For Tristan, Connor, Nathan and John.

I took this picture especially for the nephews. There are many times when visiting the Hamiltons that one would wake up surrounded by these little green men, caught in the middle of an advance on the enemy. While I was visiting, Connor and I played soldier and we used the whole house as our battleground. Here are some "guys" left over from previous visits who are still on the offensive.



Wonder who will win?

Family and Friends

Me and Annie


Diane salsa dancing.


Baci sleeping on the dinosaur toy.


Kyle, Mary, and Daddy at the thai restaurant.


Me and Diane :)


Scott's memorial seat at the thai food dinner (he wasn't there, yall). Enjoy the pad thai!


Sisters! :)


Dave brought me flowers cause he missed me :)

Maya's adorable...

Sunday, Dave and I went to church and then a lunch at the pastor's house and then the beach with the Conklins! Maya's just at the perfect cute age, and she's really well behaved, which is always encouraging. Burying Maya in the sand was Tom's - her dad - idea of playing with her, boys will be boys and never grow up. Dave and Tom made a mote so the water wouldn't reach us. The waves were extreme due to hurricane Bertha - or whomever. It was nice to spend time with Tom since he's been away on work-ups as long as we've been here, only home about a week a month. Katie - I see her about once a week - usually to pick berries, hah.

I'll be babysitting Maya a lot this month - which will be good since energy bills are highest in the summer.

Dave is getting ready for a two week detachment to El Centro, CA, his favorite place, to practice dropping bombs. He's really looking forward to it. He's got 25 flights to do in 21 days though so we'll see how it goes. Basically he's been bored for ten days and now he'll be crazy busy for the next 2 weeks...


The boy-ohs building the mot at the beach. Dave made all the sandcastles in the foreground, not Maya, by the way.


Maya finger painting. I limited her to only two colors and she chose pink and blue, which i thought was interesting. I tried to teach her pink and blue make purple.


A close up of the picture. I really like it. It is better than most of the modern art dave and i saw at the national gallery of art in the modern art wing! In college, my freshman year, i had pictures painted by Tristan and Connor hanging in my dormroom as decorations. :)



This is our macaroni art project. Maya didn't really get it until post glue drying. (But then again, they have absolutely no point, so that might be why she didnt understand the project, too. )

After Near Death Experience, Mav Remains Ungrateful.

Maverick Humphrey Wrigley, seen here in a green bandage on the way home from the Vet, suffered a near death experience which his owners, Dave and Annie, say has left him unchanged and "just as spiteful and bitter as always." Mav was rushed to the emergency vet late Sunday night after his mom applied the wrong flea and tick medicine.

"He woke us up by running into the wall under the bed," said dad, Dave. As the parents investigated what Mav was doing under the bed, they were shocked and frightened to find Mav dripping with drool, hunched over, eyes dialeted, and shaking all over. "He looked like a scary animal from a movie," said the survivor's mother. "I knew something was wrong when he had drool coming out of his mouth. My immediate thought was the flea-and-tick prevention medicine I'd put on him earlier. It was the only thing different in his day."

Dave shown a flashlight into Mav's eyes, which seemed to stimulated him enough to "snap him out of [the seizure]." Annie checked the flea medicine box which indeed does have blatant warning against using the medicine on felines. "We were in a hurry to go to church, so I applied to to Slider and put him in his crate, and then put a two drops on Mav." Annie stated the vet in Kingsville, Texas, where the couple previously got their flea medicine, instructed her to use the same medication on the cat as on the dog. She says that their rush to get out the door led her to forget to check the labels on the medication, which she had ordered from 1800petmeds.com. This investigation concluded that the medicine received in Texas as not the same as what was ordered from the website.

After determining the meds where what was causing Mav's seizures, Dave called the number on the box. "It was a waste of ten minutes," said the disgruntled dad. "They asked for my name, the cat's name, his age and weight, and put me on hold. They then said to take him to the vet right away." Because of the late hour on a Sunday night, Dave and Annie had to find an emergency vet. "Luckily it was about 2 miles from our apartment," said Dave.

The couple drove the sickened cat to the vet. "He was in pretty bad shape. He didn't even fuss when we got his cage out and put him in it. Usually he's notorious for putting up a fight," said Annie. At the vet Mav was admitted right away and ten minutes later the doctor came back with some preliminary test results. "We'd told them everything we knew when we got there, even brought the box of the flea meds," said mom. "The doctor told us his liver and kidneys were functioning okay, which made me relieved, but that there were toxin levels in his blood." Mav was given a bath - which Annie and Dave both wish they could have witnessed - and admitted overnight. The doctor gave him a muscle relaxant to help the twitching stop and an IV. "Once I knew his liver was okay, it relieved a little of the stress," said the worried father. "At that point we just went home and waited to hear from the vet."

The vet called the next afternoon to tell the parents they could pick up Mav, as he was doing very well. "We picked him up 20 minutes after we got the call," said Dave. "We were both glad to have him back. I was so worried about him, especially because it was my fault he got the wrong medicine. I cried a lot that night," confessed the culprit-mother. Annie admitted she'd hoped Mav would be happy to be home and "be grateful that we saved his life, maybe a little bit nicer than before." No such luck, Annie, no such luck. The vet assistant had to wrap Mav in a towel to get him into his cage, and was very relieved to give him over to his owners. The assistant was unable to be reached for comment.

"We got him home and took off his bandage," said a relieved Dave. "He's been acting pretty normal, still letting you pet him and then biting you." When asked if Dave held any animosity towards his poisoning wife, Dave responded, "If Mav weren't okay I would. But since he's fine, I don't. We both learned a lesson: Always read the box. I probably could have made the same mistake, especially cause the vets in Kingsville told her to give the same stuff to the cat and the dog, especially in a rush." When asked if they were going to continue to use the same flea-and-tick medicine, they said yes. "So long as we don't put it on the cat, we're fine," said Annie.


Mav, shown here in a file photo from 2004, is reported to be doing well four days after this incident. When asked for a comment, he professed he was happy to be home. His quote is unable to be published because of language content. His parents apologize for his language. "We don't know where he learned those words, must be from his days on the streets."

4th of July Celebrations

On Friday, we got up early go head up to Serverna Park, Md, to visit Nate and Cindy (Dave's former roommate/best man, and his fiance). We spent the entire day out on Cindy's dad's boat. It was especially cool for me because I'd never been on a boat. We went tubing and water skiing. We had a great dinner courtesy of Nate and a firework display courtesy of Nate as well. Cindy's sister and her husband and 2 kids were there, too. Olivia (3) and Aden (2). They particularly enjoyed the sparklers. As did Dave.


Cindy on the boat :)


Dave on the tube!


Dave w/ the skis on, waiting to get pulled up. Cindy and I did not attempt water skiing, it just looked like it would break my ankle.


Lots of money in this picture.


Dave and I at lunch - I had crabcakes, for the second time ever, which were really good. Dave had a bacon cheese burger... predictable.


Nate and Cindy at lunch. The parking lot is in the water -- so you have to park your boat to eat there! So Posh.


This little pup came in all dressed up for the 4th and her grandma's 95th birthday. You BET i thought it was wonderful and thought Slider would love it too.


Dave and I! It was really hard to get this picture because we were going 40mph and it was bumpy as heck! And then my chair came loose halfway though... Dave fixed it though. I was worried Cindy was going to fly off the back at some of the bumps we hit. But she didnt :)


Some back yard fireworks.


Dave and the sparkler.

Olivia and Aiden enjoying/being afraid of the fireworks. Dave and Olivia got along really well, he tired her out by have her run horse races (Olivia as the horse, duh) all afternoon.


Aiden and his sparkler.

Air and Space/National Gallery of Art

Dave and I enjoyed a long weekend for Independence Day! He had off Thursday and Friday, and wasn't scheduled on Wednesday. So we drove up to Arlington. We had a great dinner of Thai Thai food -- including lemongrass soup -- with my mom and dad while the dogs romped in the backyard. We went to DC on Thrusday. And as luck would have it, they was a folk festival celebrating Texas. Blah. But there was a good 15 piece mariachi band. We went to the Air and Space Museum, which was especially interesting since we just watched the Discovery Channel series "When We Left Earth" which chronicled the Apollo, Gemini, etc projects. We also went to the National Gallery of Art and saw the exhibit from Afghanistan's National Gallery of Art. Apparently, after the fall of the Taliban, archaeologists were permitted to come in and escavated tombs that had never before been touched. Tombs had been located in a trade-hub so it wasn't so much "Afghani" as it was of the age... More reminiscent of Egypt.

First the Air & Space Museum:

Hubble Telescope


Apollo - this little guy held three people!




They upgraded to SkyLab where everone had their own room - it was pretty cool inside but I forgot to take pictures. This was the backup model incase something went wrong on the launch of the actual Skylab.




Dave's work outfit looks a lot like the astronaut's!




In the Navy section, they had a mini Carrier where people had brought stickers and posted them of thier squadrons. The Tomcatters - the one sticker towards the right and center- is based out of Oceana.





They stopped giving shark repelent to astronauts/pilots becasue it was found to attract sharks - go figure.


F/A-18 (model)






Prowler - for Jefferton. (model)







Across the way to National Gallery of Art!




Some exhibit there... where the medium used was wood.. Dave and I thought this was cool - mainly because of mym awesome photographing abilities - but didnt care for the rest of his work. Because IT ISN'T ART! Lattice work that is 8ft by 6 ft isn't art. Dave and I discussed a) how much we dislike modern art and b) if our civilization was destroyed tomorrow, would proceeding peoples care about the lattice work or about Renoir? Does lattice work say anything about our society other than we have lost touch with what art is? No.








The following three pictures are illegal. Proceed with Caution.


Italian art through the ages - was the exhibit, beginning with byzantine art - I looved the Icons! Though they did cause some religious debate with Dave and I...

The halos were first painted (in gold) and then the details were etched in.


I wasnt able to take a picture of my favorite - one of them at least - but it was about 8ft tall, and prolly 15ft long,divided into three sections, painted on wood - a true icon - and you could see where termite like things had gotten to the wood! It was pretty cool because it was authentic.


Beginning of Afghani exhibit. This is a picture of the entering poster. The following pictures are from postcards...


Blinging necklace.

Heart earrings.

This glass is about 2000 years old! It was made in about 120,ad. And it still has the paint on it!


Dave's extactic to have Texan culture around us again. Although we both did enjoy the mariachi band, mainly because it wasn't Tejano music. And if you dont know what Tejano is, then you've never lived in South Texas.

Berries black and blue

Dave didn't initially like the idea of blackberry picking. But I made him go. And sure enough, he realized he loves blackberries :)


They were as big as thumbs!!



Dave didn't initially like the idea of blackberry picking. But I made him go. And sure enough, he realized he loves blackberries :)



Dave enjoying his berries.

Today I went Blueberry picking! The Pungo Blueberries are infamous. The place was packed too, kids and parents everywhere. People were picking buckets and buckets full, I just got a measly pint. They will be great on shredded wheat and oatmeal :)
The last time I went blueberry picking was when Tristan was 2, so ten years ago! In NC, they were just blueberry bushes, but these were more like trees!



The wild blue yonder.




It was like a jungle out there.



gobblegobble




Look more like grapes.