Wilmington Trip - Day 5

On Wednesday of our Wilmington trip, we finally had a rainy day.  But we had a few dry hours in the morning and made it to the beach.  We decided to try a new spot at Wrightsville Beach at the north end of the island.  The water breaks through the end of the island here and creates pools of water several yards away from the waves.  This was perfect for the boys since they weren't huge fans of the ocean and it's incoming waves.  Granted, it was pretty windy our entire trip making the waves relatively large.

My mom bought the boys kickballs and Rylan had fun running around the beach playing soccer.

It was so cool on Wednesday that the boys had to keep their shirts on most of the time.  The water was actually really cold during our trip and since it was cooler than normal, windy, and only partly sunny each day, I wasn't a big fan of hanging out in the water and freezing.  That's probably part of the reason why we built so many sand castles!

Happy boy finally trying out the pools of water!

I packed up our stuff and we were walking back to the car just as it started raining.

After going back to my mom's house, cleaning up, and eating lunch, we grabbed our raincoats and headed to downtown Wilmington.  Our first stop was The Fuzzy Peach (a frozen yogurt bar) for a treat.

Look at all those sprinkles!!!

Then we took a walk along the Riverwalk on the Cape Fear River.

The USS North Carolina Battleship ...

The boys threw pennies into the fountain in front of federal court house.

After dinner we took the boys bowling at the alley we used to go to when I was a kid.  The boys used a ramp to get the ball down the lane (Carter probably would have been able to get the ball all the way to the pins but I'm not sure about Rylan).

I forget our much the lightest ball weighed but Rylan did not want any help getting it to the ramp or on the ramp.

Both boys got to wear super cute bowling shoes.

Carter got a strike but Rylan ended up winning.

Recent Pictures

My mom is visiting us for a couple of weeks.  She got here on Tuesday and Rylan decided he wanted to wear his Batman costume to the airport to pick her up.  He said he was going to scare her :)

We got lots of smiles, weird looks, and random comments while waiting for my mom's late plane to arrive.

As soon as we got my mom, we headed downtown to the sprayground at Cumberland Park.

After a couple of hours in the water, we headed over to the Brentwood Library for one of their summer programs.  Before the program the boys turned in their summer reading logs and got their prize bags of goodies.

The program that afternoon was Safari Greg.  We saw him a few weeks ago at the Green Hills Library but only about half the program was the same.  The boys really liked seeing him again.

That evening we went to Chick-fil-A for dinner since it was Kids Night.  The boys are finally back to eating chicken (yeah!) so they actually ate their kids meals (you get one free kids meal for each adult-sized combo).  The cow was also visiting tables and Sean the Balloon Guy.

We waited an hour for balloons and then all the boys wanted were swords.

On Wednesday we went bowling.

We got out water toys that afternoon and played in the yard for awhile.  Carter and I discovered that the sunflower seeds we had planted a week earlier had sprouted!

Brian and I need to finish the cornhole boards but we did get the bags done.  The boys picked out fabric for the bags a couple of weeks ago - golden for Carter and red for Rylan, just like the boards.  Since my mom is much better than I am with a sewing machine, she sewed the bags for us.

On Thursday evening we went to Cheekwood for Family Night Out.  Missy and Heather and their families met us there and we saw the Nashville Ballet perform "Degas and the Little Dancer".  The performance ended up being inside again since there had been a few storms earlier in the afternoon.

The kids were mesmerized by the performance.  They all sat still staring at the dancers (some of them only started getting antsy the last 5 minutes).  At the end, the dancers showed the kids how to do some movements.

Rylan, Carter, Hannah, and Luke:

On Friday morning the kids had gymnastics and then we went with Missy to Pump It Up.  I hate this slide - my stomach drops every time I go down it and I usually end up with a floor burn on my legs.

Yesterday morning my mom and I took the kids to the Adventure Science Center.  The maze exhibit is still there and we made this maze ourselves out of foam blocks.

Brian was out of town for work all week so last night we got to have our first date night since my mom has been here.  We went to McCreary's Irish Pub in downtown Franklin and enjoyed some beer and traditional Irish food.

This morning we went back to Edwin Warner Park and did some fishing on the Little Harpeth River.  We picked up some live bait on the way over there this time and were much more successful.

I got a picture of this fish that Brian caught.

Carter caught two fish - one that was the same as Brian's catch and a small-mouth bass (I was at the car getting more bug spray and unfortunately missed that one!).

After fishing we drove over to another spot on the river so the boys could get in the water where the bottom is less slippery and there are more rocks to throw.  While at this spot, we found this cool looking caterpillar.

"Doing the Rain Thing"

This week's gardening class was about rain and why water is so important for a garden.  After the learning portion of the class, the kids put a rain gauge in the garden and checked on some of their plants.

The kids started the pumpkins off from seeds and the plants have grown a lot over the last 7 weeks.

The flowers are starting to turn into the tiny pumpkins!

The cantaloupes (and some watermelon??? - I didn't know the kids planted them) are doing well.  Ms. Lisa was working on putting a fence up around these because the groundhog that lives under the old house next to the garden loves cantaloupe.  He apparently ate one bite out of each one last year!

After checking out the plants, the kids got to pick blackberries ...

And potatoes (I was late getting pictures of these because I was putting on Rylan's gloves and the potatoes were pulled up in about 2 seconds).

This afternoon Carter and I ate all the blackberries that we hadn't already snacked on.  We sprinkled a little sugar on them and they were super, super yummy!!!