Well, those are all novel ideas, but I’ll tell you this – give me a standard hotel room, complete with fancy bedroom sets that include a dresser and night stands, and a real bathroom with a shower in it! When I travel, I need room to stretch, and I don’t want to have to wait in line with a with a bunch of strangers to use a bathroom in the middle of the night!

One of my cousins has been studying up to get her realtors license because she thinks that she can actually make a living selling Wilmington NC real estate. Right now I would have a really hard time believing that anyone can make a living as a realtor!

I can’t remember the last time I’ve ever been to North Carolina other than to simply drive through on my way to Florida!  I can’t really say that it looked much different than Virginia to me, but who am I to say?

That is one of the things that I think makes a town more “user-friendly” to tourists and out-of-towners.  What good is a GPS unit if it tells you that you’ve reached your destination and you look around for address signs and can’t find one anywhere?

I think that it should be part of the town code in downtown that easily seen address plaques are a REQUIREMENT.  And by easily seen, I mean easily seen from a vehicle from the road, not something tucked up under an eave that can only be seen by pedestrians!

Ahh… the circle of life.  I think maybe we should just suggest that we go visit them at their house instead, so we don’t have to go all nuts and fortify our house with all the newest safety equipment!  Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see them, but if we go to them, then they are the ones who have to make sure the baby is safe.  And, we can decide when the visit is over and leave to come home when the baby is cranky!  I think I’ll suggest that to my wife!

Grandpa would always make Grandma drive the tractor, as he would follow along with the hand plow creating the rows. Grandma would cut the potatoes he had bought so there were potato eyes showing on each piece she would cut. We would haul the buckets of potatoes across the field to where the garden was and grandpa would drop the potatoes in the rows, step on them once with his shoe, and then use the hoe to pull the plowed dirt over on them. It only took them about fourteen days to pop up through the soil and start growing.

The only real part of gardening I didn’t like was pulling out the weeds. It seemed back in those days the weeds would outnumber every plant we sowed in the garden. Once a week we would go out and pull weeds while my grandparents would tend the vegetable plants. Toting the water in five gallon buckets out to the garden was no easy task either. I would spill half of it before I got there with it. Grandpa always expected more of us than we could actually physically do. I think it was his way of actually making us stronger as people.

I think that she could do a great job of personalizing each wall mount mailbox to complement the interest of each sibling, or to dress up the house in a really fresh and exciting way.  And, it will be a gift that no one else would think to give them!  I have to hand it to my wife – she sure comes up with clever ideas from time to time!