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Because we’ve been back for two days and I still haven’t written about it (my brain, it is not cooperating with me these days), here are some pictures.

Near the entrance to the NC Zoo, there are these enormous life-size statues of elephants. We stopped to take some pictures. My mom saw this photo, and thought it was a real elephant, and she fuh-REAKED out. “Where’s the WALL?!! It could’ve KILLED her!!” Um, no, Mom. I’m pretty sure it’s not going anywhere.

Although if the elephants were real, it would’ve made this moment with my brother all the more awesome.

He’s hilarious. (We were trying to get Catie to agree to sit on the elephant’s trunk for a photo. She refused.)

As for inside the zoo…

Sea lions are awesome.

The flamingo exhibit was hands-down Catie’s favorite. She started asking for them the minute we got there, and she was so excited when we finally found them. She’s normally more of a giraffe/zebra fan, I’m not sure why the sudden obsession with flamingos? Maybe because they’re pink?

I love this picture of my sister & Catie. I love their contrasting hair colors.

And then, of course, the obligatory “we’re going to take some damn family pictures before we leave here.”

I think it’s hilarious how my brother and sister both look all well-rested and healthy, while Dave and I look exhausted, puffy, and pale. Guess which ones are the parents?

P.S. Still no news on the job front. Hoping to hear something one way or the other this week!

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The job interview was yesterday, and… I have no clue about it. Here’s the run-down:

* 3 separate interviews with 3 different members of the team. – Those all seemed to go pretty well and I think I made a good impression on all of them.
* Writing test. – I think I kicked ass. (Actually, Dave’s boss told me that mine was way better than the other candidate’s that he saw. Nice to have the affirmation.)
* Lunch with Dave, his boss, and another engineer. – Fun. And the food was awesome. (Japanese, one of my favorites.)
* Teleconference interview. Singular: interview. With 3 people at the same time. Yeah. Three engineers in two remote offices (two guys in Texas, one guy in California), who btw were all asking me questions at the same time. – Holy mother of God, that was intimidating. For one thing, since it was on the phone, I couldn’t read anyone’s facial expressions and see if they were responding well to what I was saying. For another, two of the three guys aren’t native English speakers (one guy is French, and the other one is… I don’t know, maybe Indian? I couldn’t place his accent), and the conference room speaker phone was fuzzy, so I think some things might’ve gotten lost in translation. But besides that, some of their questions just threw me because they were completely not “technical writer”-y questions and it was just really, really strange.

The whole interview process took about 7 hours (10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and was unbelievably exhausting. I was showered and in my pajamas before 6:30 last night. It kicked my butt, to say the least.

So, honestly? I have no idea how it went. I just hope I find out one way or the other soon, because I hate waiting. Patience is not one of my virtues, to say the least.

Moving on! Guess what we’re doing tomorrow?

(Apologies if this song gets stuck in your head for 10,000 years. We’ve been singing it around here for days.)

So, yeah. The North Carolina Zoo is in Asheboro, which is about 60 or so miles from here. It’s about the halfway point between here and Charlotte, so my brother and sister are going to drive over and meet up with us there. Catie is unbelievably psyched. I can’t tell if she’s more excited about seeing Tracy and Chris, or if it’s going to see all the animals, but either way, she’s practically bouncing off the walls about it.

You can expect about a million pictures when we get back. Should be fun! Hope everyone has a great weekend!

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Dave had been saying for a while that he wanted to go away for his birthday weekend. We don’t have the budget for anything major, but luckily, we can go on what feels like an honest-to-God vacation without leaving the state of North Carolina. We had the choice of going to the beach or going to the mountains. Dave picked mountains. And I’m so glad he did.

Not bad, eh?

It’s about a 4-hour drive over to Boone, NC. We stayed in a small town a bit further up in the mountains. Catie did great with the drive until we ended up on this unbelievable winding mountain road full of 180-degree hairpin turns. Luckily, she didn’t get too carsick, but we did have to make an emergency stop on the side of the road when she thought she was going to barf. (We walked about a city block’s length and that seemed to help her shake it off.)

We got to our hotel around sunset on Friday evening. We got snacks from the local Food Lion, checked into our hotel, and settled in for the night. Incidentally, we stayed at Blue Ridge Village, and we loved it there. Full kitchen, washer and dryer in the suite, jacuzzi tub, the works. It felt less like a hotel room and more like a furnished apartment. Totally comfortable and nice. (And no, they didn’t pay me to say that. Although if they want to comp me a room next time we go there, I sure wouldn’t say no.)

Saturday, our plan was to first go to Linville Caverns, then Grandfather Mountain. Due to a spectacular GPS fail that took us on a 30-mile detour, we scrapped that plan and went to Grandfather Mountain first (just because it was there).

I put Grandfather Mountain on our itinerary because they have an Animal Reserve there, and I knew Catie would love that.

I was right, too. She did love it.

The views at Grandfather Mountain are unbelievable. (That’s where I took the picture at the top of this post.) They also have something called a “Mile-High Swinging Bridge” that people can walk across, which was… not so popular with us. I thought I’d be ok until I actually stepped on it. I made it about three steps, then decided nope, can’t do this, and I turned around and bolted back to the mountainside. I’m not sure if it was the bridge itself or me leaving that made Catie freak, but Dave only made it about 5 more steps before she started to cry and said she didn’t like it and wanted to go back. So, none of us made it all the way across the Mile-High Swinging Bridge. And you know? I’m perfectly ok with that.

Once we were done with Grandfather Mountain, we headed over (finally!) to Linville Caverns. That was really, really cool.

I mean, any time you get to hang around rocks that are estimated to be around 22 million years old, and see trout that live in a stream inside a cave, that’s a pretty good day right there. Plus it’s 52 degrees year-round inside the caves, so after being outside in the heat, it felt fantastic.

We were worn out after that, so we headed back to the hotel and got some take-out from a nearby restaurant for dinner. I took Catie swimming in the hotel’s indoor pool after dinner, she loved that. (“The pool is INSIDE?!?!!”)

Oh! Let me back up. Our first night at the hotel, Dave and I had stupidly thought that all three of us could easily sleep in a king-size bed (completely forgetting that Catie tends to sleep sideways and likes to kick in her sleep). It was awful, none of us got a good night’s sleep at all. So on Saturday night, we decided to take advantage of the fold-out couch. You have never seen a three year-old’s mind blown like that. “You mean, the COUCH turns into a BED?!?!! And I can sleep on it?? Are you KIDDING me?!?!!” Between that and the indoor pool, she’s going to think this particular hotel is the site of Crazy Magic Stuff.

Anyway, she slept great on the fold-out couch, and the grown-ups got a decent night’s sleep ourselves.

On Sunday, we packed up and checked out of the hotel, before heading to the Tweetsie Railroad, which is kind of like an Old West-style theme park. The admission rates are crazy expensive, but then all the rides are free after that, so I guess it works out. Catie loved it.

The park is kind of built into a mountain, and we saw that there was a ton of stuff at the very top, but you had to take a chair lift (like at a ski lodge) to get to the top. Catie took one look at the chair lift and said, no way. So, we walked it instead. It was about half a mile, straight uphill, and she didn’t complain about it or ask us to carry her once.

Of course, after we hiked it, we realized there was a bus for people with wheelchairs or strollers. Which we could’ve taken for free. Sigh. Oh well, at least we probably burned off that funnel cake we ate later.

But thank God we didn’t skip the top of the park, because that’s where the petting zoo was located. Which I’m pretty sure was Catie’s favorite part of the entire weekend.

I think this emu thought my camera was food. He got super-close to me with his giant crazy bird eyes, and kinda wigged me out.

After all that, we went back and got on the train, where this is the best picture I got.

Yeah. Not my finest photography moment, to say the least.

Even in spite of the fact that we were all tired and grumpy, we still had to drag Catie out of there, she did NOT want to leave. And of course, she was asleep before we even got on the freeway.

It was really such a fun trip, but it also feels so good to come home. All three of us took the day off today to just veg out and relax. Oh, and Catie and I made Dave a birthday cake today, since he didn’t get one yesterday on his actual birthday. Unless funnel cake counts. And I don’t think it does.

P.S. In case the ridiculous number of photos in this entry isn’t enough for you, all the pictures from our trip are here.

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Last year, Dave and I decided to take advantage of Memorial Day weekend and go check out the North Carolina coast. That trip came at the perfect time, we’d been stressed out and worried about a lot of things that were going on then, and we ended up having an absolute blast. It kind of sealed it in our heads: Memorial Day weekend, we go to the beach. A new tradition has been established.

Of course, the problem last year was that Catie absolutely hated the beach. She hated the sand, and the waves, and all of it. But I’ve noticed that in the past year, she’s started playing in the sandbox at the playground, and she doesn’t seem to mind the texture of sand as much as she used to. So we thought it’d be worth another shot.

This time, we had much better luck.

Catie still doesn’t like the ocean. The waves came up way too fast for her, and the water was just a little too cold. But she had a great time building sand castles, digging big holes in the sand, and collecting seashells (most of which she threw back into the ocean, don’t ask me why).

This year we also decided to invite my brother and sister along, since they live in North Carolina too, and neither of them had ever been to Wilmington before. It’s a longer drive for them, but they took a shortcut across the southern part of the state and met up with us there.

It was great to have them there. It was a lot easier to make sure we had one or two adults on the beach with Catie, while the others were out in the ocean jumping waves. The higher the adult-to-kid ratio, the better.

Side note: At one point, Dave carried Catie out into the ocean. When she started to get a little bit scared, my brother Chris tried to make her laugh by acting like a goofball. And that’s how I ended up with this, one of my favorite photos of the weekend.

I love that I managed to get the picture of him while he was suspended in mid-air. Awesome.

So, yeah. We went to the beach, we hung out at the hotel pool, we ate a lot of delicious and fresh seafood, and we had a fabulous time.

How was YOUR weekend?

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Stuff from this week:

1. Mother’s Day was almost a week ago, and I sort of completely forgot to mention anything about it. But it was lovely. We went to Charlotte to hang out with my sister, and had a great time. We took Catie to a Children’s Museum on Saturday, which was a lot of fun, then went out for a fantastic dinner.

And my sister, who is awesome, got me roses for Mother’s Day. It would’ve been nice if I’d remembered to take them with me when we left her apartment, but I forgot them at her place. Oh well. They were lovely.

On Sunday, we went out for brunch, then walked around downtown Charlotte for a while.

It was a great weekend.

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2. My stupid elbow still hurts from where I fell on it, and the scab on it is absolutely revolting, but I’m still working out almost every day. I’m just being careful not to do things (like certain yoga poses) that involve putting pressure on my elbow. I’ll be fine. It’s really the food part of the whole diet/exercise thing that I need to work on. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to tackle that. I have a lot of ideas and I’m still trying to sort them out. I’ll write more about it when I figure out what the heck I’m doing.

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3. Catie is in this phase where she goes back and forth between being absolutely fun and delightful and amazing and wonderful, and a 37-inch tall hellbeast demon. And you never know which kid you’re going to get at any point in the day. I don’t really know what to do about that, other than just ride out the bad moments, implement discipline when necessary, and try not to lose my temper (that last part is the hardest one). It’s just difficult when she’ll go for like a week without needing to be put in time out at all, then all of a sudden we’ll have to do four time-outs in a single day. Which may be average for a toddler at this phase, but it feels like a lot to me.

But, you know, then she’ll say something that’ll have Dave and me doubled over laughing, because she’s an absolute riot. So I guess we’ll keep her, in spite of the occasional tantrums.

She’s kinda cute too.

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4. I had a little moment of panic there on Monday, when Teenie wouldn’t stop barfing. Everything she ate came right back up (and this was after she coughed up a big hairball). I called the vet’s office, they said to bring her in immediately. They gave her a shot of some anti-nausea meds and an injection of fluids under her skin so she wouldn’t get dehydrated, and they ran some bloodwork. She’s borderline hyperthyroid (she’s also dropped over 4 pounds since we left Washington in 2008, which seems like a lot for a small cat – she went from 14 pounds to 9.8), so we’ll keep an eye on that and address it as necessary.

The whole thing was pretty upsetting and scary, and it reminded me of this post I wrote a while back, and oh god, if something is really wrong with the cat, how on earth am I going to explain it to Catie? I had a pretty big freak-out about that. But it seems that Teenie is ok. She stopped barfing, so either the meds worked or she got it out of her system. And her bloodwork is otherwise normal. So I’m thankful that I get to postpone that particular horrible (and yes, inevitable, I realize) conversation for a while.

Of course, if the damn cat doesn’t stop pooping in random corners of our living room, she may not be long for this world anyway. Argh.

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5. Dave and I are celebrating our fifth anniversary on Saturday. Five years. I can’t even wrap my head around that. It’s not that much time in the grand scheme of things, is it? It’s almost like, “Really? That’s it? Only five years?” Because in a lot of ways, it feels like we’ve been together forever. (In a good way. I promise.) So, I’m a little early, but happy anniversary, babe. Love you.

P.S. Apparently this is the “wood” anniversary. I swear I’m not making that up. And yes, I giggled when I read that, because I’m a 12 year-old boy.

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Since both of my siblings now live in Charlotte, which is a mere 150 miles away, this past weekend Catie and I decided to pack a bag and make a mini-road trip to visit them. Catie’s pretty easy to travel with, and we thought it would be fun to check out Charlotte for the first time. I mean, I’ve been to the airport a few times, and I’ve driven through Charlotte, but I’ve never really checked out the city before.

Since my sister Tracy just moved from NYC (she lived in Manhattan, and yes I’m still slightly bitter that she moved in April instead of August, because I could’ve totally had a free place to stay for BlogHer!), she thought it might help her transition to life in the South if she moved downtown, instead of out in the suburbs. I think that makes sense, and it helps that Charlotte has one of the prettiest downtown areas I’ve ever seen (with exceptions for Seattle and Portland). She found this really cool building that had been a department store in the 1920’s or 30’s, and it’s now been converted to condos. It has these amazing huge ceilings with giant windows in her living room.

Those windowsills are just about the only place to sit too, because Tracy has no furniture, since her movers are scheduled to show up with her stuff from NYC this week. But Catie travels with her own little suitcase full of toys for entertainment purposes, we had an air mattress for Catie and I to crash on, and we had a great time.

I also got to see my brother’s apartment for the first time, which I felt slightly bad about, since we’ve lived in North Carolina for a year & a half, and this was our first trip there to visit him. (Forgot my camera for that part!) It wasn’t an intentional slight at him, just the way it works out. He usually comes to our house when we visit each other.

There wasn’t anything major that happened – we hung out together, we rigged up some iPod speakers and danced to silly kids’ music around Tracy’s empty living room, we ate out at a couple of really great restaurants, and we walked around downtown Charlotte a bit to explore Tracy’s new digs.

And best of all, Catie got to hang out with a couple of her favorite people. (Two of my favorite people too, actually.)

It was a really good weekend.

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Our trip to New Orleans was so much fun, I don’t know where to start. I think I’ll let the pictures do the writing for me.

If you need a custom-made princess dress, it’s good to have a Mimi who knows how to sew. (Also included: silver sparkly headband-crown, which you can’t really see in this picture because of the light.)

Two of the nights that we were in town, we went to my cousin Ryan and his wife Theresa’s house, who generously hosted a dinner/family reunion/hanging-out-talking-for-hours thing. That was a lot of fun, since they have kids close to Catie’s age, so she had a fantastic time playing with her cousins (and their toys).

This picture cracks me up. Brendan and C.C., two of Catie’s cousins, were happy to smile for my camera, but Catie is totally indifferent and is all, “Whatever, I’m gonna call somebody on this toy phone and have a very animated phone conversation complete with hand gestures.” And, um, I don’t know where she gets that whole talking-with-her-hands thing. *cough* I swear I don’t know anyone in my family who does that. *cough cough*

We were lucky to have gorgeous weather all weekend. On Saturday, a bunch of us went to City Park, which I was hoping to get to take Catie to see.

I love the old oak trees in City Park. My aunt Michele said that the oak trees are almost like people, they’re such a part of New Orleans’ identity. I can kind of see what she means. Those oak trees hold a piece of my heart like almost no other part of the city.

The last time I was in New Orleans (June 2006), it was almost a year after Hurricane Katrina, and the train ride around City Park was still destroyed. I was six weeks pregnant with Catie at the time, and I started to cry because I always had this vision of someday taking my kids on the train that I had ridden on when I was little.

In the last few years, they’ve rebuilt City Park to even better than before. Not only is the train ride back, and the carousel has been restored, there’s a small amusement park there as well. It was fantastic.

Finally, we got on the train.

All aboard!

I’ll be honest, I almost cried. It was so cool to finally get to take Catie on that train, which four years ago, I thought might never happen.

I took a few dozen pictures from the train. Most of them were crap. Then I happened to snap this one, which I didn’t even know was good until I saw it on my computer later.

I want to have it enlarged and framed. I love it that much. And I’m not trying to toot my own horn as a photographer, this one was just a really happy accident. It was taken from a moving train, it’s not like I had time to compose the shot.

On Sunday, we went to the French Quarter.

Catie recognized St. Louis Cathedral as “the castle from Princess & the Frog.” I tried to explain that it was a church, not a castle, but… eh. It has spires. I can see how she’d be confused.

Hey look, it’s the Wilkinsons on Wilkinson Street!

I love this picture of Catie and my mom, the way their heads are tilted toward each other. They have such a great relationship, I love watching them interact.

Flying home yesterday was exhausting, as air travel always is, with or without a toddler. But we’re home, and we’re getting back to normal everyday life now. As nice as it is to be home, though, I am already missing New Orleans. I love that city so much.

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