In Durham

We moved out of the Airbnb place and into Fernando's place on the 28th.

Fernando and Eva had a meeting at Duke to go to late that morning so they dropped Guillermo and me off at Duke Gardens so we could spend some time there with Leo.  It was beautiful there and when we heard there was a cafe on the grounds we took a walk in that direction.  What a disappointment when we realized the cafe was actually closed.

After discovering the cafe was closed we spent a lot of time at this Koi pond and had some snacks there.  Then we headed back to the visitor center and waited in their lobby for Fernando and Eva to get back.

At one point, I left Guillermo and Leo in the lobby to see if there was anything that we couldn't live without from the gift shop.  I was in there paying for some item when Guillermo came rushing in with Leo saying I needed to get back.  Turns out Leo had had a little meltdown in the lobby and had flung two handfuls of cheerios around the room!!  Guillermo said the man at the front desk peeked at them when it was happening but then just put his head down and pretended he hadn't seen anything.  Anyway, we cleaned up all the cheerios and shortly after Fernando and Eva came back.

We also checked out Durham's Costco today.

June 29th

Guillermo has started clearing all the leaves away from the garden and has big plans for it!!  Eva, Leo and I went to Target in the afternoon and while we were there, Guillermo called saying he had been stung perhaps 14 times by wasps while clearing those leaves!!!  He wanted me to bring home a spray bottle and some dish detergent.  So, when we get back, Guillermo and Fernando are in the garden (Fernando got stung several times also) trying to do something about those wasps.  They immediately put the detergent in the bottle and set to work doing in those wasps.  And to think that Leo had been running around in those leaves practically everyday since we arrived!  We did not know that yellow jackets make their nests in the ground!

June 30th

The garden is getting in shape!!!  I'm impressed with how much Fernando works out in that garden also.  It's so hot and muggy outside so it can't be all that pleasant.  Evidently he is a gardener just like his dad and his sister!

In the evening we went back to the same plaza where we had Pizza the other day but this time had dinner at the Nantucket Grill.  Again, good food, nice atmosphere out on the patio and Leo loved running around in the plaza.

July 1st

Our last full day in Durham.

Leo helped his Abuelito plant some seeds today!

This evening we took a drive to Chapel Hill and had dinner at a Mediterranean restaurant.  It was a nice drive, a good meal and a fun break.  The pig having dinner outside another restaurant down the block was a bonus!

Fernando and family moving to a new city

June 25, 2017
After breakfast at our hotel, I drove Eva and Leo to the airport for their flight to Durham.  Meanwhile, Guillermo and Fernando went back to the house one last time, turned over the keys, etc. and then gassed up the uhaul.  Then they waited for me at the hotel to come back from the airport.

The drive this day was good.  We got as far as Suwanee, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta.  We had a few little issues along the way such as finding gas stations that were good enough to pull into with a truck that was pulling a trailer.  Or finding a place to eat that had a good enough place to park the truck with the trailer.  The drive through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama was nice with very interesting scenery.  Georgia is also a very beautiful state.  When we stopped at the Hampton Inn in Suwanee, my goodness that place looked fancy.  Not all Hampton Inns are the same!!  I braced myself for the price they were going to give me for the night, but it was the exact same price as we had paid the night before so that was surprising and nice!  Fernando found a Korean restaurant nearby where we had a very good dinner that evening.  Fernando had to have been pretty tired because he drove all day without a break from driving.

June 26, 2017
Guillermo started off driving our car and drove for about two hours before we decided we needed to make a change.  Since Eva and Leo spent last night at a hotel in Durham, they had until 1:30 to stay in their room before the hotel was going to charge them for an extra half day.  So we decided that Guillermo would ride with Fernando in the truck (which was slower) and that I would go on with our car to Durham and hopefully get there before 1:30.  I drove for over 4 hours straight and got to their hotel at about 1:05 or so.  Eva and Leo were having lunch in a Waffle House next to the hotel so we finished up lunch there, then Eva picked up their bags from the hotel desk and we drove on to the Airbnb house we had reserved for the next two nights.  Thank goodness for Google Maps!!!!!

The house we rented was in such a nice area, had 3 bedrooms, 2 bath and also had kids toys, which Leo just loved!!  He was so happy there at that house!

Ok, we're at a new house.  Am I going to like it here?

Yes, it's fun here at this temporary house!  And how I love pushing my own stroller around!!

It was nice to have this place to whisk Leo away to while things were being unpacked and put together at their new house.  How Leo loved it here and I usually had a very hard time convincing him to leave to go eat or go back to the other house. 

Shortly after we arrived at that house, Fernando let us know that they had arrived at their rental house so we drove over there to meet them.

Their house is cute, they have a good sized yard and a garden waiting to be fixed up and planted in the back!  The garden is covered with leaves right now and Leo sure loved running around in and throwing those leaves!

 We had dinner at a very nice Pizza place the first evening.  We ate outside on the patio and there was plenty of space for Leo to run around.

Last days in New Orleans

Last few days in New Orleans.  We had fun keeping Leo busy while Fernando and Eva packed up their stuff.  We took him to the Children's Museum twice, riding the street car one of those times.

We were going to ride the ferry also across the Mississippi River also, but it proved to be too difficult to figure out the correct place to go with the heat that day.

At the Children's Museum

Eva with her Mother's Day shirt, Fernando with his Father's Day shirt and Leo with his own special shirt.

Enjoying an ice cream at the mall

Last meal in their New Orleans house.

We arrived in New Orleans on Sunday, June 18th (Father's Day).  Tuesday night (June 20th), we had a little scare with Tropical Storm Cindy off-shore.  There were warnings there could be power outages (yikes!  in that oppressive heat that would have been rough) and possibly orders to evacuate.  Fernando and Eva found headlamps and candles they had already packed away, they gathered containers of water, and Guillermo and I went to Walmart earlier that day to pick up some food items.  We took Leo with us to Walmart and when we went back to the car after shopping, it was raining and the wind was really whipping.  Leo thought it was fun!

It rained hard almost all night long.  It sure sounded bad but in the end, the worst part of the storm seemed to be hitting further east.  The relief we felt when we realized that things weren't going to get worse was tremendous.  New Orleans is a really nice and interesting city and I'm going to miss it, but I'm sure glad Fernando and Eva don't live there anymore.  

So the following Saturday (June 24th) was the big "packing up of the U-Haul" day.  I had a fun day planned for Leo and told the rest the two of us would be back in a couple of hours.  We were going to go to an indoor playground for a while, but when we got there, it was closed and wasn't going to open for a couple of hours.  So, what to do.  What to do.  We drove to a park near their house and Leo played on the playground for a little while.  But it was so hot!!!  After a while, we got back in the car and had a snack.  Now what do we do.  It still wasn't time to go back.  So, we went to Walmart and hung out there for a while!!  It wasn't the morning we had planned, but it turned out ok.

The weather was good in the morning, but there were thunderstorms during the afternoon that delayed the loading of the truck for a while.  After Leo's nap and lunch, it was time for me to take him to the hotel we were going to be staying in that night.  We packed up a few things and off we went.  Leo looked absolutely precious pulling his little ladybug suitcase into the hotel!!!  The staff just loved seeing him pulling it along.  We unload our stuff into the room and open the door between our rooms and Leo had a blast running back and forth between rooms.  It was such a perfect set-up.  Then we changed into our bathing suits and we went down to the pool.  The pool was really nice and had floats and pool noodles to use.  It was sprinkling just a little when we got to the pool but that was ok.  Leo had fun floating on the pool noodles and floats and sitting on the steps and splashing me.  Then it started raining a little too hard so we packed up and went back to the room.  A little later, everyone came by the hotel (except Guillermo) and we went out to get some dinner.  Fernando took his to-go so he could also take Guillermo's food back to him.  After we ate, I dropped Eva and Leo back off at the hotel and then went back to the house to finish up whatever needed to be done to get the house ready to leave.  We were totally finished by 9pm and we all went back to the hotel.  We stayed at the Hampton Inn Elmwood - one of our most favorite Hampton Inns ever!