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North Carolina State Fair in Pictures
Gawking at a turkey The Man-child’s one demand this year: Ferris Wheel Waiting in line, classic Ferris Wheel shot On our way up! Aerial of the fair from the Ferris Wheel Kettle Corn Train Garden Hogway Speedway #18 Rutter Busch These little pigs really wanted the Cheetos! Hogway Speedway
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Boys and the “Wild”
Living in downtown Raleigh, there isn’t much “wild” to be found. My ultimate wilderness escape includes tall trees, cool air and a mountain stream, but when not the mountains, I prefer my wild to be manicured and safe for letting two small boys run around and explore. This makes the J.C. Raulston Arboretum one of my favorite urban escapes. This week the temperatures dipped into the low 90s with cooler mornings. Two mornings in a row I took the boys out to do their thing that my boys do – run, explore, climb, and eat snacks. Our favorite discovery was the pond of croakers. These frogs were singing up a…
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I thought Tornadoes were for Kansas?
Saturday a huge tornado swept through Downtown Raleigh and South East Raleigh. While our friends were hiding in closets and basements, we stupidly were standing at our windows amazed by the blowing trees and looking for cues that it was time to hide. Our neighborhood was missed by about five blocks. Power went out almost immediately and came back on in the middle of the night the next evening. Scooby had only one thing on his mind: light. Can we light the fires? Where is your flashlight? Can I hold it? Where is Daddy’s flashlight? Can I hold it? Do you want to trade flashlights? I thought he’d be excited…
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Lake Benson Park
Yesterday morning we took a short trip out to Garner’s Lake Benson Park for a little lunch and playtime. I’m willing to drive a good twenty minutes to get to a park if it is really great. For a park to make my list of greats, it has to have several features: 1. A nature trail. This doesn’t have to be a formal nature trail, just a path through some trees with a water feature here and there. Bike pumps make great walking sticks, thud phhhh… thud phhhh 2. Shaded play area. Several of my favorite parks are my favorites simply because they either have a section of the playground…
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The Walk of Shame
This morning I went to the farmer’s market to buy the things that I tried to grow. Yes, this is probably a gardener’s greatest walk of shame. However, for $20 I came out with 6 lbs of peaches, 7 ears of silver queen, a pint of blueberries, three squash, two zucchini, and four sweet potatoes. Twenty dollars would not have covered my water bill to grow all of that successfully. Backing up a bit, I first went to school to drop off my time sheet. I had planned on carrying Wookie and letting Scooby walk, but when I went to unload the boys, neither had shoes. Whoops. So I carried…