Drinking One Percent: President's Day Trip

We are really behind on doing anything remotely close to 'blogging', but instead of making excuses or whining, I'll just cut to the chase and tell you what we've been up to. Over President's Day weekend, we flew with the kids to Wilmington, NC to visit David, Emily and Grayson. I just spent some time uploading the entire photo album to Kodak Gallery, so I'll just post a few highlights here:

1. The Brazik Zoo - The Brazik house is truly a zoo (especially compared to the Smith house with our measly 1 dog) and our children would have been happy to stay there the entire weekend 'managing' all their animals. However, because cats are evil and they like to hang out near the people who are allergic to them (me!), we needed to escape and see a little bit of Wilmington.

2. Port City Java - Scott and I indulged in our espresso habit at Port City Java in downtown Wilmington, which is where they film the show "One Tree Hill" on the CW network. Never seen the show, but it was a good latte.

3. Elijah's - We were happy to be able to eat out on the porch at Elijah's, an excellent seafood restaurant along the Cape Fear river. The outside heater was very helpful in the chilly weather and so was the boardwalk nearby where Nora could escape every few minutes to run around and try to get out of eating, as usual.

4. Snakes - Two choices for our time downtown Wilmington after lunch - The Children's Museum (sounds so nice, doesn't it?) OR the Serpentarium (not so much). Of course, we chose the serpents and actually paid money (cash only please) to go into a dark, humid and very creepy 2 story building which housed more snakes per square foot than any zoo or haunted house I've ever been to. I don't mind snakes that look dead and just sleep while you look at them through the glass. These snakes were active, huge and, apparently from the explanations on each window, deadly. I had forgotten my paper bag for hyperventilating, so I just casually strolled around singing my happy song and not making eye contact with the snakes. Scott, on the other hand, gave each snake their very own personal photo session - mostly close-ups. When we were finished and I was sprinting for the exit, the nice little serpentarium worker mentioned that if we wanted to get our hands stamped, we could come back and watch them feed the snakes in 30 minutes. That sounds disturbing, no thank you.

5. Boombalatti's - a fabulous homemade ice cream store with lots of yummy choices. We visited twice over the weekend for treats, but going more often might turn you into a 'fatty boombalatti'.

6. Pony Rides - Emily keeps her horse at a barn about 20 minutes away and we all had the chance to spend some time with the dogs that run around the barn and a lot of beautiful horses. The kids took turns riding a small horse and everyone had fun feeding the horses peppermint candy treats afterward. This was Nora's first time on a horse and once we got her helmet to stay straight she couldn't stop smiling. Of course, she needed to make a fashion statement with her hot pink cowgirl boots too. Avery's ride ended with a request for horseback riding lessons this summer, which we're looking into at a barn in St. Charles.

7. Playing the Wii - I haven't had a chance to play a Wii yet (even though it seems most of extended family now owns one...interesting) so we played some golf, bowling and then I tried out the Wii fit and did some step routines, which was really fun, but kind of intense with everyone watching and critiquing all your moves.

8. Straight No Chaser - David and I always like to 'share' any new music we've discovered when we get together, so while I was pirating his iTunes library, we discovered a group called "Straight No Chaser". Take a minute to search their 12 Days of Christmas performance on YouTube or read their MySpace page. It's a very cool story about an a capella group from Indiana University.

Noni takes her first pony ride