4 Days x 100 Degrees = 400 Years

WHEN: June 3-6, 2010 WHERE: Southeastern Virginia

I'm baaaaack! After a blogging hiatus (aka, unaccomidating schedule) I am back with the latest news in time and space. The usual "guilt" of not blogging has crept up on me almost daily during the past two weeks but I've also come to accept that not Every. Single. Aspect. of my life need be published for the WWW community. I felt a betrayer last week when I did not even publish a Picture of the Week and even worse when my only post in 12 days was a half-hearted acknowledgment of Stace and my anniversary. There has been no shortage of events to write about lately. Rather, there have been too many to allow me to write about them. For one, we have had guests at our apartment the past two weekends while at the same time Stace has been fighting off a virus/ailment she has had for the past 11 days and on Friday we found out we were to be aunt and uncle to our first nephew - Carter Travis Armstrong. But I would chose any day to have my blog suffer in the wake of my life rather than vice versa. Blogging is supposed to be fun, not crippling. But I will fill you in on some of what has transpired, mostly in the past four days. When pictures are worth a thousand words and your typing speed is measured in words per hour, a photo-saturated blog post is the obvious choice. I just hope your mouse scroller isn't broken, and I apologize for when it will be by the time you reach the end of this post. Leta and Jay visited us last weekend for Memorial Day but due to the bad weather and our poor history of taking pictures together, I have little to report on. I do know that we bought far too many sweets while they were here and that we convinced each other to each buy games, which came in useful over a wet weekend. They had planned to come down for a beach weekend and just in time for our pool/grill/fire pit to open last Saturday but that all fell through the floor. The weather was uncooperative and we later found out that our grill (which was promised by November of last year) was only available for the office to use for the "community events". Note: we have had ZERO "community events" at our complex in the 9 months we've lived here. Classic property management fraud! That's a post for another time.

The rest of the weekend/week was spent taking trips to Urgent Care. Stace was there twice and has been on prescriptions since. Stace was feeling well enough Memorial Day to let me leave her at the house and head off to the beach to enjoy the beautiful day. But her virus was no where from being finished and is still working its course. Enchantment of the Seas made its sixth visit to Norfolk this spring on Thursday so I strolled down to Waterside to eat lunch. The cruise ship returns Saturday for one more visit before cruises to Norfolk end until October. I will miss seeing these beautiful giants. Up close for the departure

Thursday night Philip and Beth arrived after spending several days in DC over Memorial Day. The three of us drove up to America's Historic Triangle Friday while Stace stayed back for work. We visited the Jamestown settlement, Colonial Williamsburg, and Yorktown.

Powhatan Indian village at Jamestown

Scale models of the three ships that brought over the first permanent English settlers, 403 years ago. This is the Susan Constant.

The 7-month journey taken by 103 colonists

Inside James Fort (recreated based on archeological digs on nearby Jamestown Island).

Blacksmith's shop

Lunch greeted us inside one of the colonial homes, although I think he was looking for lunch from us. Definitely not shy. Although we enjoyed the experiences of our trip, I don't think we could have picked a hotter weekend to go. The heat index in Williamsburg on Saturday reached 104°, and we were outside most of the day, walking around for 6 hours. The low temperature Saturday was 78. The humidity across the southeast was stifling. Dew points are a measure of humidity (the point at which dew forms - precipitation). To illustrate how high the humidity has been in the southeast this weekend, only two days in five years has the dew point reached 80° in Miami, FL; a city obviously known for its humidity. Many areas weren't far from 80 this weekend and some were above. Our next stop was at colonial Williamsburg; the country's "capital" beginning in 1699. The original capital building in Williamsburg For Jay & Leta ;) Hee-haw! A ginormous live oak Our last stop was Yorktown, where the Revolutionary War was officially won by General George Washington and the colonists in October 1781. Holding a ridiculously heavy musket after a high-decibel demonstration. This nightmarish tool was used to drill holes in soldiers heads when they were shot, to drain the fluids built up behind their skulls. Sharing love for Carolina Our first stop Saturday morning was to show Philip and Beth the Virginia Beach oceanfront. The high-octane, 2000 horsepower thrill ride "Rudee Rocket" The next stop was Cape Henry Lighthouse. Stace stayed at sea level because of some joint pain, while we trekked up the stairs for a great (but sweltering) view - think a greenhouse in 95° heat with no air circulation. A cruiser patrolling the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay We spent 3 hours at the beach on Saturday and first I needed to dig a hole for our umbrella. Of course, we never ended up using it either days. Stace was not able to go to the beach with us because she had to turn around and go home to get ready for her class' graduation Saturday afternoon. I felt bad I was missing it, especially when we drove by it on our way home from the beach. I quickly showered after we got back and caught the last part of the ceremony. Unfortunately I missed the stellar speech I heard she gave for her kids. I am so proud of her - in so many ways! Stace with one of her kids on the front lawn of their school. We grabbed a bite to eat at the Rudee Inlet Marina restaurant, just in time for sunset. And we didn't even mean to match.

After church Sunday morning, we all took much needed naps before heading back out to the beach for an even hotter day still. Stace joined us this time and was content to sit on our beach chair in the surf to stay cool. We spent most of our time in the water which was wonderfully refreshing and made it possible to even be outside.

We ended our stay by erecting a monument to memorialize our busy weekend (and to zap any remaining amount of energy we had left).

We finished the weekend with 13 games of Chickenfoot, just in time for bed at 12:30a.m.

Somehow I stayed awake at work today and now I'm staying up late to write a perpetual post. A long story for a long weekend. It was great to have friends and family visit us and its great to calm down and return to reality as well. It's time to wrap this weekend up and go catch up on some sleep.