Ice Cream After Easter Dinner...

Movie... maker... is... addictive...

Just another day at the beach...

When the surf is flat...

Anna and I are still enjoying our spring break. It's been close to 80-degrees the past couple of days and the trend is supposed to continue. We hit the beach for most of the day yesterday. Got a little too much sun so we took today off. We were going to take a little drive up the coast today to Wilmington, NC, as Anna wanted to do a little shopping at a scrapbook store there. She's been getting into it more lately, and had a couple scrapbook sessions this week at different friends' homes. After calling the store, she learned they closed shop.



Soooooooo, we did what any couple would do after learning a scrapbook store 1.5-hours from home was no longer open... we went to one of the local surf shops and bought a longboard skateboard. OK, OK... I went to buy the longboard and my wife went with me. However, I think she was more excited about it than me. I had been looking at something called a Carveboard (sort of like a giant skateboard w/ inflatable tires) for a while. Just something to play around on to feed my surfing jones when the surf is flat. Supposedly, it's the closest feeling you can get to surfing on dry land. Downside is, you need big hills to get the most out of one, as all you basically do is carve back and forth down the hill (much like surfing or snowboarding). Since we don't have any real hills here at the beach, I figured a longboard would be a good alternative. Yeah, yeah... some of you are scratching your head and thinking "You bought a what?" "How old are you?" To that, I say, young enough to crack a grin when messing around on one :-)



To make it even more fun, Anna and I towed each other around the neighborhood with the golf cart. Even after Anna bailed and skidded face first down the asphalt (good thing she had on some protective gear), she got right up and had another go at it.

Spring Break has begun...

No better way to start spring break than a fun little surf session last evening. While Anna was having dinner with a few friends, I was just a stone's throw away getting wet off 6th Ave. South. In my 15 years of surfing, I've never had any photos taken of me with a hi-end camera. Well, that was until last night. The surf wasn't all that great when I first got there, but the winds shifted and it started to clean up after about an hour. Shortly after, I noticed a guy with a camera on a tripod taking pics of me. He kept shooting for about 45-minutes, at which time I got out of the water. He approached me and graciously offered to email me the pics. The surf wasn't huge, but I was pretty stoked nonetheless to see the pics and how clear they turned out. The guy who shot the pics is Danny Robbins, who owns Danny's Quality Painting (843-446-5325), and does photography on the side. For any locals reading this, Danny is a stand-up guy, so if you're looking for a painter, pressure washing, or drywall repair, give him a call.

Anyway, here are some of the many pics he took...

Some different shots in sequence using movie maker...

SPRING IS HERE!

It feels like spring is finally here! Today it's supposed to get up in the low 70's so I'm trying to update the blog before too much of the day gets away from me. This past week, Kirby and I enjoyed entertaining our students.

Oh, the things we do for our students....

Kirby and Jon Hoffnagle (PE teacher at the Primary School) were asked to ref the elementary PTO basketball fundraiser game a few weeks ago. Kirby started to get some ideas of dressing up as "Billy Bob" and "Bobby Earl" characters.




He thought up the costumes and even some "skits" to do while they were reffing the game. They didn't tell anyone they were going to do it, so when the refs were introduced, this is what happened.




Of course they had to have a real ref (Andrew Baeli, one of Kirby's co-workers from last year)who could actually blow the whistle (since Bobby Earl and Billy Bob couldn't through their teeth).

The same day, I was trying to catch the St. Patty's Day leprechuan with my students. Mr. Leprechuan visited our classroom and we were all suprised to see what the sneaky lil' guy had been up to. The class came up with some creative ideas to catch him... be quiet, stand on our chairs, lock the doors, leave gold under the desks...

He even left us gold chocolate and a special note with "magic powder" to sprinkle in our applesauce.

We never did catch him. I guess we'll try again next year!

Better get your bread and milk!

Well, not quite a blizzard. Not even a real snowstorm for that matter, but we did get a little snow here along the Grand Strand... the most they've gotten in quite a few years. It dominated the news stories all last evening. We ended up getting about 3" of accumulation here on the coast. By about 1:00 in the afternoon it was all gone. Being from the north, it was a nice treat for Anna and I to see.

Some pics and videos. Some serious, some not so much so. As always, click on the pic to enlarge...

We submitted this pic to the WMBF News website and they used it as their featured image...

6th South and Lotus...

"Burrrrrrrrr"...

Driving down Elizabeth St. to the beach...

Bye-bye palm tree...

A look up the beach at 6th South...

Anna's attempt at weather reporting...

Got bread? Got milk?...

My weather report...

Snowman on the beach?...

Pulling onto the beach...

The roads were so bad, everything was cancelled :-)...

Freezin' for a Reason

Last weekend Kirby braved the cold breezy air and participated in the Myrtle Beach Polar Plunge. NMBM school raised about $6,000 (for Special Olympics) to see a few teachers and some students run into the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of winter.




Everyone was stuffed into the warm basement of a hotel until the DJ let the herd of entergetic people out onto the beach. Everyone stripped off their clothes and when the bullhorn blew... there was madness!!






Here's a video from a local news cast of the event. I can't get the link to work, so you'll have to copy and paste the address into your web browser...

http://www.wmbfnews.com/global/category.asp?c=151146&clipId=&topVideoCatNo=109086&topVideoCatNoB=144993&topVideoCatNoC=123142&topVideoCatNoD=139177&topVideoCatNoE=144602&clipId=4502538&topVideoCatNo=109086&autoStart=true