Bad Blogger

Bad, lazy, unmotivated blogger. There is a lot to share and there are a lot of photos to come. I just have to put it all together. It is supposed to rain this weekend. Hopefully that means that my new friend and I will get some time to blog. See you soon!

Vegas baby!

Las Vegas. Tacky, noisy, crowded with people bent on losing all their money in casinos. Those are the first things that spring to mind - and guess what? it's all true. But there's a lot more to it than what we were expecting.

We stayed at the newer end of the strip, at the Luxor, the pyramid shaped, Egyptian themed hotel. Since we arrived mid-week it was very quiet, not crowded at all. The casino at that hotel is very small which helped cut down on the crowds. There were a few exhibits going on and they had a deal where you could visit 3 of them for $54 which was very good value when you consider that they're usually $30+ each.

We chose to visit the Bodies exhibit since it was at the Luxor. It was extaordinary. They have developed a method of inejcting specific organs, veins, arteries, tendons, muscles etc with a preserving chemical and then they dissolve the other tissues thus isolating what they want to keep. The result is a little erie at first, realising that the statue in front of you used to be a living breathing human being. Once you get over that, it is an amazing thing to look at. It left us with a profound appreciation for how amazing our bodies are and all the wisdom our creator demonstrated when he made us (Psalm 139:14) I think anyone with any sort of medical background should take the chance to visit one of these exhibits (there is currently one in Atlanta).



We also chose to do an interactive CSI exhibit. They basically show you a "crime scene" and you have to do different forensic tests to solve the crime. It was a great idea and the labs were very interesting but it wasn't that well executed. Oh well!

The third thing we chose to do was ride the rollercoaster at New York New York. I wasn't feeling very well and was a little dizzy to start with so I can't tell you if it was a good rollercoaster or if I was just especially whimpy that day! It was fun though.



The weather took a dive towards freezing while we were there and Tim and I had a funny day walking the strip into gale-force winds that made our eyes water and forced me to buy a hat and gloves. But it is well worth doing, our favorite hotels were of course the Venetian, as well as the Bellagio. Beautiful.








By far the highlights of our trip though, were eating at Shibuya restaurant at the MGM Grand, THE best Japanese food I've ever eaten, and then going to see the Cirque du Soleil show Ka. It was breathtakingly good. I can't begin to describe it so let me just leave a link!

http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/shows/ka/default.aspx



So there is so much more to Vegas than casinos and gambling! I'm not sure I would ever take children there (too many scantily clad waitresses and nasty flyers on the streets) but I would go back if there were good shows to watch.

MIA

So, things are a tad hectic in our house at the moment! Last weekend Tim and I went on our annual Jacksonville trip to watch an NFL game (Jags won this year - woohoo!). This week Max is off school, we've got our special assembly day in Conyers on Saturday and next week we're off on the company trip to Las Vegas. I'm a bit nervous about burdening a dear friend with not one, but two children and the school run on top of that but hopefully we'll all survive.

Normal operations should be back up and running by the middle of December. Then my parents arrive! Being busy is good, right?

Cumberland Island (pic heavy!)

It's been raining here for the last two days and it reminded me that I still haven't put up photos of our rainy trip to Cumberland Island!

We took a trip there after first visiting Okefenokee swamp again.



We had a great time and saw plenty of alligators - Donal had a hard time believing they were real at first as they stay so still and are right there in front of you on the foot paths! Some of us (read: everyone but Nik) went to the reptile show and got to touch snakes and baby alligators. We spent the night in St. Mary's and then headed off bright and early on our camping adventure.

Cumberland Island is an island off the coast of Georgia. It's a protected national park and you can only get there by your own boat or by the daily ferry service. They only allow 300 people on the island at one time and it's about the size of Manhattan, so you can have all the privacy you want. The beaches are long, wide and extremely beautiful.


We decided to initiate my sister in the ways of camping. You can only bring what you can carry onto the island so I was a little worried about supplies, tent, sleeping things and food for 6 people for 3 days but it turns out that we managed just fine, we even had some food left over!


Ramen noodles in the rain anyone?


We arrived on the ferry, checked in and were assigned our camp site. After a short hike through a canopy of the most beautiful gnarled oak trees and groundcover of spiky saw palmetto, we got to our camp site. Despite the rain we managed to get our tent up, a fire going and extra wood chopped. Unfortunately it continued to rain all day and all night! We didn't mind too much and figured if we were already wet, we might as well just go to the beach and get even wetter in the ocean.


The kids are real water babies and love, love, LOVE the beach. They complain at home if they get water in their faces in the bath tub but somehow they don't mind getting hit square in the face by a big wave! Lily had fun chasing the sea birds and trying to stick her little fingers into ever sand flea hole she could find. She's also an avid beach comber and we managed to find some beautiful shells.




After the weather eased up the next day, we went on a LONG hike (especially for little feet) to the Dungeness ruins and to see the wild horses.





We saw several armadillos, live ones - up until that point I'd only ever seen squished ones by the side of the road. A real highlight, oddly enough, was watching the amazingly colorful dung beetles busily clearing the hiking trails after the horses had been through. It was a very entertaining sight!



I don't quite think we converted our guests to camping - rain + sand + cold showers don't really add up to a spa vacation but it was a once in a lifetime trip. And boy did our warm showers feel good once we got home!


Our brave photographer.

This photo pretty much sums up our first 24 hrs....... wet!

More photos...

Max woke up at 4 am screaming in pain. He said he had a stomach ache. He threw up at 5,6 and 7am and is now home from school and typically - feeling perfectly fine. Ahh, this parent thing is fun sometimes!

Anyway, I know I promised lots of photos so I thought the best way to get them up here whilst sleep deprived would be a slide show. So, here you are. A slide show of photos from the fair. Again, photos by the talented Nicola

My beloved sister!

She and my BIL have been visiting for the past two weeks as you know. They left on Thursday evening and I miss them already! We had a lot of fun, we took them to the fair and thank goodness we went when we did - it's rained every day since.

We also took them camping to Cumberland Island. That's another post all by itself, but let me just say that I don't think we converted them to camping...... despite the scenery LOL. We did, however, convert them to So You Think You Can Dance - who doesn't love that show?!

The biggest highlights though were just hanging out with them and playing together as a family.

Nik is a fantastic photographer and she managed to get some brilliant shots while she was here. I'll be sharing them over the next couple of days. So here are some of the kids playing with their Uncle Donal:








"How does this thing work??"

Father and Daughter Jam Session

Lily really has a gift for singing. She sings about everything. She truly loves music and can often be seen with her eyes closed giving a heartfelt rendition of "Battlefield" to an invisible audience.

The kids both love it when Tim plays guitar for them too and Lily likes to sing along. Unfortunately I wasn't able to capture Lily's caterpillar and roly-poly song on video and she'd had enough of making up lyrics by the time I'd found the camera, but the little father/daughter jam session that followed is just too cute for words.

Tim was just making up melody and lyrics on the fly and our little song bird chimed in there with him ♥ Enjoy!