Gram's birthday!

OK, we're a few days late but that's the way it works when you have to do that work thing. Happy XXTH birthday! :)

Anywho, it's always nice when one of Nicholas' many grandparents stops by to visit to get their next fix! It's an addiction for life and it requires multiple doses, especially at this time where Nicholas is changing practically by the day!

Linda and family visit!

Capping off a very busy weekend was a nice visit with Grammy's friend Linda from Kenosha (in Wisconsin) and her family. Mommy and Daddy had already given them a sneak preview of Nicholas on the night of the 22nd after seeing Gramps and Grandma Carol off to bed. They were in town for a wedding and were staying with Grammy.

Unfortunately, the visit was rather short as they were all shipping out to head back to Wisconsin from RDU this evening. But the nice thing about Nicholas is that cute baby mode is awfully fast acting and has devastating effects upon all who encounter it!

Believe you me, today was no different!

Gramps and Grandma Carol returned to the house today and we were joined by Grammy as well.

Today's fun was a session with the grille where Daddy got to try out the cherry chicken recipe from the book Grammy gave him for his birthday. The second attempt was better than the first one by a long shot...that bird, the seven-layer salad and the potatoes were REALLY GOOD!

All we can say is if you left the house hungry, you were not exactly paying attention. And of course, the dominoes were brought out for a cutthroat session of Mexican Train!

Gramps and Grandma Carol visit!

Gramps made his second visit to Nicholas in a little over three months and he brought along Grandma Carol along for the ride. We have to say that playing hooky to see Nicholas is certainly a lot more fun than work and we encourage it of all potential visitors.

Gramps and Carol first met a few moons ago when Gramps was cultivating his clown alter ego Brother Noah at clown college and they have been the best of friends ever since. Or embalmed as the case might be.

'Ike aku, 'ike mai, kokua aku, kokua mai. Pela iho la ka nohana 'ohana is a Hawaiian proverb which is translated recognize others, be recognized, help others, be helped. Such is a family relationship. Hawaiian 'ohana is very inclusive, so much so that pretty much everyone whether related it or not are considered cousins. In our case, we seem to have settled on Nicholas having a veritable pantheon of proud grandparents and one can never have too many of those!

Either way, Carol is one of the nicest and neatest people you'll ever meet (and lest we forget Carol's trainer/owner Mrs Beasley, her veteran dog of the nursing homes and her faithful companion!).

And of course we can't forget Moby Dodge and the tendency of Gramps' conversion van which has this tendency to disgorge mighty mountains of goods painstakingly haggled over and acquired via his ubiquitous and ever present network of spies, paid informants, and store managers throughout the greater Daytona Beach area. If there was ever a continuing education course for bargain hunting, Gramps would be the Professor Emeritus! (Raleigh merchants beware...we might well get him training you how to drop prices to 10% of the original sticker in one fell swoop...) Anywho, we now know why Daytona was curiously absent from the list of places suffering from the recession!

But occasionally, Gramps can be caught out and this time we'll chalk it up to him being a bit tired from the long drive from Port Orange. I really wish we could take credit for it but he was the one who really made it happen when he suggested that we split our party...Gramps and Daddy went off in search of petrol and Mommy, Carol, and Nicholas headed to Golden Corral. You know, it was really like shooting fish in the barrel there...and he knew he'd been had when he saw them sitting at a table and knew that the dinner had already been paid. But if you're going to make it easy, we won't complain... :)

However, Mommy and Daddy had their own senior moment when they realised that the diaper bag (with Nicholas' formula!) was miles away at the house. Consider us excited for putting one over on Gramps, eh? :)

Nicholas' web log (BLOG) is weighing in at close to 17 megabytes and will soon be on the move to a new company to host the web site and EMAIL as the current web site is close to renewal. The new web host will allow a lot more space and be a much cheaper alternative for the four Internet domains I currently manage.

Switching hosting companies is often a tricky business because the Internet name servers that resolve the domain name (in this case, sunfox.com) to a physical Internet address (the IP address) have to be updated to point to the new web host and that change often takes 24-72 hours to propagate to the entire Internet.

What does this mean to you?

If done right, you shouldn't notice any disruption in service. As the name servers update, you may be served up content from the old site and the new one. Because they should be identical, you shouldn't see any difference in the content. EMAIL should work the same way...until your name server updates, EMAIL goes to the old mail server.

However, you might well see a connection refused error if you hit the site during the transition (or EMAIL may be bounced back to you). Please be patient and allow time for the changes to finish and then try again.

After the new web host accounts are set up and the changes have had time to propagate across all of the Internet name servers, the old web host account will be dropped (after I clean out all of the mail from that server) and we'll be completely on the new web host. Hopefully this transition will be painless for all of us and we can enjoy the services of the new hosting company.

Unfortunately, good things come to an end and so does our holiday at the beach.

Shipping out from the house at Ocean Isle is the same frenetic activity as found on arrival day, only in reverse and with the added bonus of cleaning the quarters before departure.

But that's OK because we got a chance to stop at Captain Nance's which is our preferred seafood shack in Calabash. Their $5 lunch plates are filling enough and the hushpuppies are very good!

Then it's the 2 ½- to 3-hour trip home to Clayton and back to work for Mommy and Daddy. And thus another vacation truth was revealed...vacations are always WAY TOO SHORT!

Nicholas returned to Myrtle Beach, this time to Broadway on the Beach. This place is rather like Barefoot Landing... shops, restaurants, theatres.

One store in particular bears mention... Father Time. If you want a real treat for a youngster, this place is the one (just make sure you watch where the kid's hands are at all times!). They sell clocks of all sorts...grandfather clocks, mantel clocks, you name it.

We went by there last year and fell in love with these wall clocks at the back of the store that play songs and have mechanisms/displays that move about on the signalling of the hour. The physics in some of them is utterly fascinating. Well, we finally took the plunge on a breaking clock encased in wood whose face breaks into two pieces and performs one of six songs on the hour.

One of the things that has amazed me is how focused Nicholas can be when he wants to be. Two things in particular catch (and usually hold!) his attention...things that move and things that are musical. This one is both and I know he's going to be thrilled with it!

Nicholas braved the surf and the waves for a second time and it was certainly a lot more pleasant an experience for him this time round now that he knew what to expect.

Besides, cuddling with Mommy after a good swim is always fun! :)

Today was Nicholas' first expedition to the delights of Myrtle Beach, specifically Barefoot Landing. Barefoot Landing is a complex of shops, restaurants, and theatres on both sides of a lagoon that is stocked to the gills (heh!) with huge fish. The fish (most of them a variant on Japanese Koi) remind me of the Sunken Gardens at Brackenridge Park in San Antonio. Great place to visit if you're ever in the Alamo City.

But I digress. The real fun was several miles south of there at what is (in our opinion) the best seafood shack in all of Myrtle Beach... Captain Bennett's. There are actually three of them...the one you want to go to is the third one if you're approaching Myrtle Beach from the north. Real Calabash seafood and lots of it!

Mind you, Nicholas is happy enough with his formula. But I'm sure he'll grow to love Bennett's in future trips. :)

Speaking of consuming mass quantities, it was about this point that we started getting an inkling that something was up with Nicholas. He's normally a rather pleasant fellow provided the groceries are on time. But he was eating us out of house and home...so much so that we had to stop by Food Lion to pick up additional formula as he was rapidly exhausting the hefty amount we brought with us. But he'd eat and eat and nothing really seemed to satisfy him.

In the light of hindsight, we figured this was probably his first real growth spurt and it sure picked a heck of a time to kick in. We knew he was getting bigger but it seemed like he was growing by the day. He'll be squarely on the growth charts next time round...we're absolutely certain of that. Not bad for a kid who was five weeks behind the starter's tape, eh?

Today Nicholas was introduced to the ocean and it was definitely not what he was expecting! But for someone being exposed to the ocean for the first time, he did a wonderful job of adapting to the environment. That in spite of the following differences between the ocean and his bath:

Nicholas' First Trip to the Beach!!!

We packed up and said goodbye to Clayton for a week of fun and sun (we hope!) at the beach. Ms. Pat rents a nice-sized beach house at Ocean Isle that is approximately fifty meters from the ocean (there is a row of houses across the street that will eventually be washed away and make the house a beachfront house!). She's even kinder to invite us to come round for the week for much less than it would ordinarily cost.

For those not familiar with North Carolina geography, Ocean Isle is located just across the Intracoastal Waterway halfway between Shallotte and Calabash. Our usual routing is I-40 to US-17 in Wilmington, then south on US-17 to Ocean Isle (the turn is about 10-12 miles north of the South Carolina border). Note to self: next time, bypass Market Street in Wilmington...the traffic really stinks!

On your map, look for the southernmost part of the North Carolina coast that is lying roughly east-west just north of South Carolina. The house is on the extreme eastern end of Ocean Isle (which lies, not surprisingly...east-west!).

Thus, the place has convenient access to the Seafood Capital of the World in Calabash (which is the definitive "down east" style of cooking seafood) as well as Myrtle Beach about 40 miles to the south. It's not unusual for us to make a few trips to Myrtle as you'll see in the coming entries.

Sharing the house with us were Julia's brother and sister-in-law and nephew from Columbus, Ohio...Patrick, Suzette, and Patrick Samuel. Also joining us from the Twin Cities in Minnesota were Uncle Warren and Aunt Chris. Fortunately, the house is rather nice sized so it wasn't at all cramped.

Arrival is usually a frenetic packing of the vehicle, driving the three hours to Ocean Isle, and then unpacking it all to the second story of the house. Then if we're lucky, we get a quick jaunt at the beach and relax for the coming days.

What made this a bit more interesting than usual is that we had a third passenger and limited amount of cargo space to accomodate all of the necessities (a pack and play, the stroller/car seat combo, and all of the clothes/food we were bringing in). However, the Ford Escape does have a remarkable amount of cargo room, even with Daddy's golf clubs and other extraneous items coming along for the ride. I think we'll have a better handle on the cargo requirements next year... :)

One thing I have to say is that Nicholas is an exceptionally good traveler for one so young. Once we shoved off from home, he pretty much slept until just south of Wilmington when we needed to get more fuel in the tank.

Anywho, the operative rule is that when we're at the beach, we're on beach time when we get there which means clocks and schedules are irrelevant. You want to eat...eat. If the beach strikes your fancy, then have at it! There is rarely more of a set schedule other than we think we'll go to place X today!