After a looooong day of driving, we're finally at our hotel in Pennsylvania for the night. The boys are ready for bed, and so am I!

Will post more tomorrow.

We didn't get as early a start as we'd hoped this morning. Greg's alarm went off at 6:00am, but he pressed the snooze button for 50 minutes, so that set us back a little bit. I wasn't going to complain too much though, because I thought it was too early to begin with!

We eventually got the house tidied, and the rest of the stuff put into the van (well, Greg did all of the packing). We stopped for lunch at Ruby Tuesday's. I had the most amazing shrimp dish, and the fries that the boys and Greg had were out of this world! I'm really sad that they don't have this chain in Canada. But, when we do cross the boarder and find one, it'll be a special treat!

We stopped at a Wawa gas station to fill up before continuing on our way. There is a tiny little town in Ontario called Wawa. It's in the middle of nowhere, but has fantastic chicken wings at one of the motels. It turns out there is also a Wawa, PA, which is where this gas station chain has its origins. I learned today that "wawa" is the Ojibwe word for Canada goose, which would explain the corporate logo.

We stopped at a Walmart in Charlottesville, VA, where are staying the night. We found the White Cloud toilet paper, and I couldn't resist taking a picture of Finn holding a package. I tried telling him that the baby on the packaging was him, but he didn't really seem to get it!
We also went to the Sam's Club next door to look around. We meant to get a membership before we left Toronto, but didn't get around to it. So, we got one today. The only problem is that they couldn't properly sign us up because there computer system wouldn't let them put in a postal code with letters. After about 30 minutes of trying to figure out what to do, they ended up using the store's address, and we got our cards. The people were friendly and very helpful.

Greg and I are very much in love with Virginia, and have come to the conclusion that if we ever decide to move to the U.S., Virginia will be at the top of our list.

Our motel room is cheap and clean, but unfortunately smells like cat urine. It's half of the price of the hotel we were going to stay at, and it has internet, so we're trying not to breathe too deeply in here!
Finn's hives have returned. To a lesser extent, but they're still around. He still hasn't complained about them being itchy, which is good, but they look horrible. Hopefully they will all dissapear for good soon.

Guess what? Greg found his bathing suit! LOL. He was walking to the beach, and there it was, with one clothes pin still attached. It was wedged in between a couple of bushes not too far from our place!

I went down to the beach for a few minutes. The water level is extremely high. Here are a few shots. Compare them to photo in the title banner at the top of the page.And how about this sky? It was the most amazing colour of blue. Finn took this one. Greg and I on our laptops. We loved having wifi access while on vacation. Life is good. I've been playing with textures in PS lately, so I messed around with this one a bit.

At 5:00 am this morning I woke up to a shaky bed. It finally dawned on me that the entire house was shaking due to the extremely strong winds! I could not believe how windy it was. I had some some stuff hanging on the clothes line, and went outside on the deck to take it down. Sadly, Greg's bathing suit did not survive the night, and is now probably in someone's pool or something a few houses down!

Finn woke up this morning with his legs covered in hives. They soon spread to his torso. He doesn't seem to be bothered by them, but I'm sending Greg to the pharmacy to get some Benadryl just in case.

I tried installing a different template while using Firefox instead of Chrome. And guess what? It worked. So, tomorrow, I'll be trying to make a new banner. Woo hoo!

Sunny, but VERY windy again.  Good for the mosquito situation, but bad for the beach.  We did go down to the water, unfortunately there was another mini wind storm going on, so the boys didn't get to play in the sand.  

...a new look. I've just moved my blog over to another email address (once I get my iPhone I hope to do a little mobile blogging). Unfortunately, in the process of moving it over, I lost all of the comments, and my banner, and poll. But, hopefully during the boys' nap time I'll be able make it look good again. Not much I can do about the comments though.

I can't believe our trip started a week ago. It's already Wednesday, and we leave on Saturday. Time does indeed fly when you're having fun.

I noticed on the fridge that there was an envelope, and on the front it said "your house was cleaned by Darlene and Sandy". I have no idea how much to tip them. I mean the place was nice and clean when we arrived, but I mean, isn't it their job?? Let me know what you think would be appropriate.


Not too much happening today. We attempted a visit to the beach, but it's really windy today and the it felt like there was a mini sand storm on the beach. The boys were really upset that they couldn't play outside. They were both crying and screaming on the beach as we were packing up their toys. I don't know what upset them more though...the sand that was being blown into their eyes, or the fact that they weren't allowed to play. Either way, it was quite the ordeal!


There was quite a nice sand wall/ledge near the water. Looks pretty cool, don't you think?

We saw a few people doing this board-kiting or what ever it's called. Looks fun as heck, and the next time we come down here Greg and I are both going to give it a go. Hopefully we'll have a nanny in tow so she can look after the boys!We haven't had much luck finding pretty seashells on the sea shore, however there is a big jar of them in the living room. I borrowed a few and took some pictures while the boys were napping.

Oops. I'm not sure why I didn't get around to posting yesterday. Other than a quick trip to the beach to fly a kite, we didn't actually do too much. Finn had a wonderful time, and although Spencer also enjoyed the kite, after watching it for a little while he started digging in the sand again! If you look up, way up, you'll see the kite. It was an el-cheapo kite, so we were surprised taht it lasted more than 10 minutes in the sky! Greg and I actually wondered weather the kite would fall apart first, or fly away due to Finn letting go. Thankfully, neither happened!
Then something appeared on the beach that was much more exciting than kites, sand or the ocean. It was a pick-up truck. Good grief, you'd think they'd never seen a pick-up truck before! I guess one driving on the beach was a rare sight though.

What a difference 24 hours makes. Yesterday, Finn was terrified of the water. Today, completely different boy. He was begging to go in, and cried when we had to go. He figured out how to cover is mouth when a big wave was approaching, and didn't freak out when his face got wet. Spencer enjoyed the water, as usual. He got completely soaked by a huge wave. He swallowed a lot of salt water, but recovered quickly.Big waves. If only I'd had some sort of waterproof cover for my camera and lens, I could have been more creative in my composition! Two happy, wet, sun-soaked boys.
Our house for the week. It's actually one of the smaller ones in the area!

On the pathway to the beach.
Some seagulls and a sandpiper just hanging around.
Greg playing in the waves. This wave tossed him around quite a bit. I think he quit for the day after this one!
We went for a little walk along the pier. Lots of people fishing off it, and a few birds hanging out, hoping for a free lunch. As you can tell by this picture, the pier was pretty lop-sided. Our house is somewhere in this photo.

Just a quick update with one picture and the video.

Here's the view from our back balcony. The beach is just a short walk down the pathway and over the hill. And here is the video. The beginning has a panaromic view from our balcony, and then we have Spencer and myself enjoying the waves (it was his very first time in the ocean!)

My internal alarm clock once again woke me up at 6:54 am. Although it seems a bit early to me, once I saw the sun coming through the windows, I was awake pretty quickly! Finn woke up pretty quickly, but Spencer staying sleeping until about 7:30, which was great, because he obviously needed the sleep!

After we all woke up, we headed over to the grocery store to stock up. It's a little hard to feed 4 people with half a glass of chocolate milk at crackers. After spending way too much at store, we headed back to the house for breakfast. After that, it was BEACH time!
Although Finn had a lot of fun at the hotel pool a few nights ago, he wanted NOTHING to do with the ocean. He screamed and cried and ran away from the water. Bribery. Threats. Promises. Nothing worked. So, he stayed on the beach and played instead. He would not help Spencer and Greg build the sand castle though. They were too close to the water and he refused to go that close. I'm not sure who had more fun building the castle: Greg or Spencer. I'm pretty sure it was Greg, because he even said that he'd like to stop at a store to try to get a rectangular pail for building!
We couldn't forget Paddington. It kind of looks like he's trying to ski down a sand dune, but I didn't want to take too much time positioning him. There were some young Quebecers next to us on the beach, and they were giving me strange looks. What sort of 30-year old woman poses a stuffed bear on a beach and then takes a picture of him with a big SLR camera?Finn, my cute little water-fearing beach bum.Spencer loved chasing these "burs" around. He'd point and run after them. I think they're sandpipers, but I'm not sure.And here is Greg playing in the waves with Spencer. Unlike Finn, Spencer LOVES the water and would have run in if we'd let him. He laughed and played for a long time. Greg is currently uploading a video to YouTube, so I'll include a link to that in my evening update!

We are finally here. After almost 1700 km (just over 1050 miles) we pulled into our new house (for the week). It is nice and big and clean. We forgot to bring a baby gate to put on the stairs, but Spencer knows how to navigate stairs pretty well, so hopefully it'll be ok. Because the sun had already set before we arrived, we haven't been able to truly appreciate our view yet, but tomorrow morning we'll take a better look.

We did hit the outlet mall this morning. It was hot. Really hot and humid. Greg actually enjoyed shopping (don't believe him if he tells you differently) and he bought more stuff than I did. Since we wanted to get going, I didn't get to as many shops as I would have liked to, but being the nice guy that he is, he promised that we'd stop at another one on the way home. Further north. Where it's not so hot. And then I can really do some damage!

Going over a bridge heading into Norfolk, VA. If you squint, you can sort of see the outline of the ship.

Woo hoo! We finally reached our destination state.
Over the bridge towards the Outer Banks.
This is the view from our deck. I can't wait to see what it looks like in the morning!
The boys also went to sleep at a fairly reasonable hour tonight. They are sharing a room, and I can only hope that they will sleep in until at least 7:30am!

I am now off to bed.