Back from vacation....

I'm back from vacation and at work trying to get caught up. We had a great trip that was lots of fun including my son catching his first fish, one of the highlights for sure! Let me get caught up today and hopefully I can update things tomorrow.
Until then here is a picture of Lil Doc proudly showing his first fish!

-Doc

This Blog is on Vacation

I will be back next week so please don't forget about me while I'm off on the NOFO having fun. Enjoy this Picasso painting of Don Quixote while I'm gone. My parents have this painting (minus the On vacation part) in their house and I love it. (and don't forget to pre-rank your fantasy football players as the draft is not far away)

-Doc

Our Camping Trip

As promised here are some pictures from our camping trip last weekend:

Our new tent!
I call Melanie the grocery goddess because she found us.... CHEERWINE DOUGHNUTS!!

The kids tent

Our friends tent

Doc the Super camper!

Yum! Chicken fajitas for dinner the first night

Lil Doc loves his flashlight

So does Colin!

Yum - Marshmellows

Mommy and Lil Doc roasting marshmellows

Our campsite

My truck and tent again

The kids just loved this stump for some reason

When all else fails a movie on the I-Pad can cure boredom

Other friends visited us the second night.

Naptime is over!

family picture on the lake. This will end up on our Christmas card

Our friends boat was named 'The Black Pearl'

Don't they look like they are having fun?

Teaching Lil Doc how to row

My buddy Steven calls this picture "The Most interesting Man in the world" - I laugh but posted it anyway.

-Doc

A few Monday thoughts

I hope everyone had a great weekend. We did, very busy with stuff all three nights. Last night we even had some severe weather and a tornado touched down in the next county but altogether a great weekend. A few notes:

-NCAA tournament updated standings to the right over there. Kimmeh continues to lead but can score no more points. Can anyone catch her?
-Later this week possibly tomorrow (if they get them to me) My two other blog brothers Mt. Cat and AbsolutGator and I will be posting our top 10 lists of most influential music albums of out life. Should be good stuff!
-The NASCAR race at Martinsville Virginia was rained out yesterday so I get the rare opportunity to listen to the race here at work on the radio... GREAT FUN on a Monday!
-I am here this week but will be leaving Friday night on vacation (Spring Break) up to New York (The NOFO) for the opening of NY Mets season and my brother in law's wedding the following weekend. I will basically be gone from the 3rd until the 13th and although I will have internet access but probably won't be able to post much so I have a request... Would a couple of you like to guest blog here on YJKOBT for me? A few posts about whatever you like? Random stuff or odd news? Let me know because I would love to have some guest bloggers to post next week. I will just add you on as a YJKOBT contributor.
-After this weekend I am less than 10 miles away from completing my goal to Walk to 100 miles so by the time I get back from New York I will have completed my goal ahead of time actually! It also seems that I have been losing some weight so I guess I am doing OK with my goal of living healthier.
-Why the cat with the lime on it's head? Because I like it and have never had a good excuse to post it here.

I hope everyone has a great week!

-Doc

How Long is Four hours?

First of all I am glad to be back from vacation but have been very busy and blogging has been down on the list of things to do. Thank you very much to my buddy Mt. Cat for picking up the slack in my absence. I will post about the rest of our family vacation later but I had to share this story.

Last Sunday we were scheduled to fly back from New York's JFK airport at 2:25 pm to arrive home before 5 pm after our wonderful vacation. We had decided that we needed to get to the airport early because not only is JFK very busy but my wife had lost her drivers license and we were concerned that she might have trouble at security. So got there plenty early. The security was not too bad and so we found ourselves able to relax for a bit and get a bit to eat and have an hour and a half before our flight was to board. Cool.

We had Patrick with us of course and we decided to let him stretch his legs and get some energy out so he ran around the terminal and tried to mess with peoples things. We chased after him and had some fun. It gets to be 2 pm and we find out that our flight is going to be delayed boarding due to another late flight coming in that they were holding a plane at our gate for. At this point we get a bit concerned because there is weather out to the west that will be arriving later and we don't want to get stuck. We are still OK though and Patrick seems to be alright.

We keep hearing delay after delay announcements for our flight which are not all that bad we finally get in line to board about 3:45 pm. Everything is still OK because they are telling us that we will still get out before the weather and get back home to Charlotte by 6 pm. No problem right? WRONG !

I checked my watch when we were seated on the airplane and it was exactly 4 pm. The crew goes through the normal pre-flight stuff and then the captain comes on the intercom and advises that we are in for a bit of delay because of the weather we are 65th in line to take off. Yes 65th in line to take off. At this point Patrick whose "seat" is either my wife's or my lap is starting to get a bit antsy. There simply is no room on an airplane for a 14 month old to do his thing and move around and he doesn't understand why he is being trapped there.

The time starts to drag on. We are going nowhere fast and the captain keeps coming on to tell us about the weather and they are hoping to take off soon. Oh and did I mention that the free satellite TV wasn't working even though they restarted it twice? Yep we were just stuck there. At one point they even turned the engines off and the exasperated captain tells us that we "aren't going anywhere any time soon."

Now I don't want to sound like I am blaming Jet Blue. It wasn't their fault and they did try to make us comfortable giving out water and chips but it was flat out miserable in there. People were agitated. Patrick was restless but you can't really blame him, he was hungry, had diaper rash and was cutting new teeth. The really nice lady who we shared a row with was a saint. She even took turns holding Patrick and one time even walked up and down the isles with him. I want to publicly thank Eleanor Grant who is a gospel singer and who we shared a row with. She has a new CD coming out and was on her way to Miami to do publicity photos. We might not have made it without her.

Well if you have managed to read this far you may figure out by the title of this post that we didn't take off until just after 8 pm. Yes we sat on the runway at JFK for FOUR HOURS. How long is four hours? Long enough for an average NASCAR race, or the movie Titanic (if you sit through the credits), an hour longer than the average NFL game, or half of an average work day. I submit that the longest four hours possible to be experienced is sitting on an airplane with a teething, hungry, and antsy 14 month old who just wants to run around. I never want to do that again! What is your idea of the longest possible 4 hours you could ever experience?

-Doc

HouseSwap

Have you seen the movie "The Holiday"? It is really great...definitely a chick flick. But what I love about it is the part about swapping houses for a vacation. To me this seems like a great way to take a vacation and have the lodging part for free. Plus, you get a whole house (or apt) with the person's stuff in it, some times even a car to use. You can cook meals and therefore save on food too! So, theoretically, you could take a vacation for only the cost of transportation.

My question is, have any of you ever done this? I am interested but not sure how to go about it. Yes, there are some good websites but how do I get people to want to come to my humble abode. This area has many things to offer: NASCAR, shopping, culture, sports. Plus, I have a place that would be great for families with small children: big yard, swingset, toys, etc.

I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts on this. Tis the season for vacation planning!

Happy Trails,

-As American as Apple Pie

Pictures from My Vacation

So, last week the family and I went on vacation to Florida and Georgia. We had a great time and saw a bunch of friends and family so I figured that I would share some pictures with my blog family. So here they are. (I think you can click on them to see full size)


Here is a picture of Absolutgator and I posing by this big cannon in St. Augustine Florida (the oldest city in the USA):
Here is Absolutgator holding my son Patrick and trying to corrupt him with Florida Gator non-sense. I had to take the gator head away from him:
Here are a couple of pictures taken in Tallahassee Fla at Florida State University. Patrick, Mommy, and I all enjoyed the FSU hall of champions. Got our picture taken with the Bobby Bowden statue, and even ran into coach Chuck Amato...Way cool!
Here are a few pictures taken in Panama City Beach. We went to "ZooWorld" which is this really cool little zoo they have there. If you are ever there I suggest checking it out. It would be worth your while. This pic is of Mommy, Patrick and I near the turtles :

My favorite animal that we saw at ZooWorld was this really REALLY cool Panther We were really close to him and he was stalking all over the cage and growling and stuff. It was GREAT. I think he just liked the Panther shirt I was wearing that day. (as you can see in the above picture) My wife makes fun of me because I took a lot of pictures of him, but what the heck I love Panthers:
Here I am holding my son and introducing him to Sydney the giraffe:
Here is a picture my wife snapped of me while I was taking a nap after all the kids wore me out. My little buddy "Thor" had curled up next to me:
Here is a picture of me holding my son in Newnan, Georgia near Atlanta at my sister's house:

Here is Patrick wearing his new FSU hat and playing with one of his toys in Georgia: Yes he tried to jump that ramp in the background, I have pictures of that too:

Those are some pictures of our great trip that we had last week. There are others but I didn't want to bore you all to death. I hope you like and of course I use any excuse to show pics of (in my humble opinion) "The cutest kid on the planet" LOL!

-Doc