We decided to turn the tables on Gram and crew and head south on I-95 for a weekend visit to Fayetteville. For those who don’t know, Daddy was born at Womack Army Hospital (now Womack Army Medical Center and much larger than it used to be!). Fayetteville itself has changed so much in the past thirty-some years that it’s hard to recognise some of the landmarks of a bygone era. But that’s OK… driving Bragg Boulevard and the roads round the mall sure brings back memories…well, longing for old farmer Faison’s cornfields where Cross Creek Mall and the All-American Expressway now sit, that is. Traffic was sure a lot less back then… 🙂
The roads had improved greatly since the snow came and dropped about six inches on us in the greater Raleigh area on Wednesday and Thursday. Fayetteville bore the brunt of the storm and had at least eight to ten inches of snow in some areas and reports of thunder snowshowers. It’s something to experience…thunder and lightning in the middle of a snowstorm. Daddy got to experience that twice…once at Fort Leavenworth, KS in 1979 (during the worst winter ever recorded) and in 1998 in Rochester, MN. We’re certainly getting our fill of actual winter weather and the weekend is projected to be in the mid-to-upper 60s. Go figure!
NOTE TO GRAMPS! Just keep the “it’s really nice in Florida” speech to yourself…we like having four distinct seasons in North Carolina even if this one is more intense than usual! {Just kidding…} ;)-
But the weekend was meant for hanging out and just having a good time with the family in Fayetteville. Once we were situated, they came out to our hotel room and roughed it with us for a while. There wasn’t as much cute baby mode as we’re used to seeing from Nicholas as we think he might have been fighting off some bug or another. One thing you learn very quickly with kids (or ought to) is that they’re real fond of giving a good home to all sorts of nasty virii and germs.
But he hung in there and had fun playing with the toys that we brought with us from Clayton. OK, we moved a good amount of his playthings down there with us and he had fun walking from toy to toy and hanging on to anything in reach…his musical table, one of the hotel’s tables, other people…he wasn’t picky!
That’s one thing we’ve noticed is that in the past couple of weeks in particular, he’s doing a very good job walking (holding onto something to be sure but it’s honest to God walking!). We honestly think he’s going to skip that crawling foward thing and go straightaway to walking. That’s when you notice the personality really starting to assert itself…he is extremely single-minded and if something has caught his eye, he’s going to do his dead-level best to go mess with it. It’s not uncommon to redirect him back to the play tables about ten times and finally distracting him with something else. That works for all of about thirty seconds…and then he’s back again. The only thing that seems to stop him in his tracks is when our clock sounds off on the hour. He’s utterly mesmerised by it. We highly recommend those breaking-face clocks… 🙂
After a few hours of shooting the breeze, it was time for dinner at the Texas Roadhouse. The food was outstanding but be warned that if you’re of the panoramic physique persuasion (i.e. like Daddy), the booths are just not going to work. Unfortunately on a Saturday night in Fayetteville on payday weekend…the alternatives aren’t all that hot at that time of night. Even so, we were seated within forty- five minutes which is amazing.
Nicholas pretty much slept through dinner…an amazing feat given the parties on either side of us (as well as the general ambience of the place) were not to put too fine a point on it…LOUD! As in can not hear the thoughts in your own skull LOUD! But he slept through that nonetheless and it was time to retire to our hotel room for the night.