Blueberry Ever After

So my favorite author, Wally Lamb, has a new book coming out soon and I can't wait to read it! His last two books She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True were so fascinating I couldn't put them down. Lamb hasn't published any fiction of his own in years, so it has been a long while since I've read something I couldn't put down.

The new book is called The Hour I First Believed and is a fictional work about the Columbine High School shootings that took place in 1999. Check out the link below for a sneak peek. I already have! (Amy, Kathleen, be sure to save a spot for me in Dorkville.)

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This last picture is my favorite, because I am the one who rocked him to sleep. Score!

As many of you know, Jay and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary in September with another Caribbean cruise. This time we dragged Claire & Pete with us to Florida for a week of sailing the ocean blue (when I say dragged, I really mean we invited them along and received a very enthusiastic "Yes, we'll go!").

Our ports of call were Grand Cayman, Roatan (Honduras), Belize City and Cozumel. We had adjoining balcony rooms, smooth water and gorgeous, sunny weather for the most part. Overall, it was pretty fabulous!

I could go on and on about all the activities we did between the kayaking, snorkeling, and playing with parrots and monkeys, so I think I will just leave you with some pictures instead of all the details:

Claire & Pete on the balcony as we left Tampa:

Sailing under the Tampa Bay bridge:

Heather & Jay at Seven Mile Beach, Grand Cayman:

The rain clouds that finally passed over us and headed toward the ship:

More of Seven Mile Beach:

Arriving in Roatan, Honduras:

Our ship from the shore in Belize. It was a long tender to shore!

Jay's parents arrived for a visit on September 9th and we have been having lots of fun with them. In fact, we've hardly been in North Carolina since they've arrived, we have taken them so many new places! The first weekend they were in town we took a road trip up to Washington DC. After checking into our hotel, we made a beeline for the White House, which was just a half mile away. Unfortunately it was a bit soggy out, but we didn't mind, because we were on holiday!

After checking out the White House we headed for the National Mall to view the monuments, and on the way we saw Air Force One landing at the White House. It was pretty cool, because there were actually 3 helicopters and 2 of them were decoys that didn't actually land. They came in one right after the other and all went different directions. That is not something you see everyday! After waving to George in the copter, we walked all the way to the Washington National Monument, then crossed over and saw the new WWII Memorial, which is beautiful and new since the last time I visited DC. We also took in the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam War Memorial before heading to the hotel for happy hour and a yummy pasta dinner.

On Saturday we bought trolley tickets and started the day with a trip to the National Cathedral. It is either the 5th or 6th largest cathedral in the world (we got conflicting reports on that) and it is stunning. We hadn't intended to see the cathedral but it came highly recommended by our hotel concierge, and we were really pleased we took the ride out to see it in the end. After the cathedral, we went down embassy row, through Georgetown and stopped off at the Smithsonian museums, where we hit the Air & Space Museum as well as the Natural History Museum. Both were great! Again we took advantage of the complimentary happy hour and then went for dinner at a small brewery just around the corner from the hotel.

Sunday we had breakfast and planned an alternate route out of the city due to a triathlon that was taking place that day. Once we made it through the race traffic, we made one final stop at Arlington Cemetary. I had never been before so I was excited to see it, at least until we got out of our air conditioned vehicle and into the sweltering 95 degree heat. We did manage to see JFK's gravesite and the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier before melting into the pavement. At that point we decided to carry on home, but I think we managed to squeeze in quite a lot in just 2 days! Claire and Pete seemed pleased with the weekend, which was all we had hoped for anyway.

Here are some pictures from the weekend. Enjoy!