Now that we've gotten the excuses out of the way we can finally blog about everything that we've done in the past two months out here in North Carolina.
We visited the site of the largest Confederate surrender during the Civil War (Bennett Place). It's about five minutes from our place. For all the history buffs in the family this alone should be sufficient reason to want to come and visit us.
We also joined Chad's law school classmates for a Durham Bulls baseball game. We tried to sit next to the more mature students as opposed to the ones who were drunk by the 4th inning. Overall I think we succeeded.
Any time a home run is hit by the home team the Bull on the left field wall snorts smoke out his nose while his eyes light up red and his tail goes up and down. Pretty cool!
And since we went on a Friday night there were fireworks.
In celebration of our Anniversary we decided to get some Tacos at Durham's famous "La Vaquita" restaurant followed by a visit to the Duke Homestead. The basic takeaways are that tacos al pastor can be just as delicious in NC as they are in Mexico, the Dukes were pretty doggone wealthy, the moniker "bullpen" comes from the place where Durham Bulls' pitchers used to warm up, there are still some bitter feelings about the fact that Durham's official nickname is now "The City of Medicine" rather than "The Bull City" (which was in reference to Duke's Bull Durham tobacco line), and baseball cards can be partially attributed to a Methodist minister's request for a change away from the scantily clad ladies the Dukes were putting in cigarette packages.
Chad had to go to school on the 4th of July, but he did get the 6th off so we packed up and headed to Masonboro Island for an overnight beach camping excursion. Chad's law school buddy, Robert, came with us. The water was warm and the island was pretty much empty except for us. Pregnant Emily could not get to sleep in our hot tent although Chad slept like a baby. The next morning both Robert and Emily were anxious for the ferry to come pick us all up so we wouldn't have to be on the island any longer. Chad likes to point out the irony of the fact that he wasn't expecting to enjoy the trip at all and ended up having the best time out of all of us.
This was early on in Emily's re-reading of the Harry Potter series. She's currently on the last book.
Since the beach wasn't all Emily hoped for, we decided to visit the largest population of lemurs outside of Madagascar. This is also just down the street from us at the Duke Lemur Center. This should be enough to convince all of our nieces and nephews to come see us because, as we all know, lemurs are what monkeys want to be when they grow up.
In an attempt to get ready for Lincoln's birth and to remove any lingering smell of smoke that the Murphy's Oil Soap didn't get out, we recently repainted a dresser we found on craigslist as well as Chad's ugly nightstand. Sorry we don't have any before pics.
We also finally bought our fishing licenses (and Chad went through the fiasco that is getting a new NC driver's license, but that story is for another time and place). Unfortunately we didn't catch a single thing, although we saw some very large fish surface. When a snake came swimming across the lake towards us Emily decided it was time to call it quits.
Friday we enjoyed a trip to Raleigh to attend the temple and also to see a bunch of Raleigh's free museums. We went to the Museum of Art, the Museum of Life and Science with its accompanying research center, and the Museum of History.
This one's for Ruth.
Yep, Emily's chillin' with some tobacco plants.
And if all the above wasn't enough to convince you that North Carolina is fantastic and you should all come pay us a visit, the following prego-pics should serve as a reminder that within a month we hope to have the cutest little resident of this Southern State. If lemurs, baseball, Civil War history, warm ocean beaches, or museums aren't your thing, we're confident little Lincoln will be.
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