Beach Trip, July 18 (Travel Day)

Our Beach Trip (July 18 - July 25)

And after much delay, back to my travel log!

Our caravan to the beach included 3 cars. Nonna and Pop Pop in one, Stacey, Steven and Charlotte in the other, and our family in the last. We got a little bit of a late start (no surprise) so we started looking for a lunch place around 1:00. Chris had his heart set on a "deli" in which he named in his mind, 'Sandwiches and Stuff.' Well, we looked for the elusive Sandwiches and Stuff for over an hour as we drove through the next 3-4 towns on the highway and passed multiple McDonalds as the kids grew more and more ansy. Truth be known, I was ansy too! In desperation, we stopped at a Hardees and got hot ham and cheese sandwiches and a hot dog for Emily.

We made it in time (just barely) for 5:00 mass and ran into quite a few members our family there. After a quick stop at the grocery store for diapers and some essentials we headed to our beach house. The traditional Smithfield BBQ sandwiches were served for dinner and we got settled in. Every one was very excited to be there!

Here is David hanging our with his Uncle Jamie. They really seemed to become good friends on this trip.

Uncle Rob and Andrew

Austin and Daniel

Emily's Birthday Celebration at Home

After a big day at the Children's Museum, Emily informed me that she wanted to make a cake for dessert tonight. This is not an unreasonable request by any means, but I didn't have a cake mix at home and didn't want to stop at the store with 3 tired and cranky kids on my way home. For a moment, I thought we could make a cake from scratch... so I started to dig in my pantry and found a brownie mix. I asked Emily if she would be ok with a brownie cake if I made some homemade frosting to go with it. She agreed that this was a good plan but somehow fanagled me to help her make homemade vanilla and chocolate frosting. She told me she had a plan. Did she ever!!! Here we are with our brownie cake and homemade chocolate and vanilla frosting. Emily got out 3 little bowls and the food coloring. She scooped white frosting into each of the three bowls with a plan to do this:

She wanted pink, orange and purple frosting. The was educational. A little red in the white to make pink, equal amounts of red and yellow for orange, and red and blue for purple (of course).

Here she is in action. Cake decorating is serious business.

And the finished product... She did all the decorating and I did the lettering for her. It was going to just say Emily... then Emily's 6th Birthday... but the chocolate got in the way on the bottom... I think Emily did a fine job. We may do this every year.

And yes, we added candles and sang happy birthday! It was really really yummy!!!

Now I have to brag on my sweet boy... he was very concerned about a piece of cake being saved for his Daddy. So we cut a good size piece for Dad and put it in the freezer for his return. And yes, the cake was really good!

Lia liked her cake too. Birthdays are fun for everyone.

Emily's Birthday Outing - Children's Museum

Emily is 6 years old today! To make her day special, we visited the Houston Children's Museum. Given how hot it was today, it was not an 'original' idea... the place was packed but the kids all had a great time. We stayed about 4 hours. Here is Emily on the obstacle course.

And David on the little floor scooters... You can see he liked this activity.

Oh my goodess! Those little sticks again! I'd like to say my son is some sort of prodigy and designed that beautiful bridge... but some other kid did that. David likes to lay out flooring with his sticks.

And sweet Lia... found some little discs with birds and trees on them. She was very busy sorting them and showing them to me.

Cousin Camp, Fri Jul 17 (Arcade, Peach Picking, Fish Camp)

I haven't been able to blog about our vacation due to a busy week - a faster pace of life than we have been used to anyway! The kids and I have been busy with Son Rock Kids Camp (vacation bible school) last week. I volunteered to help out David's group (3-4yr olds), and Emily had her heart set on staying with me and helping out the little kids too. It was sweet. Lia played in the nursery... she had a rough first day but seemed to do better later in the week. We all enjoyed the rotations of Music, Bible Stories, Snack, Craft and Games each day... we got the CD and are all enjoying singing the songs and dancing in the car. And with Chris in Thailand, the added pressure of doing it all at home has cut into my blog time as well... (imagine that!)

... back to our trip. I left off on the last day of cousin camp. After breakfast, we went to this little arcade near Nonna and Pop Pop's house. Chris and David really like race car games. Hey look, I really was on this vacation! Unfortunately, I am really bad at the race car game!

Chris is busy driving the race car. Emily is his lovely assistant.

Lia told me she could drive the car better and faster than Daddy could. Never mind her feet don't even come close to reaching the pedals...

After lunch, we went peach picking! There appeared to be miles and miles of peach fields. As you can see, these trees were loaded! The kids thought this was really cool.

Here is David with two prize peaches.

Bill and Kristen's kids. I love this picture!

Jed, Madison and Jeanne.

The peaches cost $10 per crate... I am fairly certain we had about 100 peaches and nectarines... an excellent deal considering how much fun it was for everyone to pick them! The fruit stand, where you pay, had an ice cream bar. I ordered a peach milkshake... with fresh peaches of course! What a treat. Chris, who dearly loves to put his peaches in his red wine, was also very excited about our harvest.

Dinner was at the Fish Camp - another fun Nelli tradition. Fried fish, hush puppies, and cole slaw... the place was packed and our families had to sit in a bunch of booths since we were hungry and didn't want to wait for a big table.

Jed, Christopher, Madison and Olivia

Stacey and Charlotte.

And on to the beach...

Cousin Camp, Thur Jul 16 (Museum Day)

Rob and Leenie, and their daughter Stephanie arrived at Nonna and Pop Pop's on Tuesday night to go to Carrowinds. Aunt Leenie has a talent for french braiding hair and all her nieces love to get their hair done. Emily was lucky to get beautiful double french braids Thursday morning.

The main family event for Thurday was a trip to the Whitewater Rafting Center. If the kids were older we would not have missed this. In addition to rafting, I heard there were zip lines and rock walls to climb. But since ours are so little, we decided to go to Gastonia's Schiele Museum of Natural History. It is an amazing museum and just right down the street from Nonna and Pop Pop's house. There is also a planetarium there that we'd like to visit our next trip. Here is Emily at the Entrance. She enjoyed the Indian exhibits at Christmas time and was excited to see them again.

The Schiele Museum was having a special Ocean Exhibit for our visit. There was a beautiful mural on the wall and I got this sweet picture of Lia. She is just so stinkin' cute! I asked her to go sit in that chair and smile for me... I guess she was listening.

After a few hours at the museum... we enjoyed the nature hike on the premise. Here are our children blazing the trail by order of their age. They had lots of energy to start... but didn't quite finish as strongly. They never do. It was a nice little walk though.

And after the museum and our nature walk, we got to see Chris's friend Dale perform at a Chamber of Commerce happy hour. His band is called Cotton Mouth. They were fun and the happy hour provided free Carolina pork BBQ so we were quite happy.

Another fun day at Cousin Camp!

Cousin Camp, Wed Jul 15 (Carrowinds)

Carrowinds was probably the most exciting day of cousin camp. Carrowinds is an amusement park like Six Flags/Astroworld. Chris and I were not sure if there would be enough to keep the little ones busy... we were wrong. There was a very large section (put on by Nicolodeon) of rides for the little kids. We got to see an ice show. And if that weren't enough, there was a huge water park as well. As you can see above, Pop Pop took very good care of Lia. She fell in love with the carousel and was able to ride it over and over again because there was not much of a line when we got there. Every time we would walk by it she would point furiously. There was no doubt which ride was her favorite.

Here is an action shot of David and Emily on the swings. As you can see, they were loving the rides.

Here is David and his Nonna. David was afraid of the horses that go up and down on the carousel. He prefers to sit on the benches. By the end of the day, we got him to ride one of the horses that was mounted on the ground.

After a morning full of kiddie rides, we had lunch, and headed over to the Scooby Doo ice show.
It was nice and cool inside the theater and ice skating show was awesome! Lia got her nap in during the show. It worked out well.

And if that wasn't enough... we spent about 3 hours at the water park after that!

We closed the place down with a few more rides including the big space needle and an incredible view. Our group met at CiCi's Pizza for dinner and to celebrate Jamie's birthday. The party blowers were a huge hit with my son. He played with it non-stop once it was presented to him. Here he is with his uncle Jamie. Happy Birthday!

I think we got everyone to bed around 11:00pm. A very big day!

Cousin Camp, Tue Jul 14 (Discovery Place)

Tuesday's big adventure was a trip to the downtown Charlotte Discovery Place Museum. The museum was boasting an Odyssey Pirate exhibit that everyone was excited to see. Here is Emily posing at the entrance. Arrrgh!

The museum had a whole floor of hands on exhibits demonstrating all sorts of scientific principles. The little kids got to do their own science experiment on what kind of materials would make a good rain jacket. They learned how to use a pipette and determine whether different materials absorbed or repeled water. Emily got the hang of it pretty quickly. David really liked squirting the water out of the pipette. We learned materials like foil and wax paper repel water the best...

The highlight of this hands on room centered on small wooden sticks like the one my husband is holding. There were many of these sticks available for building things.

David, for example, chose to create a flat design, much like wooden flooring. Olivia is helping him here.

The big kids decided to tackle something a little more challenging with these little sticks. This picture shows a 'cantilever' addition to their very impressive tower. For those who don't know, a 'cantilever' is a beam supported only on one end. It is especially difficult to create this with little sticks. Team Nelli is very proud, as you can see.

And the final design, complete with red monument on top.

A sweet Daddy/Daughter moment.

And here is David raising the flags at the hands on pirate exhibit.

A fun day at the museum! There was a big family pasta dinner later that night. Chris's friend Dale was able to come over with his daughter Caroline. I am not sure how Nonna does it... I think she expected 10-12 people for dinner, which quickly escalated to 20 people and she managed to feed everyone! I found out later that the sausage and meatballs she planned to take to the beach were eaten that night. As she says, "I keep a very well stocked freezer! They also keep lots of wine around too.