Sailing

I'm going to go ahead and warn you, this is a long post. But I want to remember as much of it as I can.

This past weekend Sadie turned 3 months old. She is growing up so fast, it's amazing.

Now, I would love for Sadie to be completely comfortable around water and the toys that come with that. So to help with that, we went to Oriental, NC this past weekend with Geoff, Beth and Kayla Shull. Geoff's parents have a house and sail boat down there, so we left Greensboro on Friday and headed to the coast. Sadie did great in the car ride down there, watching the world whizz by.

Saturday morning Geoff and I headed out early to fish. We sat out for about an hour and then caught a 36" red drum. He probably weighed around 25 lbs or so. Of course, we have no pictures of this because our phones were dead. But I caught him, I swear.

After going back in and eating some breakfast, Geoff took Steph and Beth out to fish while I watched the babies. We didn't want to take them out on the flat bottom boat because it's way to easy to fall in the water. They didn't catch anything (my fish was the only one caught all weekend) so we decided to head to the Yacht Club and take the sail boat out.

The boat is a 40' Hinkley, a very beautiful boat. We stayed out on the water for about 5.5-6 hours. Sadie did tremendously well. She was fascinated by all the stuff going on around her. She loved the breeze, watching the water, and looking at the ropes and sails and everything else. The only time she got fussy was when she was tired, and that was because she didn't want to go to sleep and kept trying to look around. Once she took a cat nap, she was back at it, looking around, laughing, and making noises.

I got to drive the boat a lot, which I enjoyed. There's nothing like hearing the wind in the sails and the boat slicing through the water, no engine noise, no cars, just the water and the wind. Very relaxing and peaceful. My goal is to get very comfortable with everything it takes to sail a boat. I still require a lot of direction from Geoff as to what rope to pull, what to tie down, and when it all happens. It's a great learning process though.

The boat has an Autopilot function that was installed but never commissioned, so Geoff and I messed around with that a lot on Saturday trying to get it to work, but to no avail. We decided to make that job number 1 on Sunday.

We got back to the marina and parked the boat right at dark. We were going to try to fish at night, but the navigation lights on the flat bottom boat wouldn't work, and we didn't want a big fine from the Coast Guard, so we went home and ate dinner.

Sunday was pretty much the same thing in the morning. Geoff took the girls out fishing and I watched the babies. Still no fish caught, so we went to breakfast and then to the boat to figure out the auto pilot problems. Steph and Beth went to the pool at the yacht club and let Sadie and Kayla try out swimming. They both seemed to really enjoy it.

Meanwhile, Geoff and I figured out it was a wiring problem. After switching around some wires behind the breakers and to the main terminal for the navigation equipment, we were able to start the commissioning process for the autopilot. After a few dockside procedures, we headed out to the sound to complete the seatrial portion. After about an hour, it was ready to use. It's a pretty cool feature that allows you to leave the helm while the boat stays on a certain heading or stays at a certain angle to the wind. It's a wonderful thing that we had when we were in the BVI, so to have it in Oriental is a nice treat.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to document as much as I could about Sadie's first trip to Oriental. Hopefully there will be many many more and she'll be super comfortable on a boat and the water.

 Geoff at the bow of the boat after we got the auto pilot working

 Sadie taking her cat nap while Geoff sails the boat

Sadie in her life jacket. It wasn't the most comfortable thing for her, but it kept her safe! (She's squinting at the sun, not the pain of the life jacket.)

Friends

So, Sadie's growing up! She'll be 12 weeks old tomorrow. Here's a video Steph took of Sadie this morning. She's a rolling over champ now!

She's cooing and laughing and making all kinds of noises with us. Her desire to observe everything that's going on continues to increase as well. She's a very bright child, if I do say so myself.

Her demeanor is so great, and she's a very happy baby. It's wonderful to look back over the past several weeks and see how fast she's growing. It's exciting and sad at the same time I think. This time is going to be gone before we know it.

Here's a picture of Sadie with Kayla Shull from the other night. Kayla was born 10 days after Sadie, but Kayla's already taller! Sadie's not going to be dunking any basketballs anytime soon, I don't think...

This one's just a quick update. I'll try to post more on here later when I get more beach pictures.

The beach

We spent last week at Holden Beach with the Cox family. It was a lot of fun and a great way to relax after all the craziness of the past couple of months.

We stopped over in Wilmington to see my Brother and his wife and the rest of my extended family. Over the past couple of years, the Vernon family has migrated to Wilmington to help my uncle with his church, called Crosswinds. We ate barbecue with the family and spent the night with Susie and Billy, my aunt and uncle. After breakfast in downtown Wilmington with Mandi and Bryan, (I had a screwdriver at breakfast. It was vacation. Get off me.) we wandered around for a bit and then made our way to Holden to meet the Coxes there.

We ate lunch at the Provision Company with my mom and dad and Kyle and Hillary. Shrimp burgers from there will be in Heaven. I know they will. Jesus might even make them.

We got settled into the house and our vacation officially started. The house was a bit dated, but it was on the canal and had a floating dock that we could fish off of.

It was a week of hanging out at the beach, watching more Olympic events than I ever have before, and playing games with the Jonathans. (JTFL. If you don't know, you don't need to.)

Sadie got spoiled by hanging out with her grandparents all week and not being put down until night time. It was great though, as Steph and I were able to spend a lot of time out on the beach, which we wouldn't have been able to do if we had gone without the family.

The vacation went by all too fast, and now we're back in the real world. Steph's working from home (picture of her work buddy below) and I'm taking over a new team at my place of work.

Here are some pics of Sadie at the beach and at "work" with her mom.