Ok . . . now we're going to bring us up to date. After we flew out here to Virginia we went to the Outer Banks in North Carolina for a week. It was a lot of fun. Brittany's brother Paul flew out and her sister and parents already live here, so everyone was at the beach together. Brittany's siblings enjoyed meeting Juliette, and Juliette's grandparents enjoyed playing with her again (they had both met her in the weeks after she was born). The end result of this was that Brittany and I actually got quite a bit of time on the beach by ourselves, seeing as there were lots of willing babysitters.
The beach, by the way, is an east coast beach, not a west coast beach. This means that it's narrow, there are lots of people on it, and those people actually wear bathing suits and get in the water, instead of just rolling up their jeans and building sand castles (although, being a true Oregonian I did build a sand castle). I have never actually played in the ocean before, and I had fun. Juliette had also never played in the ocean, so we felt obligated to introduce her. She was already a bit wary when we got to the beach due to the wind and sun, but she really started screaming when the water hit her feet. It was a good experience. Why, by the way, do parents feel like they have to do things like that, even though their kids obviously don't care and don't enjoy it? I probably asked myself that very question as a child, and yet here I am, continuing the legacy.
One of the highlights of the trip for me was nearly getting bitten by a black widow. The day we arrived at the beach house I perused the equipment which was stored under the house (all the houses are on stilts) and immediately thought "I bet this is the kind of place where black widows love to hang out." This did not stop me, however, from slinging a beach umbrella over my shoulder the next day and taking it down to the beach. I arrived at the beach, stuck the umbrella in the ground and set some other stuff up before going to open it. As I was about to open it, a black spider the size of a quarter fell out of the umbrella onto the hot sand. It didn't take long to see the red hourglass on its underside. In retrospect I should have caught it in a jar or taken a picture of it, but instead I squished it between my flip-flops and threw it up onto a dune where I didn't think anyone would step on it. Ah well . . . opportunity lost. Actually, while I wasn't that startled at the time, when I think back on it, I'm very grateful it didn't bite me. I mean, if I'd stuck my hand up the umbrella shaft to open it while the spider was still in there . . . Anyway, you can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I am O-K.
But the beach was great. We read, we swam, we just plain sat around. It was a good relaxing week. Since then we've been scrambling to get things in order for school to start on the fifth. That has included moving all of our stuff off the ABF truck into storage (in 95 degree heat with humidity), getting loan money figured out and getting on health insurance. It's been stressful, but this is life, I suppose. We're healthy (although we've all had colds . . . I guess you could say we're getting healthier) and we're happy. We have a beautiful baby and life is good. We are still accepting donations, however.
