Relient K Salutes 'The Office'

Joe's Graduation

Hope this link works
grad2011.html

A Candy Land Prom

Prom in Hertford County is a very big to-do. The entire town comes out to watch the couples as they enter into the prom. Students come in all different types of vehicles. This year I saw both a Rolls Royce and an 18 wheeler. Apparently, a couple years ago a couple came in a boat attached to a truck.

It took two hours for all the couples to arrive and walk down the "candy land" road. It was a non-stop flow of cars dropping off prom goers. The cars were backed all the way up First Street.

Hershey World Tour

This is the tour of what Hershey production looks like:

Picture 1: The cars that you ride in through your tour of the process. The kids complained about how boring the tour was until they were able to get in the cars. The cars are on a moving walkway; it was too funny to see how many of them lost their balance trying to get into the cars.

Picture 2: Supposedly this was the number of candy bars that had been produced throughout the day.

Picture 3: You can't really tell from this picture, but the Reeses cup boxes were shooting by in their final packaging across the top, while the other candy bars were being sent to their next station.

Picture 4: This was a conveyer belt full of Hershey Kisses!

The Great World of Hershey

Myth: The whole town of Hershey smells like chocolate.

Maybe the factory does, but the only chocolate I smelled was the chocolate infused shampoo, conditioner, and lotion the hotel provided.

Picture 1: The front lawn of the Hershey Hotel says "Welcome to Hershey"

Picture 2: The basket of candy awaiting us in our hotel room. This was the coordinators thank-you basket for booking 60 seniors at their hotel. However, I'm sure they eventually regretted that once they began receiving numerous noise complaints from surrounding rooms. We were visited multiple times by the hotel staff, asking us to quiet the kids.

Picture 3: The kids waiting outside of HersheyPark. It was 50 degrees and rainy at the park that day. Most of the kids had planned for 80 degree weather and so they only had short sleeves and sandals. They eventually bought hoodies at the gift shops.

Picture 4: This is the entrance to Hershey World. Inside you can take the free tour of the Hershey bar making process. There is also a gift shop and a station where you can create your own candy bar.

Picture 5: Hershey World was really crowded! It was difficult to keep up with 60 kids in that place. We had to keep sending chaperones back in to search for the remaining kids.

Ocean Isle Beach Paparazzi

Thought I'd add my own photos...minus an annoying video! :)

Ocean Isle Beach Weekend

Here are some pics from the beach this weekend and a pretty sweet video...

Pictures from Pinehurst

Here are a few pictures from our Pinehurst trip a few weekends ago (April 16th & 17th for the record). Unfortunately, I didn't take advantage of the many scenic photo opportunities, and I can never seem to remember to get a good group photo. The first pic is the clubhouse at Mid South as seen from the 18th fairway... sure beats the one at Cedar Grove! Second pic was us waiting out the storm on Saturday, and the final montage is all of our amateur swings and passable golf attire (clockwise from top left: me, bobby, pat, alan).

Went Flying Today!

Rob asked me today if I wanted to tag-along with him while he did a few "touch-and-go's" today in his airplane. I was definitely nervous, but I couldn't turn down the opportunity. He rents airplanes these days, since he sold his, so the one we were in today was nice and new with lots of high-tech gadgets. It was a 4-seater, but I couldn't imagine having passengers in that small cockpit. We flew out of RDU towards the Franklin County Airport which was only 30 miles east. The air traffic controller had us pass over downtown Raleigh before we headed out, we were low enough that we got to see everything from a birds-eye view. The view was pretty amazing... we could see tarps all over where the tornado damage was. As you can see from the picture, we passed right next to Carter-Finley and the RBC Center. It only took a few minutes to get to Franklin County. Rob landed and immediately took off again, circled and then went for another landing. For the second landing he wanted to practice landing with minimal runway. I immediately pictured us landing at the far end of the runway and running out of asphalt... Lucky for me, he just meant coming in as soon as possible and using the least amount of runway. If you go to google maps and look at the franklin county airport, we approached the upper end (where the 23 is) and he had stopped by the time we got to the two thick white lines (before the first turn off)... pretty impressive. It was a pretty cool experience. I thought I would be scared when we took off and landed, based on how big jets speed up and slow down abruptly and loudly. The single engine plane was the exact opposite, it was such a slow experience. It felt like we were up in the air before we had even gotten going, and landing was just like floating down softly. It was definitely bumpy the whole ride, but nothing scary.