Sleeping Beauty

10 days old and looking so adorable in her octopus outfit!

Emerald Isle, Good Friends and Four Cool Canines!

This past weekend Bryan and I stayed at Emerald Isle with our good friends Catherine and David. We had a great time and so did all of the dogs! You just can't beat time at the beach. I swear my blood pressure goes down as soon as we cross the bridge onto the island.

Here is Hannah (11 years old) taking it easy until it's time to play on the beach.

Jonah (16 months old) had a blast and is a certified beach bum now.

Scout (8 years old) is a salty dog at heart and an all-around great Lab!

And the newest member of the pack is cutie pie Tink, short for Tinkerbell (8 months old).

Jonah and Tink are now best buds and chased eachother nonstop!

They are so cute together and perfect playmates because they have the same high energy level.

On Saturday afternoon we took the boat out to a little island and went swimming.

The water was so warm and the fish were biting...seriously, the fish were chomping on us!

WARNING TO ALL VISITORS IN THE AREA: Beware of attack minnows

We did manage however to get in some much needed relaxation.

Catherine and I were so happy to be out in the sun and enjoying eachother's company

Long-time friends, David and Bryan, drove us around for a little sight seeing

Catherine and David got this boat last summer and it is very nice!

I took this photo shortly before the minnow attacks started. I'm not kidding about the fish.

Those little buggers left bite marks on me! I yelped more than a few times when they bit me.

(Yes, I'm probably a wuss)

Bryan, did you get taller again??

Aren't they cute together?

What a sunset!

We stayed out on the water until sunset and then went back to the trailer and

cooked up some yummy homemade shrimp and grits!

Catherine got in some cuddling with Tink

and so did David

Around lunchtime on Sunday we took the dogs to the beach for a little swim.

They all had a great time running on the beach and crashing through the waves.



Not sure what was happening here, but I think Jonah was chasing Tink

(he obviously forgot he was on a leash!)

Scout and Hannah, by far the calmest dogs in the pack.

Tink was so cute to watch running through the sand,

with her long floppy ears waving in the wind.

Scout and his daddy.

Tink went swimming in the ocean for the first time and did great!

She kept up with the "big dogs" and we were all so proud of her.

I rode back to Raleigh Sunday evening with Catherine and David.

On the way home an exhausted Scout and Hannah curled up next to eachother in the back seat.

Awwww!!!

Memorial Day Weekend in Wrightsville Beach

Bryan and I were lucky enough to be invited to fish with some friends in Wilmington on Memorial Day Weekend. We stayed on their boat, which was absolutely beautiful!

This was the view we woke up to every morning from the boat dock. Pretty nice, huh?

Wrightsville Beach

We fished for two days and caught a white marlin, a black fin tuna (yummers!) and 8 mahi.

Here is a mahi in the water as we were getting it to the boat.

Bryan wrested the mahi as we brought them in the boat and loaded them into the fish box...not an easy task because these fish are incredibly strong and can easily injure

you if you don't get control of them quickly.

Dinner!

The view from the back of the boat as we were cruising back in after a long day

of fishing the Gulf Stream

Say "cheese"!

So after an exhausting weekend, we packed up the truck and headed back to Raleigh on Memorial Day. No sooner had we gotten on the highway before the traffic came to a dead stop because of a bad traffic accident. After sitting on I-40 for over an hour, the road finally opened back up again and then Bryan's truck started acting up. For fear of his truck dying completely on the side of the highway, we decided to park it at a gas station in Warsaw (A.K.A. the middle of nowhere) and have Bryan's dad pick us up and bring us back to Raleigh.

By this time it was 10:30pm and we were both exhausted!

While we waited for a ride home, we had a dinner at the

Arbys/Hess/Truck Plaza/Car Wash/Mini-Mart, which was lovely!

We didn't get back to Raleigh until 2am but at least we got home safely! Ahh, memories! :)

Salem is Born

Salem Lane Mauldin was born on Wednesday, June 3rd at 3:01am. She weighed 7 pounds, 5 ounces and was 21 inches long. She has strawberry blonde hair and dark blue-grey eyes. We are all so happy that she arrived into this world healthy. I can't wait to watch her grow up!

The proud grandmother (Nana) and new mom

Grandma Diane (Gammie) made the treck from Hendersonville to see Salem

Aunt Carol was so happy that Salem was finally here!

Holding my baby sister's baby- still such a weird concept to me!

Salem's great-grandmother Mimi was brought to tears when she first got to hold her.

Lake Mattamuskeet

For years, Bryan has told me all about the waterfowl that travel from all over the Western hemisphere to winter at Lake Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge. Last winter we finally took a day trip down there to check it all out. I was amazed to see thousands upon thousands of ducks, swans and geese of all types and colors. It was truly a memorable experience and we can't wait to go back and take Jonah with us next time.

Hannah was in complete awe of all the waterfowl she could see and hear. She was literally shaking with excitement when we arrived. I'm guessing what she was really thinking was, "Umm, I bet they taste like chicken!".

After riding around on the refuge for a while, we saw people with professional cameras and monster long-range lenses taking photos and they were drawing quite a crowd. I asked Bryan what in the world they were looking at and he said, "probably that gigantic bald eagle right in front of you!". Holy cow! My whole life I had wanted to see a bald eagle and there one was, right in front of me, and I didn't even see the darn thing! Blame it on a blonde moment I guess :) It was so beautiful and much much bigger than I had expected.

The refuge featured a boardwalk that went all though a cypress forest. Hannah enjoyed running through it and I really loved checking out the tall trees and unusual swamp plants. It was all good until we saw fresh bear tracks and then I was really to high tail it back to the truck!

Bryan scoping out all the ducks. He is incredibly good at identifying all of the waterfowl. He can even tell you what they sound like, what they eat, where they live, how they fly, etc. He's like a waterfowl encyclopedia!

The sunset over the refuge was very peaceful and we saw wave after wave of waterfowl flying in formation heading for a place to sleep for the night.