Trip to Atlanta // Caed at 10 Months

Caed and I were in Atlanta Wednesday through Sunday of this week while Brad, Dad, David and John had their 1st Annual "My Three Sons" Fishing Get-Away in Destin, FL. (Here's David's account of the trip.) We'll have to let Brad give you an update on the fishing trip, but here are some fun details about our trip to Atlanta.

During our trip, Caed hit his 10-month mark and it seemed like just over night that he acquired new skills. Here are his most recent milestones:

• Picks up grapes, in addition to Cheerios, to feed himself
• Transitions from laying, to sitting, to standing in his crib completely unassisted
• Crawls from one point to another (this just happened yesterday)
• Pulls up on furniture and toys and stands while holding on to something
• Takes several steps at once while holding on to something
• Understands "all done" and can make the sign when he's finished eatting
• Does most of the hand motions for "Pattycake" (thanks for the lesson Grandma)
  
• Two more teeth surfaced and a third is on its way, giving Caed a grand total of almost five teeth!
  

(Caed was quite fragile this week mostly due to his teething ... who wouldn't be if you had three teeth coming in at once!) But aside from that, Helen, Grandma, Caed and I enjoyed our time together and thoroughly enjoyed watching Caed hit these new milestones.

The first time I realized that Caed could "walk" was when we were in the dressing room at Dillards waiting for Grandma to try on some blouses, and just as I got Caed out to stand and hold on to the stroller, he started to push the stroller down the hall of the dressing room! Who would have thought? Here's Grandma's reaction:









Caed was so proud of himself!

Then, after we left Dillards, we headed over to Babies 'R' Us and Helen bought Caed his first pair of Pumas. They're awesome! Thanks so much Helen! While we were trying shoes on, I had Caed stand up and hold on to Grandma's wheelchair (we just had her ride in it while we shopped so that she wouldn't overwork herself). While he did this, he decided that since he pushed his stroller earlier, he would try to push Grandma in the wheelchair. He was however unsuccessful, but he certainly had the right idea in mind. What a sweet boy!

We stayed pretty busy the five days we were there, and it was nice because Helen only had to work until about noon every day, so the four of us were able to do quite a bit together. We took Caed swimming at the neighborhood pool, visited Pop at the National Cemetery, went shopping -- twice, rode the carosel at the mall and enjoyed a couple of nice meals out. Grandma even took Caed and I on a grand tour of Chambrel and ate lunch with her neighbors. Thanks for a great trip, Helen & Grandma. Caed and I had a really nice time!

Here are some more fun pictures from our trip:

Beach Trip to Kitty Hawk

Caed, Mom and I went to Kitty Hawk Tuesday through Friday of this week while Brad was out in Seattle at an Acts29 Boot Camp. What a fun time! This was Caed's first summer beach trip! (He's been to the beach on 4 other occasions -- once last November with our Community Group ... he was only 3 months old, and then twice to Oak Island before Mom moved ... both times were too cold to really enjoy the beach.) So, this time was really exciting.

Being that Caed still takes 2 naps a day, our time at the beach was somewhat limited ... however, the time we had was great ... any more time and we probably would have gotten burned or would have run out of ways to entertain Caed, even though the sand, birds and all the people are very fun to look at.

The water was still pretty cool and was pretty rough (compared to what we normally see in Oak Island), so we spent most of our beach time in the sand ... Caed was very content with that. (He wasn't so sure of the water at times, but here and there, he got more comfortable with it and did his share of splashing.) At one point he was splashing so much that I didn't realize that he had dropped his paci and before I knew it, paci was floating away! Luckily, I saved the day and rescued poor, wet paci ... Caed was thrilled!

Here's a video of Caed in the sand (None of his splashing footage came out real well):


Here are some pictures from the trip:

Asheville?

A couple of months ago, Brad and I decided that we'd go to Asheville to celebrate our 5th anniversary in June. (We try to take a trip a year around our anniversary to just get away.) But as the events started piling up on the calendar for June, we realized that it was going to be tough to get away. So, a week and a half before Memorial Day weekend, we thought that we'd try to move the trip up to Memorial Day weekend. (At the time, I hadn't looked at the calendar and I thought we had a little more time to plan .... Since when was there a week left in May after Memorial Day?)

Any way, we started planning away and mom had agreed to watch Caedmon for the weekend (our first over-night trip away), so on the Monday before, we decided to make sure that Caedmon would be ok drinking from a bottle instead of nursing (he still nurses 4 times a day). So, that afternoon before his 5pm nap, I tried the bottle and there was no success, just screaming, crying, squirming and sweating! Later that evening before bed, Brad tried the bottle a second time with Caedmon and he experienced the same thing.

What the heck were we going to do? Since mom's only 15 min. away, we thought that she could try to get him to take it, especially if I wasn't around, so I called her at about 10:30pm Monday night and arranged to bring Caedmon over Tuesday morning. I took Caed over to mom's to put him down for his first nap that morning and the plan was for him to sleep over there, play when he woke up and realize that I wasn't around, so he'd know that there was no chance for milk except from his bottle. This attempt, however, was again unsuccessful. Mom tried again 2 more times that day (from a bottle, a sippy cup, a spoon) ... nothing worked. Caed still ate his lunch and a good snack that day, so he didn't starve, but there was no hope for the bottle. So, by the end of the day, we were coming to the realization that we wouldn't be going to Asheville after all.

Brad and I were pretty disappointed. We hadn't put a whole lot of effort into planning, but we were still very excited to go away just the two of us for the weekend, so we were trying to come up with other scenarios that would make it work out. We came up with three options: 1) Take Caed with us, 2) Since mom had offered to watch Caed anyway, why not see if she would want to come along and watch Caed in Asheville while we went out during the day and enjoyed an evening or two out on the town, or 3) Stay in Raleigh, but have mom babysit a night so that we could go out. Thinking about staying in Raleigh was definitely a downer since we had already planned to be out of town, so we thought through options 1 and 2 carefully and decided that option 2 would give us the most flexibility to enjoy our time in Asheville -- just the two of us. So, as romantic as it sounds, we ended up going to Asheville to celebrate our anniversary with Caed and my mom, but it turned out to be a really great weekend! Thanks to mom for being so gracious to come along with us, along with Tucker & Champ, and hang out with Caedmon at the house while we went out and enjoyed Asheville Saturday and Sunday!

When we first arrived, Brad took me up to see the Grove Park Inn. I had definitely heard about it from all the spa ads that you see on TV, but when Brad got to stay there for a restaurant show he was in this past February, I wanted to go and see what the hype was about. Wow, what a gorgeous place! The weather was just perfect when we went, so we strolled around the property, through the main lounge, onto the veranda overlooking the spa and view of Asheville. There was a wedding just beginning on the left veranda, so there was nice music playing as we strolled down the steps to the little waterfalls. Then, as we were about to leave, we grabbed a seat in the rocking chairs by the enormous fireplace (how neat to be there in the winter with the huge fire blazing!) and then we thought we'd have time for a quick drink ... it definitely wasn't a quick drink, but it was so relaxing to just sit back and enjoy the scenery.

That evening, the 4 of us were planning to go out for dinner to Barley's Taproom, but Caedmon was way too tired to make it, so Brad took mom over to the Fresh Market to pick up a salad and sushi and she ended up staying home with Caed so he could get to bed. (Thanks!) So, Brad and I ventured to Barley's alone and enjoyed some good beer and pizza. Then, we stopped by the Thirsty Monk to enjoy another beer after dinner. What a neat little place!

Then, on Sunday morning, we got Caedmon all situated and we headed toward Hot Springs for a day of hiking and sightseeing. We ended up spending most of our day on the Laurel River Trail. It definitely wasn't a very strenuous hike -- all fairly level -- but it was fun to venture out onto the rocks into the river. We picked up lunch from the deli at Ingles (what an experience) and ate out on the rocks, partially under my umbrella (well, just me ... Brad braved the rain).

After a few hours of hiking, we turned back and drove through Hot Springs and up the winding mountain road to Max Patch. This was only a small portion of our day, but it was one of the neatest parts. The views were just amazing and the light breeze and moderate temperature felt heavenly!

Then, after we finally found our way home ... mountain roads can be tricky to navigate sometimes ... good job Brad ... we headed home to clean up and enjoy and evening out at Salsas!! (Our favorite!!!) (Funny thing, when we got there, we ran into Mark (Brad's brother) and Jed. We knew they were in Asheville for a backpacking trip, but didn't get a chance to connect with them to see what their plans were, so it was nice to run into them briefly.) If you haven't been to Salsas, we highly recommend it. The atmosphere is neat and the food is fantastic ... Mexican/Carribean ... yum. This time around, Brad and I shared a nacho appetizer (w/ pork ... yum) and the Cuban Mojo Steak ... yum, yum, yum and I washed it all down with a delicious margharita. We were definitely living it up!

On Monday, instead of getting up early and heading out as originally planned, we ended up sticking around and enjoying downtown Asheville -- Brad, Caedmon, Mom and me -- the fun window shopping that you can do there.
What a fun weekend! It was really nice to get away and be out of town when the entire purpose of the trip was to do just that -- get away. Thanks again, mom for being such a huge help with Caedmon ... we had a really nice time celebrating our 5th anniversary a few weeks early!

A Visit to Furman

After almost a year and a half of saying that we'd go visit David at Furman, we finally made it this past weekend. We had all intentions of going his freshman year, but somehow we never made it and then it took us until April of his sophomore year to get there with all of the family stuff that's been going on ... but we're glad that it finally happened, and we really enjoyed our trip.

It turned out that Brad had to visit some of his customers in Charlotte Friday afternoon, so that allowed us to leave mid-day Friday to beat the rush-hour traffic out of Raleigh/Durham/Greensboro. Brad then dropped Caed and I off at Michelle's for a few hours while he ran his calls. This was the second time that we've done this and it works out really well -- Brad gets to run his calls and we get to visit with the Pierces. (Madison and Ryan particularly enjoy this because they really enjoy playing with their little cousin Caed. About a month ago ... on our way to Atlanta when we stopped in, Michelle, Caed and I surprised Madison at school and joined her for lunch and recess. Madison couldn't have been more proud to show off her little cousin, and Caed was pretty excited about his first trip to 5th grade!)

We stayed the night in Charlotte and then left about 9am for Furman. (Caed must have been excited that morning because he woke up at 6:30am rarrying to go, when he usually doesn't wake up until 8am!) We grabbed a quick breakfast at McDonald's on the way down -- I've just discovered that I really like Sausage, Egg & Cheese McMuffins :) -- and then we arrived at David's dorm at 11am.

I had been to Furman once before for softball camp during the summer after my freshman year in high school, and I had always remembered it to be a beautiful campus and it still is. The tulips were out and many of the flowering trees were still in bloom. (You can't see them from these pictures, but the lake and fountains are gorgeous too.)

And I do have to say, of all the things that we saw, David's dorm room was the most prestine of them all ... ha, not quite, but thanks buddy for deep cleaning before we arrived! :) Caed enjoyed his time in uncle David's room ... he laughed and rolled all over David's bed and squealed to make sure that all of David's hall mates were up and ready to meet the new day at 11am on Saturday.

We ended up staying about 20 minutes away from campus at the Phoenix Inn.
It took us a little bit to find the place, but it worked out really well. Our room was nice ... we could even put Caed's pack-n-play in the area by the sink and close the door to give him his own space (it's difficult to sleep in the same room with him these days because he makes all kinds of noises in his sleep). And when he took naps, we enjoyed time by the pool playing Scrabble and in the pool-side pub playing darts -- both of which were dominated by Brad ... David and I didn't stand a chance at either activity!

Later in the afternoon on Saturday, David took us up to Paris Mountain to see the 'aerial view' of Greenville, and then on a walking tour of Furman. Caedmon really enjoyed the fountain ... Brad wheeled him into the spray and he couldn't figure out where the water was coming from :).

For dinner, we ate at a neat little place in downtown Greenville called Chicora Alley. We had to wait a while and bait off Caedmon's hunger with his banana star puffs, but the dinner was really good. If you're in Greenville sometime, I'd recommend it, just go early so that you beat the crowd ... it's a small place and their kitchen doesn't handle large crowds well. And for breakfast/lunch the next morning, we ate at the Greenville staple, Stax Original. We got there too late for breakfast, but we had their meat and veggie dishes and they were pretty good ... a little heavy for a ride in the car, but it was tasty :).

All in all, we had a really nice visit. We got to spend some good one-on-one time with David, which we haven't done in a while, and had the opportunity to see his girlfriend Katie as well.

On our way home on Sunday, we made a planned stop at Ikea in Charlotte. This was a long-awaited shopping trip since we're getting closer and closer to breaking ground at 909. Ikea was a mad house, but we were able to spend some good time meandering through the kitchen and bathroom departments to narrow down our thoughts on those areas for the house. It's so exciting to pick all of that stuff out, but so difficult at the same time because there are just too many choices out there. (I'm working with the Ikea home planner this week to get a better idea of the layout of our kitchen and where we want everything ... our architect said that this would be helpful regardless if we go with Ikea stuff or not, so that we can tell them exactly where we want stuff. We'll more than likely break ground on the renovations and new addition in about 3 weeks, so as we get closer to that time, I'll give you a better idea of what's going on with the house. Everything has been so up in the air until now that I haven't had firm info to share.)

On the Road Again

Whew ... what a whirlwind of a month ... isn't it still February? Thankfully the birds and now sunny skies are telling me differently.

After a roller coaster of a week in Ohio - first week in March -- we were home for a weekend and then last weekend we took a road trip down to Oak Island with our crew for one last hoorah. Mom closes on the OI house April 2 and moves up to Raleigh April 6, so we had to take advantage of the weekend and enjoy the beach.

The weather unfortunately was cool and damp, but we were still able to make it down to the beach for a nice walk and take the boys down to the park.







(Click on this picture to read the boys' conversation as they played.)

Here are some other fun pictures from the weekend:









For more pictures, visit my Facebook page.

Now that we've been back for 2 whole days, we're heading to Charlotte for the evening so that Brad can run a few calls early tomorrow morning and then on to Atlanta for Pop's burial service on Friday.

It'll be interesting to re-visit the emotion that I put on hold once we left Ohio and wrestle with Pop's death again. I've been putting together some memories though over the past few days to share at the service on Friday ... so that has helped me work through things again. Please continue to pray for my Grandma as she grieves and as she unpacks and begins her new journey in Atlanta. Please also pray for my dad as he continues to work through the logistics of Grandma's move and works through the grieving process as well.

Home Again

We're back from the first leg of Pop's memorial -- the Cleveland viewing and service at Rockport United Methodist Church. The second leg will take place at his burial on March 20 in Atlanta.

What a tough couple of days! Brad began his trip up to Ohio early Tuesday morning, 4:30am to be exact, and then Caedmon and I left the house at 6am to catch our 7:30am flight. Brad had to stop by a customer in West Virginia and Caedmon and I had a layover in Baltimore. Caedmon and I finally arrived in Cleveland about 12:45pm and Brad didn't get in until later that evening, but fortunately we were all able to make it for Pop's viewing. (Caedmon was so marvelous on all of our flights, and even took an hour nap in the Baltimore airport!)

The viewing was really nice. There were soooo many people there ... so many of Grandma's church friends, choir friends, golf friends and even Pop's buddies from Greyhound. Just about all of the Hottel family from Ohio was there as well.

Dad and Grandma did such a nice job organizing and displaying all of the pictures, Pop's Greyhound uniform with safety badges, and Pop's army cap. It was really neat to see all of that stuff. Pop's Prudential hat was even resting by his hand :). And to be able to meet so many of Grandma & Pop's friends and to be able to show Caedmon off was a joy! He really lite up the evening! People would come up to us from across the room and say, "This muuussst be Caedmon. Your Grandma has showed us all of his pictures! What a doll!" And even after not getting much sleep that day -- Caedmon usually takes 3 naps, yielding 5.5 hours of rest during the day and when he had to wake up 2.5 hours earlier than normal for us to catch our flight, only take an hour nap in the Baltimore airport (impressive), and then a short 30 minute nap at the funeral home, he could have cracked at any time. But miraculously, he was wonderfully happy and brought the smile and laughter that everyone needed at this time! Praise the Lord!

On Wednesday we had the service for Pop at Grandma's church, and what a nice service it was! Pastor Dan, Grandma's favorite pastor, gave the eulogy and painted such a neat picture of Pop, from the time he was a kid until his last days. He mentioned how family was so important to him and how he helped raise his younger brother Claire and care for his mother when his father died young in a car accident. He told stories about his service in Berlin during the reconstruction after WWII and how that sparked his love for driving. He spoke about how he wooed Grandma at a little restaurant where she worked to learn English. He spoke about the many trips that he, Grandma and Dad took during his "Greyhound Vacations" and his love for his Model A. He spoke about the great father that he was to Dad, and his service to Greyhound and his love for driving. And finally, he spoke of his love and support for Grandma, and that despite the Alzheimer's and the hardships they had at the end, that Grandma was faithful to her vows and how she deeply loved her husband of 58 years. Dan then went around and had family and friends share stories and memories of Pop, and I decided to share my story of Pop's cookies. Everyone snickered (ha ha). I found out later that afternoon that Karen & Jerry's kids always referred to the Little Debbie Nutty Bars as Uncle Lloyd's cookies and that a neighbor of Grandma & Pop's referred to them as Pop's cookies as well. How fun!

Overall, the trip was nice. It's always good to share special times with family, and especially in celebration of Pop's life, it was good to be together.










































Tatiana took some pictures of Caedmon, Grandma and me in her studio yesterday. Once she gets those pictures together and sends them my way, I'll share them.

Ohio Trip

We drove up to Ohio 2 weeks ago for my Grandpa's funeral and it turned out to be a pretty good trip despite the circumstance. It's usually about an 8+ hour drive and with the stops we needed to make for Caedmon, it took us about 10 hours. Luckily though, he was a great traveler: He ate, played and slept at all his scheduled times and was a great baby! Praise the Lord!

We got up to Ohio late Wednesday night and had a great time catching up with all my aunts. David and Jon didn't arrive until Friday evening. This was the first time, with the exception of my cousin Andrew, that everyone had met Caedmon, so that was a lot of fun and he definitely brought a lot of joy to the house -- especially for Grandma Courtney!

The service for my Grandpa that Saturday was really special. It was tough because it was an open-casket service -- the first one I've been too -- but it was good to see him one last time and I think it brought about good closure. And he looked really good! He was dressed in the tweed blazer that he wore so often and then we put the matching tweed hat that he wore just as much on his chest.

There was a portion of the service that was dedicated for reflection and it was really nice to hear all the great stories about Grandpa -- stories about his childhood as he raised the best and biggest potato crop in Medina county, stories about how he taught his daughters positive work ethic as they plowed the fields and occasionally ran over the little pine trees and tried to tape them back together, stories about how he danced with his grand-daughter (me), stories about how he dearly loved his wife (the Queen of Manor Care), stories of the legacy that he has left behind in OB/GYN practices and care, and the list goes on. We laughed, cried and grinned ear to ear as we heard about the life Grandpa had lived and that memory will live on with me forever, as will the stories and special memories that I had with him! I love you Grandpa!

Here are some other fun pictures from the trip:

Happy Thanksgiving!

We celebrated Thanksgiving this year in Charlotte with Brad's family and my mom. Here are some fun pictures from the weekend.