Maddie and Cooper ready for their road trip.
As usual, hurricane Irene was more of a bust than a bang. The media always hypes it up, gets everyone scared and then doesnt deliver. Thats ok though. Growing up on the coast of Virginia, I have seen my fair share of hurricanes. As a child I always thought they were so exciting. Hurricanes to me meant that my sister and I got dismissed from school early, I used to love etting the hurricane tracking chart in the newspaper at the end of Aug. and using it to plot the course of the storm, going to the store with my dad and stocking up on supplies, and losing electricity. It was all so exciting. Now its a bit different for me. The childhood excitement is still there but its now overshadowed by the worry and fear that big storms bring. Anyway, Daniel and I still have memories of hurricane Isabelle in our minds and losing electricity for days, so when the city had mandatory evacuations of waterfront areas in Portsmouth, we decided to leave. We could have stayed at my sisters house or holed up in some hotel sightly more inland, but instead Daniel and I decided to make it a little retreat weekend for the family to a city in Western Virginia called Roanoke. Daniel travels to Roanoke for work on occasion because his company has offices up there and Maddie and I were supposed to go with him a few weeks ago but we were unable to go. So we decided to spend the weekend there to escape the storm. We packed up the kid and dog, and went on a little road trip. Overall it was a good time, although taking the dog sort of limited us on what we could do, I didnt feel comfortable leaving him in the hotel room and we couldnt take him in a restaurant or museum so we did alot of walking around outside. Luckily downtown Roanoke had some outside festivals that we enjoyed and the hotel had a very nice little "park" to walk dogs and Maddie and Cooper really enjoyed it. Anyway, here are a few pics from that weekend.
Maddie in the little park at the hotel, I so wish her face wasnt blurry in this shot. It seems the older she gets the harder it has been to get her to sit still for a photo, she is always on the move.
Cooper and Maddie, looking down at the park area from our balcony in the hotel room. They both loved that park and even when they were in the hotel room, their hearts were in the park. Cooper loved seeing all the other dogs and Maddie loved the Koi pond, which she tried to jump into everytime we went down there. There is something about water that just calls out to this girl and she is fearless, stresses me out!
Maddie in the hotel room, grinning after eating breakfast.
Maddie on the tennis court of the hotel, right after it rained. She loved jumping in the puddles.
I really didnt get many photos of Roanoke, I wish I had. It was a cute town, maybe Daniels work can transfer him to that office and we can move there, that would be nice-just dreaming.
And of course the aftermath of Irene. Luckily our large tree, which we thought for sure was going to fall victim to the storm, was still standing. Unfortunately we lost the dogwood in the front yard. So here is Daniel cleaning up the mess. It sucks because that tree gave the porch a bit of privacy. Now we can see all the neighbors and they can see us! Time to plant another.
