I don't miss scraping the windshield

I recently visited Dave and Jodi at their new home in Maryland and had quite a surprise when the fluffy white stuff started piling up!  My car has never seen snow, since she was purchased in Charleston, moved to Naples, and now lives here at the beach.  Just had to take a picture!  No snow here in OBX, although its cold enough, brrrrr!!!

Santa Paws

Our pups are ready for Santa Paws to visit tonight! Maverick makes a fine-looking reindeer and Sheba is mischevious enough to be a perfect elf. They are so excited to be in Atlanta with their furry friends. Ten stockings for 5 people and 5 dogs, they are quite content!

Light Alert!

This house won the Today Show's contest in 2005 and has continued to out-do themselves every year. And its only a few miles from our house! We checked it out the other night and I kept thinking how much prettier would it be with a blanket of fluffy white snow, which the weathermen are predicting for this weekend!

Ben gives a tour- on youtube!

Cozy Fireplace

Now that its starting to get chilly at night, we cranked up the fireplace and the whole family got cozy in the living room.  And the best part is that they are ceramic logs so there's no mess!  Just flip the switch on the wall and viola, warmth :)

Hurricane and Nor'easter

Hurricane Ida came up the coast as a nor'easter formed offshore and created quite a mess on the Outer Banks.  Schools were closed during the 75mph winds and Fortunately for us, we headed to Pennsylvania half-way through so we missed the worst of it and the messy cleanup.  Our house was fine but there was a lot of beach erosion and the roads were closed in a lot of places for up to a week after the storm.  See the newspaper website of some dramatic photos here.  A local photographer, Michael Halminski, has posted these (and more) photos on his blog: http://photoblog.michaelhalminski.com/

The only road through Hatteras Island was closed for over a week!

 

The sandbags used to be under a huge dune between the ocean and the road in Rodanthe.

 

Here is a closeup of the Nights in Rodanthe house- owners have 10 days to remove it.

Cottage no more in Kill Devil Hills

Streets of Kill Devil Hills

Streets in Kitty Hawk

That's Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel taking a picture of this house in Nags Head.

Chris-giving in Pennsylvania

The time seems to be really flying by, just like always, but especially since we already celebrated both Thanksgiving and Christmas, hence Chris-giving.  Working in the same office means that taking vacation at the same time can be tough, so we've already been to PA and back since the first few weeks of November are on the slow side for visitors.

This was Sheba's first visit to PA and boy did she love it!  The weather was absolutely gorgeous, sunny and 60's, which is quite surprising for November.  Both dogs loved to run through the fallen leaves, so pretty.  We went birding at Presque Isle, of course, and did some shopping, too.  Taking the dogs to the farm was an experience- I'm pretty sure Sheba has never been close to a cow before, haha, because one almost licked her on the head just like they did Maverick last year.  He knew what to expect this year and didn't get within reach this time!  They both had a lovely time running around, chasing kitty-cats, and sniffing everything in sight.  Maverick particularly liked the free-roaming chicken, maybe because he loves birds so much.

We had a lovely dinner and saw lots of family.  Ben learned how to clean, stuff, and roast a turkey!  I really made out at our gift-giving: new cookbooks, fancy food processor, silicone muffin cups, fuzzy socks, good books and movies, and a Sam's Club membership!  Thanks, everyone, for making our visit so great :)

two tired dogs

a nice day at the beach makes the pups sleep so good at night

Portsmouth Island

I visited Historic Portsmouth Island this weekend- WOW!  It was really incredible.  The island is only accessible by private ferry, just six miles from Ocracoke Island.  It is part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore.

So the little village was first settled in 1753 and people made their living in the shipping industry- as ships came from Europe and Africa, they stopped at Portsmouth Island and dropped off merchandise to lighten their loads before sailing across Pamlico Sound to the mainland.  By 1860, the population peaked at 685 residents on this little sandbar.  A variety of events caused the residents to abandon the island- the Civil War, hurricanes, and the biggest one was that the shipping commerce was diverted northward as deeper inlets opened through Ocracoke and Hatteras Islands.  In 1956, only 17 people remained on the island.  The last two residents moved away in 1971 and the National Park Service took ownership and currently maintains the island and the 20 remaining structures.

I toured the island with the care-taker, which was really fascinating.  He has been taking care of Portsmouth Island village for 20 years and had lots of stories about hurricanes, reunions with descendants, and ghosts!  We walked and toured all of the buildings, including the school house, church, and post office.  We climbed the cupola of the life saving station and could see the ocean and the entire village.  The residents here kept free-roaming livestock, grew peaches and figs, fished, shrimped, and clammed for food.  They built cisterns for water and used oil lamps and pot-belly stoves without electricity.  The mailboat delivered daily and the Sears Robuck catalog was where they ordered everything from paint to ammo to kit-houses.

high water lines from hurricanes

method of refrigeration

church and two residential homes

post office

view back towards Ocracoke Island from top of life saving station

Scooby Doo!

Maverick was the highlight of the halloween party!  We made him a little tag for his collar with an "SD" on it and used hair spray to make some big black spots.  He was so darned cute!  Ben made a great Shaggy and I dressed as Daphne, sans the red hair. 

Poor Sheba, we tried to make her a "Shebra" as in Sheba-zebra, but she looked more like a skeleton, haha.  Both doggies were loving all of the attention, though, and are about to go to ocean to swim off the paint!  Scooby Snacks were enjoyed by all the pups at the party, it was very cute.

bats and ghost crabs, oh my!

As part of the halloween festival at work, Ben and I dressed up and manned stations with crafts and activities for the kiddies.  Ben made one cute ghost crab let me tell ya!  Our costumes were hand-made by a Corolla resident and donated to the center.

My station was to make "bat finger puppets" which turned out to be so cute- families made them in different sizes and rode the haunted hay ride with the bats on their fingers.  Unfortunately, though, neither Ben nor myself won the pumpkin carving contest- there were some really creative carvings out there!  Now we're on to a halloween party tonight- complete with costumes for two people and two dogs.  Stay tuned for pictures!

Pumpkin Carving

Getting into the Halloween spirit, Ben and I carved pumpkins last night!  He made an owl and mine is a humpback whale.  We had a great time talking about the methods we used as kids and laughing about how difficult it actually is to get a sharp knife through a pumpkin!  The one that I carved I actually grew and it turned out to have the thickest skin I've ever seen on a pumpkin (much more difficult to cut through!)- we think it may be a "pie pumpkin" because it didn't have many seeds inside.  Either way, we hope the judges are quite impressed with our creations at the carving contest!

Monarch Tagging

Yep, that's right, today I enjoyed the gorgeous weather by tagging monarch butterflies! I saw loads of butterflies in the native plant garden so I grabbed my insect net and had a glorious time in the sunshine.

As part of the Monarch Watch tagging project, I will be notified when my monarchs are reported, somewhere between here and Mexico!

Delightful Doggies and Delicious Dinner

Two dogs on a bike... I never would have thought this would work, but they are like two little angels on their double leash. They really love to take the multi-use path near our house because they can run (and literally pull me on the bike sometimes!) Afterwards we took them to the beach to have a swim then straight to the tub for a good scrub!

In the meantime, Ben was creating some gourmet fried green tomatoes in the kitchen. I've been composting for over a year now, and this spring some kind of crazy tomato plant volunteered in the compost- and it never ripened. These strange green tomatoes made for a scrumptious supper for sure!

After dinner, we all got cozy on the couch where I tried out my new Snuggie! Its a blanket with arms, and looks really dumb, but its perfect for lounging on the couch and watching a movie. The weather outside is only about 50-degrees, so a nice fleece layered with two clean dogs is essential. I hear that its snowing back in Erie, PA!

Birthday Celebrations- Part II

Ben and I traveled to Delaware for my birthday weekend! I attended the Mid-Atlantic Marine Education Association conference and Ben went birding in Cape May. Sarah was there, too, and surprised me with gifts all day long! We all had a lot of fun at the dinner and auction, and surprise birthday cake time :) Sarah brought in a cake, complete with candles and singing, to get the party started. Before I knew it, I was buying a kayak! We're currently looking at getting another one so Ben and I can paddle together.

On the way back to the Outer Banks, we stopped by Assateague Island National Seashore and Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, and of course, Wallops Island, where I used to attend Marine Biology summer camp! It was really fun to be back there, and everything still looks exactly the same. Then we went to the Hawk Observatory at Kiptopeake State Park and saw loads of hawks- peregrine falcons and kestrals, plus several others in flight. They had seen over 1,000 already before we even got there, wow!

Thank you everyone for the birthday cards, gifts, phone calls and text messages (and my happy birthday banner, Aunt Barb!) I'll be leaving up the banner for as long as possible- Thanksgiving, maybe? Ben took me to the Black Pelican for my special birthday dinner and gave me some cozy LL Bean slippers to keep my feetsies warm. My beautiful gyotaku fish print and tortoise street art will be featured in a future blog post, stay tuned. I love being spoiled!

Birthday Celebrations- Part I

Part of being an only child is celebrating your birthday for weeks at a time :) The first part of my celebrations began when Mom arrived! We spent time at the beach, pool, shopping, cooking, and just plain relaxing- what a nice vacation! And Grammy K loved on the pups, too, of course!

We had birthday cake (and cookies, too!) and loads of gifts! I'm becoming domesticated at 29, apparently, because all of my favorite presents were crafty :) From a new book 1000 gardening questions & answers and Miracle-Grow, to my new sewing machine, to my new and snazy red dinner plates, I love them all!!! Watch for updates as I practice my sewing skills- its one of my many winter projects ;)

Camping in the Mountains

Our little family (sans Otis- he was at the tortoise-sitter being spoiled with cantelope and kiwi) enjoyed a nice mountain camping trip on our travels across North Carolina. We stopped by Asheville and camped out at Mount Mitchell State Park, the highest point east of the Mississippi River. Our campsite was absolutely gorgeous and the hiking was great. Good thing we had two furry ones to keep us warm in the tent- it was chilly up there at 6500 feet!

This was the first family camping trip and let's just say that Sheba is the most easy-going dog ever and Maverick, well, tolerates camping. Both loved the trails (and chipmunks!) and we all had a really lovely time.

Look for a slideshow of photos coming soon!

Lovin' the Lake

Ben and I were not the only ones lovin' vacation at Lake Burton... Miss Sheba really showed off for all the other pups with her svelte swimming skills! While Ben and I waterskied, she was busy sporting her new life jacket and doin' the dog paddle! She's a great swimmer, but naturally, she gets pretty tired running off the end of the dock, belly flopping into the lake, and swimming back to the doggie steps to do it all over again. We strapped on her bright green life jacket (it used to be Maverick's, but he gladly gave it up!) and she was the cat's meow for sure!And quite an audience she had to impress- this was the first time she had met the Georgia family. Everyone was a fan of sweet Sheba, humans and canines alike. We tried to get all 10 of them to pose for a puppy pic; here are the eight most cooperative ones, haha!

Maverick's New Trick

We've been working on this for months and our big brown dog has finally mastered it! He will wait for you to say OK and then flip it up in the air and catch it. Who knew that he would even want to learn a new trick at age six? Maybe it is because he is constantly trying to one-up Miss Sheba ;)

Pizza Dilemma

Tonight we debated over delivery pizza from the place with a coupon, stone oven pizza that we requires pick up, or going to the store to get a frozen pizza... and ended up making our own from scratch! Just like last time, Ben was the dough-master and used the cathedral ceilings in our new kitchen to his tossing advantage! Its currently baking in the oven, with the delicious smell wafting through the whole house, while the wind and rain of tropical storm Danny persist outside our windows. This storm has turned out to be no big deal (so far!) but its a good excuse to sit inside, watch tv with the family (two with furry tails and a shelled-one), and drink beers. Cheers!

Sperm Whale Stranding

Monday was anything but an ordinary day at work- a pygmy sperm whale had stranded on Sunday, alive, and was too sick to rehab, so it was euthanized. This picture isn't the exact whale but one that looked like it (I'm hoping to get some pictures of our whale in the near future). He was a mature adult whale, almost 20' long, and weighing upwards of 800 pounds. We performed a necropsy and discovered that this animal had been sick for a while, likely stranding more than once. Many times, tourists think that pushing a whale back into the water is the right thing to do when actually it can cause more trauma to the ailing animal. When they are pushed back into the water, oftentimes they will float along until they work up enough strength to strand again on another beach.

It is estimated that of this particular species, combined with the dwarf sperm whale which looks almost identical, there are only about 300 individuals in the Atlantic Ocean (and about the same number in the Pacific). Sperm whales have only been seen alive and well a total of 11 times, so not too much is actually known about these guys. They are super-deep divers, since they eat only squid, so spotting them at the surface is pretty unusual.

Teams from Virginia Beach and Wilmington came to check out the whale and collect samples from different organs, etc. Pretty schnazy!

Beach dogs

These crazy dogs of ours LOVE the beach! Who doesn't, really?

Vote for the New Face of Global Warming

The National Wildlife Federation is looking for a new animal to represent global warming. Learn more about the critters here, then vote for your favorite!

Lazy days of summer

I've been vacationing in Hatteras for a few days with Sarah- lots of relaxing at the beach and on the sound! When I returned, I found two furry pups waiting for me, tails a waggin'! From naps, to snuggle time, to being afraid of thunder, I'm convinced that we have the cutest family on the planet!