Day 2

We wake up with the sun. Molly and Stella don't appreciate sleeping in yet. But that's ok, we need to be on the road by 9.  Get dressed and load up the car. Elijah helps me and we head down to the breakfast, the girls and grandma and grandpa meet us down there.

The food was good, tons of selections, nice big room, with good sized tables. Overall it was a pretty good breakfast. We say temporary good byes to Kristina's parents as they are not going to drive with us and we hit the road a bit early.  The first stop is the NC Zoo.


This is a BIG walking Zoo. Some of the animals have a ton of room to live in.  We only got to do 1/2 of it.  They had North American side and African side. We did the African side as it also had Dinosaurs with it.

One for each of them.

Lemurs are cool I want one.

Stella was very concerned that this gorilla was drinking mud..

A little path game.

Our attempt at a family photo

We stop for lunch at the cafe. It was pretty busy and the line was long enough that I had to take a pic of the menu so we could decide what to get.

The lunch was meh, but better then starving. We finish up and head to the dinos.

Yummy tastes like human.

Monkey see

Monkey do.

"Can we keep him?"

A Long Neck

Molly was amazed and did not want to leave him.

Umm E.. Look out behind you.

Gotcha!

Site where you could dig and keep anything you found.

Big Girl likes to move dirt

Big E found many shark teeth and other small fossils.

Not quite a slide but who's asking.

Many animals had acres to roam "free" in.

Stella loves to give kisses.

Thru the looking glass.

On the way out we hit the gift shop. Elijah got a fossil rock you have to dig bones out off. He made a nice amount of dust in the back seat!  Stella got a back pack with doctor tools. Played with it for quite a while. See vid. And little Smolls got a green monkey.

So we head back to car, pretty much around 2:30. And hit the road..  Everyone was pretty exhausted, as I hoped they would be, and there was a good amount of peace.

Sleep, my precious sleep...

Elijah digging out his mini dino bones from a rock.

"Its ok if you giggle this will only tickle a little" For about 1 hour.

"Time fo hekup"..

At this point our next stop is to be T-Roy's for Dinner. It is about 1 hour from our final destination, but thought it would be later when we got there.  However we are a bit ahead of schedule so I call an audible and decide to go straight to the hotel. Mostly this worked out, but we got caught up in the tourist traffic, and the last 30 mins too a bit over an hour.

Anyway we arrive at the hotel around 5:30. Austin greets us at the gate with our key card.  We park and unload the car for the last time for a week or so.  Austin helps out and we make short work of it. Although at one point the dolly ran off, with a load of luggage,  and narrowly missed hitting another car by less then a foot.  Opps...

We take a quick tour of the place we will be staying with 10  people for a week. And begin getting our room setup.  We get the Master bedroom.  Mom and Dad get one of the double beds, and Ted Brooke, Austin and Elijah share the other double bed and the pull out couch.

The first rule to be broken was no toys on the balcony. That lasted about 30 mins. It wasn't until about day 6 that something got tossed over.

Nice View!

 12 Floors up

While everyone is getting settled, we try to settle on dinner. Pizza it is and it can be delivered. So we order it and keep unpacking while waiting for it. It comes pretty much after most of are done. We eat. At this point it is apparent the kitchen is going to be problematic. It is pretty small and trying to get 10 people in and out is going to take some juggling, which I'm sure will lead to some temper flare-ups. But I bet we will manage.

After we eat, Kristina, Austin, Ted and Dorothy head to the Food Lion to get stuff for the week.   They are gone for 2 hours. When they came back they had alot!

Ted really likes pork.  Especially if it is on sale or he has a coupon.

I start the normal, if that is possible in a strange hotel, bed time routine. Watch a bit of TV. Kristina's Touch Screen Acer computer works nicely hooking up to the tv and allowing the girls to get their Doc fix. Then get PJs on, and read them a book.

Ok that all went smoothly but once I left the room after putting Molly in her crib and Stells in our bed, Molly cried for a bit. I stayed strong and let her be. After about 10-15 mins all was quiet and they were both fast asleep.

I take the time for a quick walk about around the campus. Overall it is nice. Well kept, big, fairly easy access to everything and alot of different things to do.  I plan out a few things in my head we can do.

Finally they get back, we unload the groceries and try to plan out who is going to cook what, when.

It is getting late (11ish) and I try to explain to everyone that the early birds will be getting up in about 7 hours and I can only hold them off for a bit. This scares Ted a bit and he heads off to bed. The rest of us follow suit.

Sleep....
Kick, damn stella move over...
Sleep....
Whack!  Uggg..
Sleep..
Oh no is that the sun.
Slee..
Daddy.......