week of change

The family metamorphosis has begun...

We heard that our oldest son has been accepted into the Army, after the Navy and Air Force rejected him. His recruiter told him that the Army is no longer taking new recruits for the infantry, so that is good news. That means going to Iraq and Afghanistan may not be in his future, which is a very good thing. I think he feels relieved to know his future is set for the next couple of years.

We also found out that our next to oldest is accepted in the school he wanted to attend and that my mother has graceously offered to pay for his tuition. He may be her only grandchild to attend college full time! Since the school has monthly start dates, he moved his to September so he has time to work out the financing for his housing. Just the fact that he is going has him excited. He has been playing with a band at local places and last night played somewhere in north Raleigh. He plays base guitar even though he started playing drums, then switched to guitar and now plays bass. He thinks these skills will help set him apart for the others at his school as he knows how to play music instead of just wanting to learn the skill of sound production, he knows what it means.

Our youngest son turned 16 this week, so we took the annual pilgrimage to Wet'n Wild Emerald Point water park. I remember many years going for our first time and he was around 7 years old. He was fearless going down the 76 foot high nearly vertical slide. It was all I could do to look over the edge and go down as I am fearful of heights. This year my daughter went along, so she was my excuse to NOT go down it as she wanted me to help keep her brothers from forcing her to go down it. I willingly obliged.

After spending most of the day at the water park, the only bad thing was I got lost trying to find it, again. I actually turned around in the very same exit ramp where I got lost last year. I hate repeating mistakes a second time, so this really irritated me. What makes matters worse is that I almost hit a car on that ramp. For some odd reason a car just popped out of the other lane and I came within millimeters of hitting that car, just after the car behind me honked at me. I had to thank GOD for protecting me as that reminded me of a childhood disaster... As a family of four, we drove by car to Walt Disney World in Florida the year it first opened. As we were getting off on the ramp to the theme park, a car hit us from behind. It jolted us pretty good as I can still remember it. What was even more disappointing was that we had to use of vacation money to fix the car and we never made it to Disney World. I have actually never been to this day. We have been to Disneyland in Los Angeles twice, but never the one in Florida. So you can see why I was so thankful that I did not repeat history and ruin our son's birthday bash in the sun and water.

Speaking of Los Angeles, last weekend my wife and I went to Lake Junaluska in order to see a couple who are really good friends of my wife's parents, who live in Anaheim Hills, California. That is a wonderful place right in the mountains, just 30 miles from the Tennessee border. It is one of our favorite places in North Carolina. We first went there over 10 years ago for a South Korean missionaries reunion, for those who had lived and worked in that country. My wife's parents live in South Korea for 25 years and my wife was born there and lived her whole life there. Around the lake next to the hotel is hundreds of rose bushes lining the lake. Every different color and fragrance you can imagine. Sunday morning I woke up at my usual very early time and went for a run around the lake. I felt like I ran twice as fast as I do in the humid part of the state where we live. Maybe one day we will be able to live in the mountains. I am a mountain man and cannot understand how people want to live at the beach! That kind of change for us is quite a ways down the road.

Almost perfect vacation

As the kids get older, we seldom take vacations together. For the past two years we have made a weekly trip to the beach right after the kids got out of school. Last year we went to Surf City, NC and this year we were a couple of miles down the coast at Topsail Beach, NC. This small strip of NC beaches is almost all beach houses with very few hotels or condominiums. It forces us to relax, enjoy the beach and the kids. It is so interesting to watch the kids change how they interact with each other while on vacation together. At home, they all separate into their rooms and seldom interact. While at the beach, the play around in the surf together, play games in the rented beach house and talk to each other while taking a break to watch TV together. It is worth it to take a vacation just to see them talk to each other! For me, a vacation means no computer, no work and no thinking about work and spending time with my wife. In that regard this year was a perfect vacation.

Well I should say almost perfect as we all got sick except for my next to oldest son, who somehow avoided it. My daughter picked up some nasty virus the weekend before from her friend's family. She had a temperature of 104 last Thursday, right before we left on Saturday for the beach. Then our middle son got sick on Wednesday, but in desperation still made it to the beach each day as he had been waiting for a very long time to learn how to surf. Then our oldest son got sick on Thursday. Finally on Friday my wife got sick and today I am not feeling to well either. It starts with a sore throat, then a high temperature, then fever chills and finally after a couple of days it is over. That is pretty amazing that we could still say we had a great family vacation in spite of us getting sick, but it was that good. It may be our final family vacation together like this as our oldest son is joining the Navy soon and our next to oldest is talking of attending a recording studio school far, far away. This may be a year of major change ahead for us.

I must get back to the beach vacation to end on a positive note. My wife and I walked both morning and evening on the beach sand. We had a couple of thunderstorms but it did not really affect us as the kids normally spent a couple hours in the morning and a couple in the afternoon fighting the pounding waves and loving every minute. Even though my wife's parents live at the beach in Wilmington, NC just having a week of continuous beach activity makes them become immersed in it and enjoy it much more than a couple of hours during a weekend visit. The older boys all learning to surf to some degree and that kept them busy trying to conquer a new thing. We also did the ritual sand burying ceremony a couple of times to take a break. One night was especially nice as the full moon appeared in a yellow tint and the moon light reflecting on the water was really special as we could see it from our top floor balcony. Nearly every day we saw black dolphins swimming near the shore when we were in the water playing around. Normally we only see them in Wilmington in the winter, so that was nice.

One final thought on beaches. As a family we have stayed on all of the North Carolina beaches (except Cape Hatteras as it takes a very long time to get there) and all of the Texas beaches and the Gulf Shores in Alabama and Florida. The Texas beaches are not very nice, but were convenient when we lived in Houston and Austin. The drive to Gulf Shores was an all day event but worth it as that is one beautiful beach with white crystalline sand. All of the NC beaches are nice, with some nicer than others and some way more expensive than others. For now I must say that the memory of this last week was really special as it was more than just a beach trip but a true family vacation.

What was amazing to me was the vacation transformation quickly reverted back to normal life in our house as within 30 minutes of arriving, my daughter was on the phone talking to her friends, my next to oldest son took off in his car to see his friends and the other ones were on the computers - all back into their individual worlds as if they never left.