Weekend trip to Wilmington!

The beautiful weekend called for a trip to visit the Byrd's in Wilmington! Temps were in the 80s with a nice cool breeze along with an amazing dusting of pollen (aahhhh-chhhoooo!).

Hanging with Maggie at the house (after playing the Wii for way too long, still sore, ouch!)


Paul enjoying the porch swing


"Here gator, gator, gator..." Where are the alligators? (near Orton Plantation)

(if you notice, I'm taking the picture from INSIDE the car...)

Feeling the need to learn something new, we stopped at Brunswick Town - Ft. Anderson. It was one of NC's first port cities - sadly, it didn't last long, however, the slide show and personal lecture at the visitor's center did.

Ruins of St. Philip's Church (one of the few remaining 18th century structures, circa 1760)


Earthen fort from the Civil War



Us!


Them!


Rooftop sunset view of the downtown waterfront


The USS North Carolina and the sun setting

spring is making a show!

It feels like spring, smells like spring and looks like spring at our house. The temps have been maxing out around 80 degrees with dappled sunshine this week. Here are a few pictures of the flowers currently in bloom at the house...

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I didn't realize how much we apparently like purple flowers... :)

2 fun weekends in a row

Wow! We've had 2 fun and exhausting weekends in a row. No lazy afternoons or sleep-in mornings for us!

The first weekend in March we hosted our long distance neighbors, Philip & Jennifer (from Wilmington!). Philip celebrated his 31st birthday on March 2nd and we celebrated with cake(s) [it was supposed to be a nice round cake, but after looking forever and not finding my cake pans, we made it rectangle and upon trying to extract it, it broke in 1/2 so we made 2 cakes... one in the shape of "31" and the other was just a mound of cake + icing + sprinkles + random candles + yeah, whatever else we could find!] . They brought their super-sweet, cute and oh-so well mannered pooch, Maggie (yeah, so we're having serious 'doggie-fever' now). On Saturday we took a little field trip out to Frankie's Fun Park where the boys could race go-karts, go head to head in mini-golf (no idea who won, the course was poo!) and of course we gals racked up the tickets on skee-ball. Here's a few pictures from Philip's cake and the adorable Maggie:

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Then, this past weekend we took to the yard. We couldn't resist spending some time outside working ourselves into a sore mess. We finally attacked the 'mound' of dirt that has been collecting in the backyard (from all the other crazy projects we've taken on since we moved in). We also had 2 new trees (corkscrew willow and a ginkgo) that needed a home, so viola! We had our project. Our course we had to make it more complicated by moving around shrubs and moving current plantings and planting new bulbs. So this weekend we planted: 2 trees, moved 2 shrubs, moved a rose bush, planted a tree/shrub & a few other random plants, tilled the garden, moved the herbs, planted 9 cana flowers, 28 gladiolas, and 20 other bulb thingies, patched 2 sections of grass... I think that's it... Oh yeah, we're sore!

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For good measure, here's what we had to work with:

(Our lot, 5/15/2004)

(aww, you can see my old Tribute on the left - good memories!)

When we first planted the 'bird feeder/rose/flowerbed'


I can't wait for the leaves to return and all the flowers start blooming! Believe me, they will be pictures to come! :)

The MADNESS has begun!

"Wolfpack beats Duke in OT, 85-80, at ACC Tournament"

Wooooooooooooooo! Go Pack!



More pictures from the game on the N&O website

Quotes from Sidney Lowe from "Go Pack!":

"I thought we played a very solid ball game, both physically and mentally, but more importantly mentally. We made runs when we had to. We talked about that in the locker room, that we needed to make a couple of runs and these guys did a great job of doing that against pressure defense. We executed our offense extremely well, we didn’t pre-determine who was going to get the shot – we took what was there – and then we got big stops down the stretch. We had some guys that just played a tremendous game for us."

On beating North Carolina, now Duke:

"It’s no secret that it’s great basketball tradition down there and you have three schools that have great basketball tradition, three schools that have won national championships, three schools that have tons of NBA players to come through there. Any time those three lock up it’s a big game and like I told our guys before, it’s not something that I made up, it was something that was there when I got there as a player. Someone told me they were big games so nothing has changed. It’s always exciting when you get a chance to play them and certainly come off with a win."