Myrtle Beach Trip

After we finished up our Easter festivities in Ellerbe, we headed out to spend a few days at Myrtle Beach.  We stayed right on the beach at the Landmark Resort, a pretty nice hotel with 2 lazy rivers, tons of swimming pools, and its own miniature golf course.  We arrived Sunday night just in time for dinner at IHOP (where I tried their Nutella crepes for the first time - they were AMAZING!) followed by an evening walk on the beach.

Monday was Mom/Grandma's birthday.  We spent most of the day enjoying things at the hotel.  We took Gemma to the beach (her first time) and in the lazy river.  She absolutely LOVED both!  (In fact, she started crying when we picked her up to leave the beach.)  The lazy river was probably her favorite part of the trip though.  She absolutely went crazy kicking her legs and slapping at the water with her hands every time.

We let Mom/Grandma pick our dinner location and she chose the Melting Pot.  We stuffed ourselves with cheese fondue, salad, meat, and then super delicious chocolate fondue for dessert. 

It was super dark in the restaurant, reminding Rachel and me of the movie When in Rome.  Rachel posed as Lance from When in Rome (asking "Does anyone have the time?"):

Unfortunately, the weather was pretty gross for the rest of our trip.  On Tuesday we were able to hang out in the lazy river for a bit, but when we attempted to find the hotel's miniature golf course, we narrowly escaped being drenched by a sudden, epic thunderstorm.  Tuesday night was fun, though, as Dad/Grandpa, Rachel, Cy, and I went to Medieval Times.  At Medieval Times, we feasted on chicken, ribs, tomato bisque, potatoes, garlic bread, and apple pastries and drank from fancy goblets as we watched knights jousting and cheered on our knight, the red knight (who totally won, by the way).  I was a little unsure at first when we walked in and were greeted by a strong smell of horse, but it ended up being really fun.

Wednesday was basically a shopping day.  While Gemma and Cy napped, my parents, sister, and I hit up the stores at Broadway at the Beach.  I finally got the fudge I had been craving.  But the best part was...there was an entire store devoted to flamingos!  I had to really restrain myself to keep from buying one of everything in the store.  In the end, I limited myself to a t-shirt, a stained glass thingy, an old-fashioned looking sign, and a mosaic flamingo figurine.  I was very impressed with my self-control.  (Although I informed Cy the other day that I want to make a day trip to Myrtle Beach sometime before Christmas specifically to go back to that store and purchase flamingo Christmas ornaments.)

Cy and Gemma met us for lunch at Fuddrucker's and then we all went to Ripley's Aquarium.  It was fun but crowded.  By the time we got done, we were all exhausted and our plans of going to a Japanese steakhouse fell through, so we ordered some pizzas instead (this ended up being a minor fiasco of its own, but I won't get into that). 

Thursday was our last day so we hurried downstairs for one last trip to the lazy river.  (The mean pool lady wouldn't let us in at first but it turned out okay.)  Then we packed up and headed out.  We were going to stop at Mount Atlanticus for some miniature golf on the way out, but when we pulled into the parking lot, poor little Gemma was passed out asleep so we ended up just going on home.  She slept the entire way.

Did I mention that my laptop broke, our credit card number was stolen, and Cy and Gemma caught a respiratory virus while on our trip?  Ah, well.  Such is life when we go on vacation.  But other than that, our trip was sooooo much fun!

Easter 2011

We spent Easter with my family this year.  We drove up to Ellerbe on Saturday (the day before Easter) and spent the rest of the day doing typical Easter activities like dyeing eggs, ordering chicken strips from Dixie Burger, and watching old episodes of Psych.  If we had had a contest, Rachel would have won for her awesome pink flamingo egg:

Easter itself was pretty action-packed.  We were up and at FBC at 7 am for the sunrise service.  After the service, we had breakfast at the church.  Then we headed back to the house to shower and get ready for church.  Gemma looked so sweet all dressed up in her Easter finery.

Rachel and I both wore hats and channeled Kate Middleton:

After church, my parents and I enjoyed chicken salad croissants and strawberry shortcake while Rachel and Cy ate burgers and brownies.  Gemma ate puffs and some sort of purple berry puree.  Not long after that, we loaded up our cars and headed to Myrtle Beach!

Did I mention that we scored some sweet Easter baskets that looked like sock monkey heads?  It was kind of Temple-of-Doom-esque, but with candy instead of brains:

11 Months Old

Gemma was officially 11 months old yesterday.   We really can't believe it has been that long - it has gone by so fast.  Hard to believe that we are already planning her birthday party and that 1 year will be the next milestone!

Zoo Thousand Eleven

This past weekend, Cy took Friday off and we headed up to Columbia to spend a few hours at Riverbanks Zoo.  We had scored some discounted zoo tickets via Groupon a few weeks earlier.  It ended up being a really great day for the zoo.  We arrived just after lunchtime and all the school crowds were leaving, so it wasn't very crowded.  The weather was nice too - right around 70 degrees.  Gemma seemed a bit disinterested at first, until we saw some monkeys swinging around and yelling loudly.  Gemma enjoyed watching them swing and started yelling right back at them as loudly as she could.  She seemed to like the penguins a lot too.

I enjoyed the chance to exercise my newly learned photography skills and use some of my new photography equipment to shoot some great pictures:

After we finished at the zoo, we headed to the lake house for the rest of the weekend.  It ended up storming and pouring rain most of the time but we enjoyed just having some time off to relax.  Before the storms hit, we managed to squeeze in a quick boat trip.  It was my first time on a boat since the ill-fated cruise (and probably my last time - I didn't do so well) and Gemma's first time (she did much better than I did). 

Last Week in Review

I have several days' worth of blog material saved up, so instead of writing a bunch of individual posts, I'm just going to drop a bunch of knowledge all at once.

First things first: nobody got to pinch Gemma on St. Patty's Day because she was very festively decked out.  (I too was wearing green; however, that did not deter her from pinching, biting, attacking me, etc.)

Second, we have a new addition at our house: a swing set!  Even though Gemma's not quite at the optimal age for maximum swing set enjoyment just yet, when we saw this toddler swing set with (free!) infant swing on sale at Toys R Us, we decided to go ahead and invest in our child's future.  She seems to like it so far.  I am loving it - it lets me get outside for a little bit each day.

Meanwhile, as Cy and Pops were putting the swing set together, I was taking an all-day continuing education class on digital photography at Trident Tech with my friend Renonna.  It was a pretty good class - I definitely learned a lot of things about my camera that I had found a bit overwhelming and confusing before.  After the class I read through some tutorials on Canon's website and ordered a few accessories for my camera.  Now if I can just find the time to actually go take some pictures...

This was my favorite picture that I took while doing "homework" for my class at lunchtime:

And finally, in other news, the list of quarterfinalists for the Amazon Breakthrough Award Contest was released today...and Norfanger Plantation was on it!  I was so convinced I wouldn't make it any further in the contest that I had actually forgotten that the list was even coming out today, and only found out because I received an automated email update.  At this point there are 500 quarterfinalists (250 general fiction & 250 YA) remaining, which will be whittled down to only 100 (50 & 50) on April 26.  The good news is that someone from Publishers Weekly will actually be reading my entire manuscript as  part of the next phase of the contest, so I will at least get some professional feedback on my novel if nothing else (and I am definitely not expecting to make it any further!).

9 Month Checkup...finally

We finally made it in for Gemma's 9 month checkup today.  (Now that she is 10 months + 8 days old.)  She was doing well over all - still on the growth charts (surprisingly) albeit just barely, but is growing at about the same rate she has been all along.  I'm looking at the paper now that they gave us with her stats and they must have written them down wrong or I'm really not understanding, because what I'm seeing is this:  Height - 108, HC - 24, and Weight - 16 lbs., 8 oz.  I know the weight is correct (she will be in a rear-facing car seat forever!) but I can't seem to make those other two come out to legitimate stats for Gemma (maybe the 24 is actually her length?  She is pretty small!).  Oh well.  They did say that she is around the 5th percentile for weight, the 7th percentile for length, and the 25th percentile for her head size.

We talked to the pediatrician about some feeding concerns while we were there.  Gemma's next appointment is a few days after birthday and we will discuss a plan for her milk-wise then (since she has had a milk protein allergy in the past).  We also discussed what to do as far as giving her meat.  She has only tried meat once - a jar of turkey that caused her to break out in hives.  We were unsure if it was the turkey itself or the preservatives that caused the breakout, so he wants us to try some homemade pureed chicken (doesn't that sound delicious?) and see how that goes.  If that causes a reaction as well, we will probably have to have some allergy testing done to determine the extent of her allergies.  I really hope it does not come to that - I have had allergy testing done on myself and know how unpleasant it is.  I cannot imagine administering that type of testing to a young baby who cannot understand what is going on.  So I will be whipping up some super yummy chicken puree this week and hoping for the best.

Other than her food allergies, she seems to be doing great.  Can't believe that her first birthday is getting so close already!

First Trip to the Park

     We decided to take advantage of the nice weather this afternoon and take a long walk to the park at Bees Ferry Landing.  We've been to the gym and tennis courts at Bees Ferry Landing, but hadn't really scoped out the playground yet.  It's a little over a mile from our house, so we enjoyed a nice walk there and back.  The playground itself was very nice.  Gemma enjoyed her first time on a swing set and a ride (on my lap) on some sort of springy thing.  She mostly enjoyed watching all the other kids playing - she was giggling quite a bit at some of their antics.  I'm glad to know now that such a nice playground is so close by - I have a feeling we'll be heading that way a lot this summer!