Yes I'm Goin' to Carolina in My Mind

So we kind of had a surprise vacation to North Carolina. The company Andrew's working for this summer has an office in Charlotte, NC so they sent him down to meet with some people for the project he's working on. Andrew's parents live about 3 hours from Charlotte in Wilmington so Eleanor and I decided to tag along and make a vacay out of it.

Andrew had to be in the Charlotte office Monday-Friday, so we just hung out in the hotel and at the pool while he was at work. Charlotte isn't really a sightseeing kind of place. It's really nice and clean and pretty, just nothing really touristy to see so I'm sorry to say I don't have any pictures from our time in Charlotte :( Actually, I probably only took like 10 pictures our whole trip. Ooops. Luckily Pam took a bunch, so I've stolen some of hers

We spent the weekend before and after in Wilmington with Andrew's parents. We got in on the 4th of July. We went to Taco Bell and then to a fireworks show on the beach. Eleanor loved the fireworks and I was in heaven because they had a snoball stand there. Yumm.

Here's Eleanor on our plane ride there. Luckily she did really well.

Here we are at Pam and Doug's favorite restaurant...Taco Bell!


At the fireworks show. Eleanor was very sleep deprived by this point.


After our week in Charlotte we headed back to Wilmington. Here's Eleanor with Grandma Pam.

On Saturday we did some sightseeing. First, Grandpa Doug wanted to take Eleanor for a walk where he does his running so we went to Greenfield Lake and walked around for a little while.



We even saw an alligator

Then we headed to downtown Wilmington and walked around and looked for a place to have lunch.



Then we went on a boat ride down Cape Fear River. This is an elevator bridge...the whole middle part lifts up like an elevator to let ships through. Cool, huh?

USS North Carolina

Eleanor was so tired she was able to fall asleep on the boat ride.

Grandma Pam standing in front of our boat, Henrietta II

Here's Eleanor before church on Sunday

After church

Returning our rental car...Does this look like a Pontiac G6 or similar?? I don't think so!

Well we were supposed to fly home on Monday night but our flight kept getting delayed until finally it was cancelled so they booked us on a flight Tuesday afternoon. Well when we got to the airport on Tuesday, the flight was overbooked so they were looking for people to get bumped to a later flight. We decided to do it to get some free vouchers so they booked us on a flight for 6:00 PM. That gave us time to go to the beach for about 2 hours. I wish we would have known about all these delays so we could have spent like a whole day at the beach! Well when we got back to the airport our flight was delayed so we didn't end up leaving until like 8 PM. That made us miss our connecting flight in Atlanta by like 15 minutes so they gave us a hotel voucher to stay in Atlanta that night and then we got put on a flight the next morning. So we finally made it home on Wednesday! What a mess!

Here's a video of Eleanor crawling around the airport. She was loving all the space to roam around!

In other news, here's a video of Eleanor pushing her little walker. She's getting pretty good at walking with help. Apparently I walked at 7 months old, so we'll see how much longer it takes Eleanor. I have a feeling the day she learns to walk will also be the day she learns to run!!