Da Beach!

I went down to one of my favorite places in the world this past weekend. Kelly and I went to Wrightsville Beach with her parents and sister-one last trip with Jenny before she moves to Bolivia for two years! Thank you Bob and Anne Rodman for blessing us by letting us stay in their condo. On Friday night, we listed our favorite places we have been to. My top 10 places, in no particular order, are: Hilton Head, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the tree stand at TJ's farm in Duplin county, Frontier Ranch in Colorado, Crooked Creek in Colorado, Greenville North Carolina, Jamaica, Lake Tahoe region, and the balcony at Bob and Anne's condo. Here are a few pictures of the scenery:

Members Only,my beautiful wife, and the O's

I haven't updated this thing in so long, its stupid.

Anyway right now there are only 53 days 14 hours 30 mins and 51 secs until ECU football!

Remember Members Only jackets!! Yeah, I had one and thought it would be cool to get patches from different places I have been and have my mom sew them on. "Cool Charlie, cool." -says Kelly. Anyway here are some pictures of my Members Only jacket that I tried on a couple of weeks ago when I found it in my parents closet. Note on the front that I have an ECU patch that I bought in 1987 on a trip to the outer banks when we randomly traveled through Greenville. Kelly and I went to the outer banks a few weeks ago to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary! See her website www.toknowlove.blogspot.com for our ratings of the weekend. Here we are aboard the Down East Rover out of Manteo. We took an awesome sunset cruise in the Albermarle Sound. One of the things I love about being married to my beautiful wife is that she loves to travel different places like I do. We have had many adventures together and I can't wait till the next one.I also like kicking her butt in putt-putt. Final Score: Charlie 42, Kelly 44. (Par was 42) Actually this is the best Kelly has ever played putt-putt and until she blew up on #16 with a 6, she was in the lead and I was worried she was going to beat me. She says that she was the better player that day. I have two words for her: Scoreboard! Ok maybe that's one word.

The last time the Orioles made the playoffs I was a freshmen in college. They lost to the Indians in six games of the AL Division series. Gas was probably still around $1.25. Going to the movies was probably $5.25 and my Members Only jacket was about 7 years from its coolness. Anyway, we may have started a new tradition last year of going to Baltimore with Maddie to watch the O's play. We went up on Friday with my parents and met Jimmy and Barbara in Baltimore. We watched the fireworks on July 4th in the inner harbor and the next day we went to the Orioles vs. Texas game. The O's lost.Maddie got a caricature done at the stadium.Maddie hardly ever sits still anymore so I had to take advantage of this moment. On a side note: I'm getting fat.

New York, New York

So after an eventful day of train travelin' and running out of restaurants, we woke up on Monday morning at our Hotel on the Hudson. This is the view from our hotel! Pretty neat huh? Anyway, I saw these guys fishing on the boardwalk so I went out there to talk to them and see if they had caught anything. While I was talking, one of the guys hooked onto this 30lb. striped bass!! (This picture was taken on the subway! how many times have you seen a guy with fishing rods and a 30pound rockfish on a subway!!)Awesome...who would have thought that I should have brought my rod and reel to NY. During the day on Monday we went to Times Square. Here are a few pictures:Monday night we went to see Phantom of the Opera on Broadway. When we got into the theatre(?) Helga the Barmaid yelled at us to show her our tickets. We thought it was just us but she yelled at everybody. "I need to see your ticket. I work here, show me your ticket!"The next day Wally arrived around 11:30 from Greenville. We went back across the river to New York. While my mom, Wally, Jimmy, and Barbara went to FAO Shwartz, my dad and I went up the Empire State Building. Here are some pictures from up there.After this we went to Yankee Stadium, which was our main purpose for this trip. Here are some pictures from the game.

After the game I told Steinbrenner he now had my permission to tear down the stadium.

Without Kelly there to take my picture I had to do a lot of self portraits!!

Train Travelin'

Kelly and Maddie dropped me off at the train depot in Greensboro. It was Maddie's 1st Birthday! Isn't she cute? The train was a few minutes late but we ended up leaving around 9:45pm. I took along my little black book and wrote notes throughout the day. Here they are, straight from the book:

9:45am--Amtrak train to NYC, sitting next to orange lady. Left G'boro at 9:45am.

9:46am--Orange lady's name is Nyga.

10:30am--In Durham. I'm listening to the Counting Crows new album. I will be sitting next to Nyga for the next 10 hours! Nothing interesting has happened yet.

12:00--I found the dining car! I bought a $4 cheese pizza and a pepsi. There is a lot of room here in the dining car so I think I'll spend some time here. There are two amtrak security guards who are straight off of Reno 911. They are sitting two tables away from me and are talking non-stop about a guy they kicked off the train for smoking--on the train! Seriously one of the guys looks like Donnie from New Kids on the Block. I guess there's not much action on these trains so when something does happen, its exciting to them.

1:24pm--We are in Virginia. 8 hours to go. A guy just sat down at my table. He's going to DC to visit his dad. He said, "Yeah my dad lives down there." I don't why it bothers me but if you're going north, don't say DOWN there.

1:06pm--Ok I was wrong, now we're in Virginia

1:24pm--!!! Reno 911 boy just asked the other guy if allow has two "L"s or one.

1:35pm--Just passed Emporia Country Club--goat ranch!

1:58pm--this old lady in a green coat just sat down at the table next to me and is playing solitaire to pass the time. She has the tiny, tiny Charlie Brown playing cards!

4:52pm--Just learned by looking at her computer screen, that Nyga goes by "Brownsuga". I've been on this train for 7 1/2 hours.

5:06pm--15 min delay, something the Reno boys were working on.

5:22pm--just left the Quantico station and whatever body of water is near here, I'll have to look that up, there are duck blinds everywhere!! I must have counted at least 20 from the train.

Time (confidential)--we are now at Central Station in Washington DC. I saw Marine One (the presidential helicopter) flying over head.

7:57pm--We are now in Delaware. It is freezing on the train and my throat hurts. They don't have any ibuprofren, but I did buy some orange juice.

7:59pm--just took a picture of myself on the train. "Brownsuga" is in the background.

8:03pm--i finally have my own seat in coach class. So there is this girl in bleached blonde hair sitting two rows behind me who has been talking for the past 2 hours on her cell phone. I now know all about this guy named Doug who is dating her roommate. Bleach girl works with Doug and her co-workers want to know if its weird when Doug stays over night. Don't worry, it's not weird, their bedrooms are on opposite sides of the house so she doesn't see him much. I wonder if Doug and Bleach girl carpool?

8:15pm--did I mention my throat hurts? it hurts mostly when I swallow so I started using my empty OJ bottle as a spittoon

9:40pm--I made it to New York!! Time to go see my folks, Jimmy and Barbara.

I found my parents and the first thing I did was get some ibuprofren from my mom! Thanks mom! Then we went to get something to eat. It was about 10:00pm when we got to this restaurant across the street from Madison Square Garden called Lindy's. We waited for a table, sat down looked at the menu, and ran. No, literally we ran! All five of us out the door as quick as possible. They had a revolving door and Jimmy almost knocked Barbara over trying to get out the door. We looked at the menu and the cheapest thing on there was a $19 hamburger!! We then went to this other place that was much more reasonable and good too. While we were eating, my mom realized she left her rain coat in the other restaurant. She said, "oh well, I needed a new one anyway!"

so i skipped the whole month of april but stay tuned...

stay tuned for my trip to new york to watch the yankees at Yankee Stadium(no I don't like the yankees, but I do want to see Yankee Stadium before they tear it down) I'm riding amtrak up there for the first time ever so I'll be sure to have some good stories/pictures to show when I get back. Maddie's first birthday is this sunday so look for pictures from her party coming soon...can you believe how small she was just one year ago! look at those little feet!!

A little road trip...

On Thursday, we just decided kind of last minute to go somewhere. I googled, "places within 2 hours of Greensboro, NC" and Roanoke came up. We left the 'Boro around 2:30 on Friday and headed north on 220. I came across a website for Natural Bridge Va. I had heard about this place before but thought it was probably some cheesy tourist trap, which it kind of is (note the putt-putt course below), but we decided to go anyway. We figured we would go to the bridge on Saturday. We checked into our hotel around 5:00 and decided that since it was so nice (70 degrees and sunny) we would go to the bridge that night instead of Saturday because it was going to be cold on Saturday. We went to the bridge and it is actually pretty dang neat. When we got there, the lady at the desk said, "make sure you stay for our show tonight at 9pm." We had Maddie with us, but decided we would see how she did and decided to stay there until the 9 o'clock show. We sat on these green benches and someone read the Book of Genesis while a light show against the rock bridge was going on. They didn't read the whole book of Genesis, just the story of how God created the earth. While I was sitting there with Kelly and Maddie listening, I was reminded that the God that created the universe loves each one of us. That's a crazy thought, but one that I've been trying to pass along to high school kids for the past 9 years. Next weekend, I'm taking a group of freshmen camping along the Appalachain Trail. It's kind of a transition weekend for these guys as they have been led all year by seniors at Grimsley High School and this will be my first trip with these guys as their leader. This will be my third group of freshmen at Grimsley since moving to Greensboro in 2002. Last week I met with some of my favorite guys in the world--Todd, Chris, and Eric who were in town for Easter. I was their YL leader when they were in school and now they are each getting ready to be seniors in college(wow time flies!). Each of them is involved in Young Life, either as leaders or working at the camps during the summer. Each of them is spreading this same message of how the God that created the universe is crazy about them. Ok back to our trip, we left the natural bridge at 10:00pm. Maddie did great. Kelly and I stopped and grabbed dinner on the way back to our hotel. On Saturday morning we headed to downtown Roanoke. They have a small outdoor market that we checked out and then ate lunch. We then headed to the Roanoke Star! Its the biggest star in the world built by man. Here are a few pictures.

One thing I noticed about Virginia. There is a Zoo on just about every corner. The Natural Bridge Zoo, the Roanoke Star Zoo, the I-81 Zoo, the Dodge Store on US220 Zoo(they do have great corn-dogs), the Zoo that is Martinsville-especially on race weekend. Here's a picture of Maddie with a real bear just outside the Natural Bridge Zoo.

A totally unrelated picture from Easter.

February!

We went to the Boone area earlier this month with our small group. There were 5 couples and 5 kids (4 of them under 9 months). This was the first time Maddie has been to the mountains.

Here she is with one of her best friend's, Anna. Maddie doing her best impersonation of Annie Oakley.
We stopped at App. State to take a few pictures of Maddie at mommy's school. Isn't she the cutest thing...
Push! Maddie Push! Maddie tried to show me that she's really a Pirate, but I told her it was ok for her to like Appalachian 2nd, since her mommy went there, and that she didn't have to knock their sign down. I then told her that we might go to Raleigh or Chapel Hill and she could knock down all the signs she wanted.We had more snow in the 'Boro this past week. Maddie can't figure out why she has no feeling in her fingers right now.
No, its not Ansel Adams, its a Charlie Heritage original out my back door!