to walk off our donut's!  Love this picture.

When Nick is at work I've learned to roam the town on my own.  I went and toured the USS North Carolina battleship that is docked here in Wilmington and has been turned in to a museum.  I spent a few hours seeing this massive vessel and couldn't believe that a missile was as big as me!!!

Yelp! has been our best friend while living here.  We have tried to not go to any 'chain' restaurants and have not been disappointed in what the locals cook up around here.  One night we went to a restaurant called Dockside, and with a view like this while eating dinner--I don't even remember what the food tasted like!  So gorgeous!

Not to mention I had this guy to enjoy dinner and the view with.

For the 4th of July we went downtown with a few new friends to the 'Boom over the Battleship'.  It was a great show and I always love seeing fireworks reflect over the water.

Happy 4th of July---and man was it hot and humid on this evening!

I can't believe how fast summer flew by.  It has been nice to escape AZ during the 115+ temps to come to ocean breeze every month. Definitely, Wilmington did not disappoint this summer.

Changes and Moving On: Wilmington

Where have I been these last 5 months...oh you know just traveling between all my homes and living on airplanes!  But if I have to travel, seeing family is the best reason to do so.  Nick took a job with The Industrial Company and was assigned to work on a project in Wilmington, North Carolina since the beginning of June, but it didn't start without me shedding a few tears as he drove out of the driveway in Arizona with all his stuff.  Actually I was okay, until I walked inside and saw a half empty house and not one piece of his clothing left in the closet--that's when I lost it!  It's been a few months, so it's the new-norm, and all the changes have been exciting.   I'm staying in Arizona so I can keep working at my job (such a headache trying to get licensed in other states) and to stay in our house until we decide what to do in the future.  I've arranged with my bosses to have a week off each month, next to my 4 day weekend so I can travel to visit Nick.  Here he is heading out of town.

We were excited for our next chapter/adventure to start in Wilmington, NC.  Wilmington is a smaller city with a little more than 100k people.  It has a branch of the University of North Carolina here, and is a big draw as a retirement area of northeasterns. I like to joke that this town is full of college kids and retirees (kind of like AZ)!!  The obvious draw of Wilmington in the beach, and it is nice that Nick is renting an apartment that is less than 10 minutes from the ocean.  Lots of people know this town for all the movies that were filmed here.  Who didn't love the TV show, Dawson's Creek?  That was filmed here in Wilmington as well as just about every Nicholas Spark's movie.  Currently they are filming Ironman 3 here.  There are 2 movie studios here that are open for tours, and you can even taking a walking tour of the city that points out all the locations of where various movies/shows were filmed.  I can't wait to to that!

Love the nightly walks on the beach

This view just doesn't get old

Love the beach grass and the old wood fences

I'm always picking out my favorite beach houses

Beach access points

Wilmington is also a very historic town.  The downtown is so cute and charming.  Old buildings are painted still advertising old paper mills.  Lots of the buildings have survived some big hurricanes over the years, and all throughout the downtown area and monuments and signs retelling an old story.  I love how so many of the streets have the huge oak and willow trees that touch over the streets making arches and have moss hanging down off the limbs.  It just seems surreal.  I'm surprised I haven't got in a wreck driving yet because I'm so distracted when I'm driving!

Downtown

Love these big old houses with the huge wrap around porches

This is the corner of water street and front street--I love this street!  Stone streets, old buildings with so much character, all on facing the Cape Fear River (which is one of the many waterways to the Atlantic).

This picture makes me laugh.  No one is at the beach!!  It's great--sometimes I've been and won't even see but two other people in a 3 hour period!!  And then when I saw one of the walkways that was lined with cactus and the tall beach grass it made me glad to see a piece of AZ was here too!

We are loving Wilmington.  I feel like we have done so much, yet my list of things I want to do out here keeps growing!  They have a huge aquarium right on the coast, a ferry that you can take over to some of the coastal islands, several museums, historical houses to tour, and lots of other cool things that are just a days drive.  Nick's job will have him here until May 2013 or possibly even August 2013--so I'm glad we will have time to explore this great place.

Last Day-Orlando

Back in the US and I got to see this pretty face!  I've known Becca for nearly ten years back when we were both in Kentucky.  Becca married a guy in Florida and now has three beautiful kids.  So glad I got to catch up with her a meet those precious babies.  We spent the afternoon at the beach and lunch at Ron Jon Surf Shop.

Such a great 9 days!  Why do vacations have to come to an end..guess that means it is time to start planning another one :o)

Last Day at Sea

We spent our last day doing what vacations are made of--relaxing!  We bought a spa pass that let us do mud baths, saunas, steam rooms, and rain forest showers!  It was sooo nice!  The last day the ship had the chocolate buffet.  By this point I felt so sick from eating for 7 days straight that Nick was sure to eat enough for the both of us!  Of course we had a great dinner in the dining room and stayed out late enjoying all the entertainment on the ship.  

Haha--Nick will probably kill me for putting this picture on here, but I have to save this memory, right?!?!

Yummy chocolate

Frog legs, anyone?  He enjoyed them so much he had two servings.

Last night at dinner together

Our great servers in the dining room.  I can't imagine being away form my family for 9 month at a time with limited communication.  These three were fabulous!  Mungi, on the far right,has been a server for 20 years with Carnival!  

My least favorite part of the trip, packing to go home!!  You have to have your bags outside your room the night before, so we were sure to wait until the last minute :)

Costa Maya, Mexico and Chacchoben Mayan Ruins

Port 4: Costa Maya, Mexico.  We had yet another day of rain in store for us.  In some ways it was nice because it dropped the temperature down by about 20 degrees, but it also brought the bugs out.  Thank goodness I had bug spray with me.  We were excited to go see some Mayan Ruins on this excursion.  After an hour bus we arrived to an area of ruins that had only been recently excavated.  Just like with the caves in Belize, I can't believe how much they let you walk on them!  We loved hearing all about the Mayans way of life and how these massive temples were built.  Pretty incredible to see first hand.  On the bus ride back to the city in poured rain--literally I thought the bus was going to go sliding off the road.  We ran in a downpour through the city and down about a mile long dock to get back the cruise ship.  We were literally dripping wet---every piece of our clothes had to be wrung out and we threw away our Nike's.  All we could do was look at each other and laugh when we got back to the room!

Costa Maya has a massive circular pool right in the center of town with dolphin tanks surrounding it.  These dancers provided entertainment as well.  I enjoyed watching them while waiting for Nick to buy a pair of baby crocodile boots!!!  It goes without saying, that was his graduation gift :)

Here we are on the steps of one of the ruins

I didn't realize there were so many temples at this site, so it was great to spend the day touring all the ruins.  I recommend everyone should visit if they are in the area.

The tour guides literally let us climb all over anything we wanted!

Me on the edge of one of the temples, overlooking the land below.  This area is extremely flat, so anytime you see a mound of dirt or hill the odds are very high there are ruins underneath that haven't been excavated.

These things were massive!  Hard to believe that these were built without bulldozers lifting the rocks up.

The ruins weren't the only huge things---look at this tree!

Here we are standing on one of the larger temples at this site

Behind us is called the "baby temple".  Baby, meaning it is the smallest temple on the site.  The backside of the temple still had some of the red clay paint on it that the Mayans would draw characters on.

Here is an altar across from one of the temples were sacrifices would be made.  The altar was huge!!

Nick at an entrance to one of the temples

Here we are after our 20+ minute run back to the boat--dripping wet.  So funny.

Showered and ready for dinner!

Again, Costa Maya is one of those places we have to come back to.  There is a huge beach resort area with so much to do, and the just an hour bus ride away there are 100's of site of Mayan Ruins.  I loved learning all the history of the area and hearing about the Mayan calendar that ends this year :)