Category: Uncategorized

3 go flying


This weekend we went to the local theme park, it was just over 2 and a half hours away, but that’s pretty local to most Americans, except probably New Yorkers who seem to be a bit like Londoners who generally think, that ‘The West Country’ is whatever comes after Hammersmith… but anyway at the park there is what you could probably call a giant swing. There is an enourmous arch, from which a pair of steel cables hang down. A third cable is connected to a pilon, about 150 ft back, and 150 ft high. You each step into an oversized bib, the sort of thing that hang-gliders use (apparently). Anyhow everyone gets hooked together, and then winched up the pilon. Then one of the ‘flyers’ pulls the ripcord and you swoop down.. The scariest part is immediately after the cord is pulled, and before there is any tension in the swing cables. At that point you are in a very short and unexpected freefall before accelerating towards the ground at around 60 mph. We have a video on youtube here

New house? Slight return.

So, we decided against buying the ‘giant shed’ for one thing I think the sellers have an unrealistic expectation of the price (since obviously I am an expert in these matters) any how we have made an offer on this place (below) and have had that offer accepted. I was there this morning with the house inspectors, and there were only a few very minor issues. Next up is the air-conditioning guy and then finally Mr. Termite. I haven’t heard anything bad from the mortgage broker so I am assuming all is well there.


The weekend is finally here, and this is the ideal weekend – homemade cake and great coffee, add the newspaper and that’s a great weekend at home. Alas this was last weekend, and now I’m full of cold and feeling sorry for myself, we’ve been to see a different house and decided to go for that one instead, yesterdays great weather has turned to showers, and ~did I mention I was feeling sorry for myself?

My Easter Weekend

This is what we did this weekend, so far. On Friday I went to Bouncing Bulldogs all day because it was a teacher workday and Coach says I am going to join the team in the Fall but unfortunately training is at 6am. Tomorrow (Mon 24th) I am going to Bouncing Bulldogs 8-12, and on Tues, Wed, Thurs and Fri because I’m on Spring Break from school, so by the end of the week I’ll be even better at jump rope.
Yesterday we went to Weaver Street Market, it’s a supermarket and a cafe in the next town (Ruth edit: organic, green, co-operative type affair beloved of hippies and hula hoopers – home of the peanut butter machine, and Gary’s favourite supermarket – he’s considering joining the co-operative)

Today (Easter Sunday) me and my Dad went on an easter egg hunt around our house. Mum told us where to start, and we had to read the clue on the piece of paper that we found. With each clue there was an easter egg. The eggs had either m&m’s, Quality Street, or Cadbury Mini Eggs.

In the pictures below you can see us in our pajamas looking for clues in the postbox at the bottom of our drive. It was still pretty early!


Click on the speach bubble to see our captions.

Power off Wednesdays

Gary and I had been independently reading about folk over the interweb that had been choosing to turn off the TV, stereo and more importantly their computers once a week to interact perhaps more wholesomely with their family and friends. We procrastinated less than usual and decided to give it a go. The first week was unplanned and as such, less fun than we hoped.

This is what we chose to do on our second week of this social experiment, Erin chose this experiment from a book our good friends the King family gave to her.

I advise you to try a power off day, but encourage you to plan ahead of time what you might do together, it works better for our family or procrastinators that way anyway.

Spring has sprung.

Today we watched the tarheels win the ACC basketball tournament. Tarheels is our team in Chapel Hill. We’ve been to see loads of games but unfortunately the college basketball season is nearly over.

After the game we went down to the park for Erin to practice doing monkey bars and Erin is now learning how to try and do monkey bars backwards. We took 114 photos in an hour at the park.

We found a hole what we thought looked like nest and we pretended that we were laying a soccer ball for an egg. We thought it was pretty funny, but perhaps you had to be there!

After that, we came home and played nerf-tag. Which is a game where two players can play and you have to wear this jacket and goggles so you don’t get hit because it hurts when you get hit.

Posted by Erin.