Sunburn Therapy

Meet my new best friends!

Stupid Sunburn!

Myrtle Beach

On Monday, a girl (well I guess she's a woman, but woman sounds so old and she is not!) I met at church a couple of weeks ago phoned me and asked me if I would be interested in going to Myrtle Beach with her and her two kids. She wanted to meet some friends down there, and her husband couldn't take time off from work. She knew that she couldn't do the trip alone, and thought I would like to come. I said "Sure! Why not?" It was only later that I realised I had spent less than 2 hours with this person, and we were about to spend 3 days together. Yikes! Thankfully we got along really well. We left at 3am; me, her, a 3 year old, a 1 year old, and a Honda Pilot packed to the brim! Eight hours later, we were at the beach! It was so much fun! We stayed in a great hotel right on the beach, and we spent as much time as we possibly could on the beach. I have the sunburn to prove it (How in the world could I forget to put sunscreen on my thighs? Seriously! I lathered up below my knees, but apparently missed the large mass above them!)

I don't have a lot of pictures because I thought my camera had broken. Every time I tried to turn it on, nothing would come up on the screen. Turns out, it wasn't broken. I had somehow turned off the screen. I'm an idiot. It took husband less than 2 minutes to figure it out once I got home! It's all good though. I told Husband that we have to go back to Myrtle Beach for a vacation! I can take more pictures then!

Oh how I have missed the beach! Living in Massachusetts, I got spoiled because I lived so close to so many beaches. This is the first beach I've been to in two years!

We went to this place Broadway at the Beach (or something like that). It has a bunch of restaurants and shops. It also has amusement park rides. This is the sun setting over the walkway.


The view from our balcony. I feel asleep to the sound of the waves. It was magical!

Oh no! Where's my bed? It's in the wall! I have always wanted to sleep on one of these beds! I think they are so cool! So, even though the couch had a pull-out bed, I chose to sleep on this. Cross that off my bucket list.

If family reunions were planned by a 4 year old...

Today I was chatting with my brother about options for a family reunion. My sister-in-law suggested we all save up and go somewhere fun, like Jamaica, in 10 years. I said I thought that sounded like a great idea. My 4 year old nephew, however, had his own plan. He said he didn't want to go to Jamaica. He wants to go to Chuck E Cheese! Sounds like a great family reunion spot to me!

Meow!

Meet Charlie. He is stray cat that has taken a fancy to hanging around outside our place (It could be because we feed him.) We also think Charlie might be a girl, but we can't get close enough to tell. He showed up Monday morning, looking so sad and hungry. So we got some cat food and fed him (or her). Now, every morning Charlie shows up about 5 minutes after I open the door to let the sunlight in (Don't worry, we have a glass door that keeps the cat out).

On Tuesday morning, another cat showed up. We named him Smokey. I know a gray cat named Smokey, how original. We can't determine if Smokey is a stray or not, but he shows up each morning and eats the food we put out. Tuesday afternoon brought two more cats to our door. At this point I was a bit concerned about what the neighbours would think, but neither cat was a stray and we haven't seen them since.


Charlie has spent the last two days curled up on the mat on our front step. He runs away when we go outside, and he won't let us touch him. But he has warmed up to me and actually got close enough to smell my hand a couple of times. Charlie won't go near Husband at all, so Husband says he and Charlie are not friends! I would love to take Charlie in, but we aren't allowed to have pets in our place. So instead we feed him and try to make friends. As one of our good friends said about feeding strays "It is the thing to do, when God sends you a cat."

As a side note, the local animal shelter offers free spay and neuter clinics for strays. Once Charlie has warmed up to me enough, I will trap him and take him to the shelter to get the deed done. I believe in being a responsible stray cat feeder!

Virginia!

We made it to Virginia safe and sound. We left Central Texas 2 Saturdays ago at 12:30pm and pulled up to our new home in Virginia exactly 72 hours later. Not going to lie here folks; the drive was loooooooong. We drove in separate cars, so it was a lonely 1400 miles open road. Thankfully we each had a copy of John Grisham's book The Confession on Cd, and that helped the time fly by. By the way, did you know that you can rent books on Cd from Cracker Barrel for $3.50/week? They have a number of new releases and the best part is you can return the Cd's to any Cracker Barrel location. Perfect for a one way trip to Virginia. We only encountered one small problem on the drive. On our second day, it started to rain hard. We had to pull off the road for about 30 minutes because we could not see anything! When we got back on the road, it was slow going for awhile; 40 miles was the top speed. But other than that, we had great weather and made pretty good time. At one point we drove past a town that had been hit by the tornadoes that struck the South a couple of weeks ago. The wreckage was unbelievable: trees uprooted, buildings were piles of wood, tractor trailers flipped over. I definitely do not want to be anywhere near a tornado!

We have settled in nicely here. Of course we still have boxes to unpack, but give us another week and there won't be a box in sight (at least I am hoping for that!). We had our first "visitors" on Friday, when a swarm of bees decided to take up residence outside our upstairs bathroom. Then they decided to see what it was like on the inside! We had about 40 honey bees come into our place over a 2 hour period! Husband killed each one with a fly swatter while I started repacking our belongings! If the bees were staying, I was out of there! Eventually, an exterminator came and killed the bees, so we get to stay! Hooray! Stupid bees!


We are enjoying Virginia so far. The weather is beautiful! It is about 20 degrees cooler than Texas here! I love being able to go outside in the afternoon and not sweat too death. I'm told that it gets humid here in the summer, but as long as we don't have 70 days of over 100 degrees, I'm okay with humidity!

Gary is all ready to head to Virginia! He was supposed to keep me company, but he wasn't very good at keeping up his end of the conversation!