Oh, a camping we will go........

Jeff, Zack and I are off to our campground. Wish us luck because Zack has no idea what is in store for him. He just knows we have a surprise for him! We will be back Wednesday evening and I'm sure I will have all kinds of stories to tell and pictures to share.

Weekend with Grandpa

What a quick and great weekend we had with grandpa! Its too bad it went by so fast. We'll see him again over Thanksgiving, but sometimes I wish he lived closer so I can see him more.

Grandpa's posing in the car, he didn't want to drive it for real

But he kept us busy! He was shy at first about asking us to do things for him around the house, but I kept insisting that we do stuff for him (after the trip to the mall of course so he could people watch while Jeff and I would go into stores).

Jeff showing grandpa where the roof went on the convertible

It started off by replacing the kitchen mats and table place mats that we bought at the mall. Then Jeff and I washed the front of the house windows (Jeff had the outside while I had the inside). After the windows, Jeff cut the front lawns grass and then put down some grass seed over an area where Grandpa had a tree cut down. While Jeff was doing that, I was cleaning up area's inside for Gramps.

Grandpa sitting on his chair outside

After a hard day of work, we enjoyed a great supper out on the town.

Today, after we went out for breakfast, we were on the hunt for a new desk chair from Grandpa. We finally found one and then put it together for him. His old chair started to give him a problem.

Here's the story about the chair-Grandpa explained to Jeff the issue with the chair, when he would sit in it, the chair would go down (also picture grandpas hands up in the air over his head, like Frankenstein arms, and then slowly move down). Jeff went into the room to check out the situation. Shortly, Jeff came back to report that it didn't give him an issue. Oh, Grandpa marched right into the "little room" and showed Jeff just how the chair was acting up. What it ended up doing was after you sit in the chair, it would slowly give away and sink to lowest point it could go. Oh Jeff said, the hydraulics went. So, that was the start of our chair searching adventure.

It was such a great time seeing him. I can't wait to see what he has in store for us next time!

Thankful Thursday

1. Rekindling old friendships
2. These last few beautiful days of August. Its sad to see the summer disappearing, but at least its not a soggy ending!
3. Spell Check. Oh how I love thee!
4. My dental clean bill of health. It wasn't always the case, but I fixed that situation over a year ago and ever since its been great (even at today's cleaning, yeah).
5. Having time to myself. I love my family dearly, but having quite time is nice once-in-awhile!

Heading North

This morning, Zack had a golf tournament. He has one every Friday throughout the summer at Brookside Par 3, 9 whole course. Its a cute set up they have there for the kids. Each group has 3 kids (and at least one adult to keep score) as they walk the course, but not specifically by age group. On the score card, the ages are noted and then later on it is determined who won in the age groups after all the score cards are collected.

Zack didn't want me to take pictures while he golfed, so I snagged some before he started. He didn't want me to interrupt him while he played (such the concentrated player).

Jeff walked around with him as I stayed back, snapped some photo's of the area and then went back to the car to read (yup, I finished my book today that I started at the beginning of the week with the airport read challenge, yeah).

Zack finished the course in an hour and half. He came in 3rd today. He had fun with his dad and the other kids he walked around with. That's all that matters.

After Zack played golf, we went out to one of Zack's favorite restaurants and that is when we met up with his mother (yeah for us). We had a civil lunch with her (even though I wanted to jump over the table and just show her how I really feel about her) and then it was time to say goodbye for the time being (remember, she has to drive him to MA for the second week of vacation, its all BS).

This evening we made it to the Beltsville MD area in decent time (since there is always traffic on the VA/MD border around the beltway). We stopped in the see grandpa for a quick visit for tonight to touch base and get things worked out for tomorrow (we had to find out what Jeff and I have in store for this weekend to help him out). Oh how we have our hands full for this weekend!

The hotel we are at now charges us for the Internet connection. So, I will tough base on Sunday after we return home before the second half of our vacation kicks off. Have a great weekend!

Day Six - Dixie Caverns & Girls

Today is our last full day in Southern VA. We didn't have anything planned for today, we kind of just went with the flow. The weather was warm, but overcast with on & off showers which limited our outdoor activities. We decided to head to the near-by Dixie Caverns in Salem VA.


We arrived at the caverns just in time for the start of a tour. These caverns do not have enough room for more then one tour at a time and we would have had to wait for a half and hour before the next one to start. Phew, good timing!


The tour was good. The guide was knowledgeable, but seemed like a know-it all punk kid, but I won't hold it against him since he gave us a decent tour.

The Dixie Caverns was discovered in the 1920's by a family walking their dog along the mountain range which was above us while we were under ground. The dog fell in a whole (which is in the photo above-the bright spot in the middle of the photo). When the dog was found in the whole, the caverns were discovered. Also, the dog made it out ok too. The dogs name was Dixie, hence the name of the caverns.

There was 300+ stairs all throughout the tour which were slippery and steep. I wouldn't recommend the caverns if you are wobbly on your feet (sorry mom, they are not suitable for you) or if you are claustrophobic.

I guess caverns in the area have wedding spots for couples who want to get married there. I guess there are weirder things out there! The picture above is called the Wedding Bell and this is where the Dixie Caverns designated marriage spot is. I wanted to get a picture of Jeff & Zack under it, but Zack ran ahead to be with the tour guide....oh well!

The big thing about the caverns is, you CANNOT touch the walls. The oils from our hands prevent the growth of the deposits since oil and water cannot mix. Imagine if people didn't listen, there wouldn't be beautiful pictures to show off.

This is the caverns other claim to fame (along with the wedding bell). The above picture is called the Turkey Leg. I don't see it, but someone must have in order to name it that.

So, that was your brief tour of the Dixie Caverns in the event you have never been into a cavern. Last year was my first time in a cavern (we ventured into the Natural Bridge caverns last summer) and its still amazing to see what water, mud, fault lines, air and time can do.

Like Father, Like Son-

After the caverns, we returned to the hotel. Jeff and I were relaxing on our bed and Zack on his. The curtains were open which overlooks the pool area. All of a sudden something caught Zack's attention outside and he jumped out of bed to investigate.

He reports back to use that there are "hot girls in bikinis out there, I want to go swimming". Jeff and I just looked at each other and asked why? Zack said, I want to go swimming. Jeff peaked out the window and realized there were two girls Zack's age out in the pool. After Zack asked several different ways to go out there, we caved and all three of us headed out to the pool area.

Jeff and I decided to sit and read while Zack swam. Zack tried to start a conversation with one of the girls, but it didn't take. He didn't give up though! He kept trying, but the girls got called in by their mother. Poor guy! He was just trying to make friends! After the girls left the pool area, he was ready to head back inside.

Well, like I said the other day, I have a mini Jeff on my hands. That apple definitely didn't fall far from that tree.

We don't have poker chips!

Last night, after our usual drive around with the top down adventure, we decided to head back to the hotel so the boys could take an evening dip. Well, by the time we got back, the girls softball team that arrived yesterday had taken over the pool area. The boys decided it was best to stay in and play poker (I can't believe the sight of some teenage girls would make the boys shy, but who knew).

The only thing was, we didn't have our poker chips. We did have a deck of cards (since I carry one in my travel bag for situations like this). Jeff came up with an idea. We each picked up a bag of potato chips for a snack to keep in the room, so we decided to use the potato chips and popcorn in place of the poker chips. Brilliant!

We divided up the chips to even piles. Zack's snack was the Cheddar popcorn and was worth a $500 poker chip, my snack chip was the Utz crap chip and was worth $200 and Jeff's Doritos was worth $100.

So, we made due and played our Texas Hold-Em using our potato chips and popcorn and played like we had regular poker chips. It was so fun!

Oh, and by the way I WON! I don't think I ever won a poker game with Jeff. That's right! When you have pockets Aces and your husband says "all in" at the sight of his hand, I agreed and said "all in" too! I flipped my cards and it was revealed that I won. Yeah baby!

Thanks to Jeff with his imagination working full force last night, we have a new way of playing poker and a great vacation memory.

Pardon the Venting

Ok, I need to vent a little. Yeah, I vented with Jeff at supper, but I'm still fired-up around Zacks MOTHER. Please excuse the interruption of the happy go-lucky vacation stories. We are having a blast being here with Zack, but I can't stand HER.

I don't know where to start, so I'm just going to let my hands type-

His mom can't just make one phone call to find out whats going on. NO. She has to call a couple of times with questions she could have asked the first time she called. For example -On Saturday when we were waiting at the airport in Hartford, she called us. She wanted to check with times and the schedule for the next day. That would have been fine, but she had called the day before to ask the same questions! The thing was, her birthday was Saturday and I'm sure she wanted to see if Jeff would wish her a happy birthday (which he did because I reminded him, just to avoid any ill-feelings since she told me the month before when we were arranging the schedule).

She calls every day to talk with Zack. Which wouldn't be so bad if it was just ONCE a day. If she feels she couldn't say goodnight to him in an appropriate way, she'll call back about an hour later to do the same thing. The thing is, when SHE has Zack and Jeff tries to call him, her phone goes to voicemail (or she doesn't pick up), no one answers the home phone and she returns the call when she feels like it. She would have a fit if we ever did that to her (even though we are tempted we don't).

Also, we rented a convertible. Yes, we splurged but its our decision, its our money, its our little perk for HER moving to VA and making us come to VA to see Zack. So, when she makes a comment as she exits her car last Sunday "Oh, what a fancy convertible" in her jealous/envious voice that we both decided not to comment on, its like running fingernails down a chalk board for me.

Then on Monday we had to run by Zacks house to get his goggles. HER parents noticed our car. HER father said, oh look who makes the big bucks, how much did this run you?, what happened to the other car? Um, this is a rental I said, but they all made up their minds that we purchased this car. Then SHE mentions, oh its only a two seater (for the back seat) so you guys can only have one more kid. OK.....this is a rental and its none of her business how many kids we will have. I didn't even want to waste my breath after she made that comment so I just smiled.

Those are just a couple of things. I can go on and on about her and how she brain washes her child. That, I will save for a different time, but for now I appreciate you listening.

Please don't get me wrong. I love Zack. He IS my first child. He IS my step-son. I WILL do anything for him. I just can't stand his mother. She not only makes Jeff's life a living hell, I'm in on this ride too.