Trip to Rhode Island

So this past weekend we took a trip to Rhode Island to attend Uncle Ed's memorial service. The trip up was quite eventfull. After picking up Cousin Chris in DC, we somehow ended up in Southeast, note, I was not driving :) We then in our infinite wisdom decided to go through the city at 5pm instead of get on the beltway. I'm still not sure who decided that.

The rest of the trip went fairly smooth with the exception of waiting for 2 hours to cross the GW bridge from NJ into NY. There's nothing like seeing 3 lanes on a bridge merge to 1, and having a SEMI and a Big Bus on each side of you, just 1" from your mirror. Needless to say I had to stop, because they did not seem to care about smooshing a van in between. The semi driver though, had the balls to pull to the left, before coming back to the middle, just so he wouldn't bust my mirror off. So... he knew I was there, but decided to still get in front of me anywhere.

This was about an hour after I was cutoff, in front of a toll both, by a Semi with a trailer. Now one would think only a driver for a small company would do such a thing.... Nope, it was a UPS truck, license plate 0816626, we couldn't see the state, appeared to be a redish plate. The number of the cab of the truck was 268530, so if you seech him, tell him to watch his cutting off drivers in front of toll booths. :)

We finally arrived at the hotel in Connecticut at 3:45am, after having left at 4:15PM. Luckily the kids were asleep in our hotel room at 4:30, in time for us to get 4 hours of sleep to then drive to Rhode Island.

All in all, the drive was worth the site of that Lighthouse in RI, and for the ceremony. It has to be one of the most beautiful spots I've seen in the country, and defintiely rivals anything I ever saw on Cape Cod. It's so peaceful, and alive, I could spend hours just sitting there and staring at the ocean, and the sea gulls. We followed up the day with my first time ever eating lobster. While I still prefer crab any day of the week, it wasn't bad at all.

The trip back wasn't too bad, with the exception of traffic by the Giants/Jets game, and bad traffic on 495 from the Skins game. I'm just so tired of driving...... I need several naps and a vacation :)

FIOS, Windows Media Center

I'm so psyched, September 24th, Verizon will be stopping by to install my 30Mb down,5Mb up FIOS Internet service, as well as FIOS TV. It's exciting to finally get a much better connection than what Comcast provides, and to have much better quality TV service.
I'm currently working on getting Caleb's room networked via some Cat 6 cabling, in order to get a desktop running for Caleb so that he can enjoy his favorite web sites, as well as Music/Recorded TV shows/Movies through Vista Media Center. If anyone ever questions how fast these kids learn, at 3 1/2 Caleb was able to Open Media Center, Browse to the DVD collection, and watch what he wanted to watch.
Now that is slick :)
If you have question on how to setup Vista Media Center throughout the whole house, drop me a line!

Wild Horses

Well OBX rocks! We got here at noon on Saturday hoping the house would be ready. Of course it wasn't ready until 3:45pm. So we lowered the air pressure on the Jeeps, and went riding on the beach. What total excitement, and inner happiness, peace, harmony all in one. Driving just feet away from the ocean..... at first I swear I was scared doing 15mph, but after a couple days I'm now doing 30mph! :)

The first day we just spent unpacking, getting food and drinks, etc. Caleb woke up the entire house at 7am on Sunday morning with his proclamation... "LOOK, IT'S LIGHT OUTSIDE. WE CAN GOTO THE BEACH!!!" Not more than an hour later we were at the beach. Even better though, and hence the title of this post, we woke up to see 2 wild horses in our back yard. Literally feet away, and just hanging out.

After a full day at the beach it started getting dark, Robyn and I decided to take Alec, and head south to the Walmart, and avoid the storm. It looked totally fine in the south. Of course after 8 miles back on the beach, and 10 miles on paved road, I got to pull into a gas station because it was pouring. We had the top up, but not front doors, side or back windows on, or with us, whoops :)

It stopped not long after and we made it to walmart after hitting a few more showers, Alec heldup really well. On the way back though, Robyn broke out the Southern Living At Home umbrella I got from my visit to Birmingham, and opened it up over Alec in the back seat. Everyone else who saw us must of though us fools. Driving in the rain with no doors or windows, but yet having an Umbrella up on the inside :) The beach ride back was fun at 20-30mph in wet sand :)

While grilling dinner under the house, it's open will show pics, in the dark I then got a visit from a wild horse. It almost decided to come under the house with me. But then it headed the other way, but I did get some video which I'll upload at some point.

We've spent a lot of money, but it's all worth it. To see Robyn and the kids happy, and see myself totally relaxed, no stress from work, I'm a totally different person.

Oh also, today, boogy boarding, I rode waves twice, at least 30-35 feet right unto shore :) Good waves with High Tide and all :)

WE are Here!

Well, we made it here. We got to OBX at about 12:00 noon today. The house wasn't ready until 4PM though so we did a lot of waiting in the car. But around 4pm it was time, we lowered the air pressure in the Jeep, and drove 8 miles down the beach in the newly lifted Jeep of ours :) About 2 miles into the drive, Robyn and I actually opened the flip back sun rider top that covers just the front passengers. This let her stand up and get some video. Pics will follow shortly, but video's will probably have to wait.

Seems like Corova doesn't have much for wifi access. I'm on right now with a Bluetooth connection to my cell phone :)

Williamsburg was fun, we got there around 2PM on Thursday, and checked into our Hotel at 3PM. Sadly Robyn felt horribly and I felt it was best to stay in and let her rest while I tried to keep the kids occupied. We did have dinner at Ruby Tuesdays . Sadly Robyn barely ate and still didn't feel better.

Friday got better, but I was in a cranky mood after Caleb haven driven me crazy. We did later in the day drop $50 in tickets at the Go Kart Plus center. Caleb and I drove together in GoKarts on their Figure Eight track and the Euro track. On the Euro track it was the two of us in one car, and a 12 maybe 13 year old boy and his younger sister in another car. He learned quickly not to take the corners too wide as I got in front of him :) When it came time to lap them though, he cut me off quick and I rammed into the back of them, on accident :) Luckily we didn't get thrown out. Robyn follwed us up with her own GoKart ride with Caleb while I snapped pics and took video.

They had this really cool pool with bumper boats too where you could also shoot water at other bumper boats. Caleb love it, with the exception thathe couldn't drive the boat. We even managed to soak Alec who was sitting with Mommy outside of the pool area. We also got to watch as Momma kicked daddy's ass once again in Putt Putt Golf. I truly suck at Putt Putt Golf, lost by 5 shots, sigh. Caleb as always did very well.

We went to one of my favorite restaurants in that area, 2nd street. I should of gotten directions as we drove around for nearly 2 hours getting lost, even more lost, and then the Ultimate Lost. We did manage to find a cool Patrol Road that sounds like it used to be used by the military, a couple of big lakes/resevoirs, and a close hand look/inspection of the gate of the local Naval Weapons Station. The civil's who now guard it were not very happy to see me lol :)

We eventually got to 2nd Street and enjoyed a great dinner. At one point I went to clean up after Alec who decided to feed the imaginary dog on the floor. I hear someone yell "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" It was out waitress who couldn't believe I was cleaning up Alec's mess. "Your on vacation, you shouldn't be cleaning up". I guess she got a kick telling her friends that a customer of hers cleaned up after his son's mess, and then left her a 33% tip lol. (Robyn's fault, I was gonna leave $13 which was 20% and Robyn said give her 20, so I figured $20)

So we got home, got the kids to bed, went to sleep, got up at 7am and headed toward OBX where we are now.

Water is warm, food is good, horse poop everywhere so we are looking for the Wild Horses.

More to come!

Daddy & Kids Funnies

So... Robyn took Alec to go shopping and left Caleb and myself behind. I had offered to go outside and play catch after working on the Jeep. So we go outside and I throw to him so he can bat. He proceeds to launch 2-3 balls all into the neighbors yard, which is fenced off.

So we move on to playing football catch. After about ten minutes he declares

Caleb "Dad, I've had enough I am going inside"

Me "But Caleb, I really wanna play catch with you"

Caleb "Go ahead daddy, you can play catch with yourself, I wanna go inside"

Heh....

Then we were at Walmart, all four of us, walking through the women's section. I was holding Alec, and politely pointed at the bra's and told him, "Look Alec, there are the milk containers!"

For once Robyn actually thought I was funny :)

Can you take me Higher?

">Yes, I went higher, 2" higher even! In the Jeep of course, thanks to an old time friend I've known now for 8 years, I was able to get a 2" Lift Kit on the jeep today. I even took off the doors, and mounted my cheapo mirror mounts ($30), and my cheao Advance Auto mirrors ($12). For $42 it's cheap, and looks pretty sweet. Next I'll need some side steps so I don't nearly pull my groin everytime I get in/out :)

Side shot with the 2" Budget Lift:

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Here you can see the mirror mounts from www.jeepit.com as well as the basic Advance Auto mirrors: