All good things must come to an end :(

The time has come, and unfortunately for us, it's time for my mom to return to wintry South Africa. The 19 days we spent together just flew by, which is the universal indicator that we were having fun! Having arrived back from the Surfside adventure last Sunday, we spent this week hanging out at some our favorite local spots.
Monday: we spent the day at home and hitting a few clothing stores for some great Fourth of July sales.
Tuesday: we headed to Lake Erie's Huntington Beach where we waded in the fresh waters of the lake and the boys enjoyed playing in the sand.

Wednesday: The day Nathan got his gran to ride on her first roller coaster ever! We went to Memphis Park, an amusement park that caters mostly for children 5 and under. However they do have the oldest steel roller-coaster in North America, which is in fact, a very tame roller-coaster, but it is still classified as a roller-coaster!

Thursday: Spent the morning at the Cleveland Metro Parks Zoo. This is Josh's absolute favorite place in the world!

Friday: Playing in the water at the pop jets at Crocker Park. Nathan, Josh, and even "Granny Mom" enjoyed running through the sprays and jets and getting wet! That evening, the adults returned for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.

Saturday: Picnic at Bradley Nature Park, which included catching some fish for Nathan's fish tank!
Sunday: Spent the morning at a playground close to Lake Erie in Lakewood. The afternoon, my mom took Nathan (and me) to watch Cars 2 at the local theater.
And in what seems like a blink of an eye, her vacation is over and life has to return to normal in the McCarthy household. Thanks for coming to vacation with us mom - we had all had a blast!

Heaven is... a golf cart community!

Apologies for the lack of recent blog posts, but we have just returned from an epic vacation in South Carolina with my mom! Liesel had booked us into a holiday house, that was literally 500 ft (150m) from the beach. It was also situated in Oceanside Village, which happens to be a golf cart community. So, waiting for us at the holiday house, was our very golf cart to use for the duration of our stay there! It seated 5 (3 facing forward, 2 backward). You have no idea how little electric vehicle made our vacation so much more enjoyable!! For example, in the morning, we would load beach chairs, an umbrella, boogie board, life vests, beach bag and more onto this cart, and then drive it out of the community, across the road and straight to reserved parking for golf carts, that is right up against the beach! So we would only have to carry these beach accessories for about 100ft (30m), from the golf cart parking to the perfect spot on the beach! After spending time in the waves, the sand and the sunshine - we would reload the golf cart and head back to the community, and head straight to the warm outdoor pool! Again, there is reserved golf cart parking right next to the pool gate! Once we had our fair share of fresh water, we would head back to the house for Lunch. The golf cart also transported us to the playground, the indoor pool, and the tennis courts! Life was so easy in Oceanside Village!

There were so many fun things that we did, that instead of boring you with pages of descriptions, I will list a few of our highlights.

• Feeding the ducks
• Extreme adventure golf
• Impromptu donut stops
• Helicopter rides!!!
• Boogie boarding
• Indoor swimming pool
• Free ice cream
• Eating fudge
• Fishing
• Sandcastles

Finally, take a look at the slide show below for a better idea of what we got up to over the last week!

The unluckiest airline passenger's blog

I thought that I would feature a guest blog today. Since my mom is (finally) with us, I think this is the ideal opportunity for her to share some of her experiences and tell us why she is the unluckiest air traveler!

The memoirs of Cynthia McCarthy:

Hi All

I have arrived at last to a wonderful welcome from Grant, Liesel and boys.   Grant says last night when he heard that the flight had been cancelled, and told Nathan - Nathan cried himself to sleep.   Let me tell you a bit about yesterday's journey.

Kate dropped me off at the bus terminus yesterday morning at 7.00 am with a large suitcase and a small suitcase and a large laptop type bag.   I travelled to Heathrow by bus, which takes you to terminal 1 and I needed to get to terminal 5, which is miles away.   I lugged the cases off the bus and went into the terminal where I had to ask the way.   I was told there was a free train service to terminal five, down flights of escalators.  Fortunately I looked helpless and a man helped me.   I arrived at terminal five and lugged all the cases up to the passport control area.   Luckily I got through without too much trouble at least got rid of one suitcase.   I waited for 2 hours then went to the departure gate - one had to go underground again to board a train to take us there - the train was not working so we were led through the emergency exits for this long walk, me pulling my hand luggage which weighed about as much as my big suitcase, and still had my big bag, over my shoulder.   We must have walked about a Km before we had to go up steps, this time no escalator.   I stood and looked helpless until someone offer to carry my case up the steps.   I had a nice flight which lasted 7 1/2 hours.

I arrived at Washington DC and had to collect my luggage and rebook myself into the United flight to Cleveland.   One has to walk miles, go through customs again and had to take my jacket off as well as my shoes,and stand against a panel with my arms stretched up, luckily no cases were opened.   After a 4 hour wait we were told that our plane had a mechanical problem and that we were delayed one hour.   Then the ramp was closed because there was lightening in the area.  After another half hour we boarded the plane but the pilot said he could not take off as there was a huge backlog because of weather and said that we should disembark and go and sit in the terminal building - now there was not steps available so after 10 minutes he said to sit down again and we were taking off shortly.   We took off, flew through the clouds when the pilot said he had to land again as a flock of birds had flown into the plane - so this time they found stairs and we got off.   This was about 9pm Washington time.   After a while an announcement was made that our flight had been cancelled and that we should go to Customer Services to arrange accommodation for the night.   I started to panic, what do I do now???   Well I was taken by shuttle to Holiday Inn, which was very nice, and went to sleep at 11.45 pm and woke up 4 hours later - I could not sleep even though I had been awake now for 23 hours!!!   A flight was booked for me this morning from Reagan airport, now I had to get there.  Fortunately I was given a voucher for a taxi as it was a drive of just over an hour.   Grant and Nathan were waiting for me, 24 hours after I was supposed to arrive.  Well now I am here at last, but unfortunately my big suitcase with all my clothes is still flying around the Washington skies.  I have been wearing the same top and slacks now for 3 days - hopefully it will arrive tomorrow.

That is the saga of my trip from London to Cleveland.

No more for tonight - another episode tomorrow.   This has been typed from my new laptop that Grant gave me!!!!

love to all

I've got the fever!

Even though it is the NBA Finals Game 6 tonight, with my team in the lead in the fourth quarter, it is not basketball fever that I am referring to. Unfortunately, at this time of the year, after a few good rainfalls, and warm sunny days, I am at the mercy of the various forms of pollen that are unleashed into the atmosphere! Of course, working in the garden and mowing the yard does not help either. So by the end of the day,  I was a stuffed up, red eyed wreck :( The allergy medication also seemed to be waving the white flag against the onslaught of pollen, as they had no effect on me!

Let's recap my demise on Saturday:
While Liesel washed all the windows, I trimmed another two bushes - STRIKE ONE.
Shortly afterwards, I took out my blower and started clearing out the dust, leaves and dirt from the garage. A huge cloud of white dust emanated from the garage..... I followed this with blasting the garage floor with water, hoping to wash the inset dust and dirt away. STRIKE TWO.
Later that evening, after bathing the boys, I stepped outside again to cut the lawn. STRIKE THREE!

Sunday's weather was completely different from the hot, humid Saturday. We woke up to a chilly, overcast day. Liesel had nursery duty at church, so she left a couple of minutes before the boys. After church, we came home and chatted to the family in South Africa. My mother flies out to London on Monday night, spending a week in England, before winging her way to us for our summer vacation!
After a nap that afternoon, Liesel took Nath to the shops with her, and he returned with a solar powered model bi-plane! The remainder of the afternoon was spent figuring out how to assemble this plane! And that was the weekend, and then we pick up my mom at the airport! That means our summer vacation to South Carolina is less than 2 weeks away! Can't wait for the salt water of the Atlantic to clear my sinuses of this Ohio pollen!!!

Work(out), work, work

The title pretty much sums up the weekend in a nutshell! It started on Saturday morning, when I decided to try out the 8:30am Bootcamp class at our gym. It was too early to take the boys with me and Liesel had other plans (carpet cleaning), so I left in a hurry and made it to the class just as it started. After 10 minutes into the class, I was praying for the instructor to stop! My body is not accustomed to this continuous cardio onslaught... But I forced myself to stay and complete the remaining 40 minutes! Needless to say, I barely walked upright out of that class, but I had accomplished my mission, burn as many calories as possible in 50 minutes.
When I got home later that morning, I found Liesel in the middle of her intense cleaning regiment. Nathan asked me to build a Lego police station for him, and I never turn down an opportunity to play with Legos! A while later, Liesel was done with the indoor carpets, so she headed outside to clean her car's carpets! So I took the boys outside with me and I started trimming the bushes around the porch. Nath helped a little by placing the cuttings into a cart for me, while Josh caused havoc, jumping on the branches, and unpacking the cart that Nath was filling.
That afternoon, Liesel went grocery shopping while Josh napped, and I took the opportunity to do some touchups on some interior walls that had been begging for attention for a number of months! When Liesel got home, it was almost dinnertime. I fired up the grill to barbecue some delcious ribs, the kind where the meat just falls off the bone! Hmmmmmmmmm

After church on Sunday morning, I brought the ladder inside to hang up some more pictures on the staircase wall. Liesel had prepared a delicious roast chicken for lunch, which went down so well! In my opinion, she makes the best roast chicken this side of the equator :-)  Later that afternoon, I hauled out the mower and gave the front and back yard a mow. It has been beautfifully hot over the weekend with the mercury reaching 95(35C) yesterday and a slightly milder 87 (30C) today. Needless to say, we have had the air-conditioning turned on for the past 48 hours.

So I have covered work(out) and work so far, which leaves me with the final work item. Right now I am typing this blog about 20 000 feet above Pennsylvania, on my way to a customer. We need to be onsite at 8am, so we are flying in the night before. I then fly back to Cleveland around the same time tomorrow. So that was the weekend! Only two more weekends until my mother arrives :-)

Before I sign off, I want to give you an update on Nathan's leg. He has had his last cast cut off about 2 weeks ago and was given an air boot to walk around in. Liesel and I noticed that he seemed to struggle walking, so we asked him about it and he said he still felt pain in his leg. So Liesel took him back to the Doctor, who took another X-ray and zoomed into the area of the break. He discovered that there was still a fracture there, which is most likely the cause of his pain. To prevent it from getting worse, the doctor decided to put Nathan's leg into another cast! This one will stay on for another 2 weeks when they will reassess the situation. Please pray for Nath and that his leg will be completely healed during these two weeks, as we go on vacation in 3 weeks to the coast, and it would be awful to have to be there with a cast! On a brighter note, Nath has now had a leg cast in each of the primary colors!!!