Connorland

It's about Connor to start this post.  

Connor had his tonsils and adenoids out yesterday, as well as tubes put in his ears (like his father had many many times when he was young ... it was sort of an annual occurrence for Joshua way back when).  

Things are very different in hospitals these days than way back in "our day" (as we realized when Paige Elizabeth L. Whelan was born).  The photo above is Joshua, Trisha and Connor waiting for Connor to go into the OR.  Connor could have been transported in a red wagon but chose to be carried!  The Curious George he is holding (which later was being tossed between Connor and I) was given to him by the nursing staff when he arrived.  

The procedure went well and we were with "the kids" for a few hours a while ago and you would never know that Connor had anything out of the ordinary done yesterday!  Gosh to be a kid and have that resilience!  He is such a fun little boy, but WOW does he have energy and trying to keep him "calm" (per doctors orders) appears to be very challenging!  THAT is why "young people" have children right?!? 

Trish's parents ~ Larry and Sheila ~ are here staying with the kids.  We all got together at our place for a cook out on Sunday.  We also celebrated Connor's fourth birthday (how the heck is he four already), because neither Larry, Sheila, Rick or Grammie were with him this year on March 8th to celebrate his birthday (yes Grammie had real guilt issues with it, but I guess it was inevitable that it happen some year).  He is eating his birthday cake above.  It got chilly and windy outside so we brought the cake and ice cream inside for the celebration, and Grammie forgot (UGH) to buy balloons!

Connor spent lots of time running, playing and riding his bicycle while they were here. Another form of entertainment was the "challenges" Rick would put forth for him.  It was so fun to watch.  Some challenges involved climbing, some walking on narrow planks and the best (which I unfortunately don't have a photo of) was Connor walking on the see saw ... Rick did explain to him, of course, what was going to happen when he got to the middle ... Connor loved loved loved all these "challenges" ~ how Rick ever dreams this up is beyond me, but I sure wish I had this creativity and patience when I was raising two boys ...  The photo above was one of the challenges, but I don't know what it was all about (check out the "tattoos" on Connors legs ~ there are several on both arms) ... the boy just cracks me up with his tattoos ... he used to call them "taptoos" and when we were in Sioux Falls working at the fair there were several vendors there who gave away "temporary taptoos" so of course Grammie gathered many for Connor. 

In front of where the coach is parked someone has mounted a flag on a huge NC pine tree ... Connor demonstrated his "Pledge of Allegiance" skills for us ... Trisha said she had no idea he even knew it and she and Connor had passed a flag some time ago and Connor was telling her about the Pledge of Allegiance and proceeded to recite it ~ learned it at daycare I guess!  

Above and below are photos of other activities that fun cook out afternoon - see saw with Trish and horse shoes with Trish and Joshua (as well as Larry and Sheila) ... I don't remember, however, who won the game!

I sure had a great afternoon ~ and hope everyone else did as well ... it's so good to spend time with the Lovett/Davis group.

Anyway, with all that said .... we are here in Newport, NC for a few more days anyway (trying to figure our next stop (more on that later).  

We left Huntington Beach State Park last Friday (April 3).  Our intent was to stay at the Croatan National Forest (that link is to a post from our stay here last year - I think I did four posts from there) campground where we were last October ~ which we loved.  However, you can not make reservations at that park and the National Forest website seems to be lacking updated information ... can you tell where I'm going with this?  

To get to that terrific campground you come off the main road (route 70) and travel about a mile to the gate of the National Forest.  As we were headed down the mile long road to the "park" I asked Rick "what the heck was that sign back there that something was closed"....  Well when we got to the end of the road, also the entrance to the campground/park the gate was closed and appeared to be locked with a sign saying they were cutting trees and hoped to be open by the 17th of April.  Well we knew from our stay and chats with the campground host last year that tree cutting was planned for the three months the park was closed over the "winter"...  Keep in mind that we are 68 feet ... backing up when you come to a closed/locked gate isn't really an option (in the year and a half we've been fortunate enough to be living this life, it's only been an issue once before ~ when the flipping GPS really did bad!  Well we managed to work ourselves out of it the first time and we did last week as well.  I decided to "check" the gate .. one padlock was locked, one wasn't.  I don't usually do things like how I proceeded but there really weren't a lot of options ... I took the lock off (the lock that only appeared to be locked ~ and yes I did feel very threatened by the signs that threatened arrest for tampering and trespassing) so we could proceed to what we knew was a great turn around area further down in one of the parking lots for the beach area.

We usually try to have a "plan b", not always, but we try.  Thankfully we did this time.  We ended up at the Moose Lodge in Newport, NC - about 15 miles from where we thought we'd be, which is about eight miles east of "the kids" rather than eight miles west at the National Forest.  This is a terrific, fabulous, awesome, wonderful lodge "camping" area.  Lots of open area for Sir to frolic in as well as water and electric with a dump station (the National Forest had electric but not water at the site) and less than a third of the price.  

Isn't is strange how things usually just work out?  It's been quite a learning curve, but Rick has tried and tried to instill that logic in me .... I'm trying to accept it!