Charleston, the first day

Back when we lived together we had Michael Dancen Jacks parties, read Harry Potter on the roof, ate ice cream with a spoon in each hand and learned who we really were.

The last time we were all together was over 7 years ago.  We’ve had relocations, jobs come and go, 8 kids, and when we get together we pretty much look and act the same as we did before all that. 

We planned this trip for years, and we started it with a prayer, a short road trip to Charleston, and some pretty smash-bang barbeque Nachos from Home Team BBQ on Sullivan’s Island.

We took a short walk to Sullivan’s beach and got excited about the local plant life.

We promptly took off our shoes…

…and like the good tourists that we are, asked someone to take our picture. 

We then proceeded to be really cool.

We checked in to our Inn and proceeded to be really cool again:

Then we were off around the city.  We found a large horse that wanted to eat my head, so Hannah fed it something else.  (Note:  It didn’t really eat my head.)

We found fantastically gorgeous alleyways.

And we found some fancy chocolates made by hand by a man named Christophe Paume.

Then we went window shopping on King’s Street.

Nailed it:

We found this quote along the way and were really inspired.  I mean, Stephen R. Covey is an inspiring guy.

That is to say, it inspired to indulge on the ice-cream we were all imagining in our faces.  Yes, true, we’ve had ice-cream in our history, but not in our Charleston history.

We sat under this tree and ate and chatted and it was great.

I’ll show you what we did tomorrow, tomorrow.

Second time at the Fair

The second time round at the fair, as an Empey parent, you have learned and remembered a few things from last year’s failures and successes.  This year, you skip the allure of the free entry with canned food donation day, and instead scour the internet for the lowest rates of attendance at the fair.  So instead of canned food day, you go on senior citizen’s day.  Half as many people, and it feels like heaven.

And if you’re Nick on your way to the fair, you’re just so, so savvy about saving little kids legs for later and therefore you drop your family off at the gate closest to the pig racing (which was last year’s favorite) and park the car all by your lonesome.  And on your walk back, you stop by the Old Grist Mill and buy a nice big cup of hush puppies, because you know that’s what your wife has been looking forward to buying since last year.

And if you’re Nicole, you’re just so so proud of yourself, and your husband, as you walk a short distance to the pig racing, instead of 2 miles to the pig racing like last year, and you sit and eat snacks you packed while you wait for the show.  And no one has complained about walking yet, and that is just so smart of you.  Good seats, and food that costs an eighth of what you would have paid at the fair for.
And if you haven’t seen pig racing you still won’t have after you watch this video:

So clearly, if you’re an Empey child, pig (and duck and goat) racing should be immediately followed by carnival rides. And like last year, you know exactly which ride you will ride.  The bumpy slide:

And this year instead of disappointment and sorrow and the longest walk you can fathom you walk straight to it, hand the man your tickets all by yourself like an old pro, and climb up the stairs.
Now, If you’re Everett at the fair for the second time, on the way from your bumpy slide selection to the dog show, you ask politely for the camera and then take pictures along the way.   They look like this:Got the fingers out of the way now:
And then if you’re mom, you steal the camera back and take a picture of everyone approaching that ostrich head, because that thing is photo worthy. 
The dog show proves to be absolutely worth everyone’s time.


And you all get to see a world champion high jumping poodle named Joker. 
Then if you’re Brookston and Everett you want another carnival ride, and again, you know exactly which ride you want to go on.  However, you don’t really know what to call this thing, and you try really hard to explain it, but your parents are not really catching on, so you grab their hands and drag them there.  You don’t know what ‘there’ is, but luckily your parents finally ask ‘ did you go on it last year?” And yes, you had, and you’ve finally found it:

If you’re Rosalyn, you know that you’re essentially paying four bucks to run though a playground one time, and you wait with the ‘rents while your brothers waste their money (in your opinion)  so you can go on the carousel. 
but your brothers clearly don’t think it was a waste:

By now it’s time for the BMX/Motocross show, so everyone piles into the grandstand and eats icecream while you watch daredevils. 

And then if you’re Mom at the fair you’re finally over the icecream ‘incident’ that occurred while watching grown men flip through the air, and you’re accompanying your daughter on her coveted carousel ride and thinking ‘don’t throw up, don’t throw up.’

By now, if you’re Roz and you just rode on your slowly spinning carousel, you’re getting to be a bit delirious.  It is nearly bedtime.
The delirium continues as you consume a 50 cent pickle the size of your foot…
…and then lay on the ground and watch your brother and parents shared the Maple flavored cotton candy that you said you didn’t like.  More specifically you said, after sampling it, “I don’t like that fluffy stuff,”  with a rather disgusted and disapproving look on your face.  That is only if you are Roz at the Fair.  If you’re mom at the fair, you think to yourself ‘wahoo, more for me,” and try to eat the whole bag yourself.  The nausea of the carousel didn’t last.
Leadership, citizenship, and life skills.  Yes. Yes, indeed.
But if you’re Brookston and dad offers you a bite of his spicy dill pickle, you remember from last year, that you don’t want a bite, and respond like this to his advertisements:
The pickles and the sugar are in the building farthest from your exit, so you get to see and say goodbye to everything as you walk past. 
Including the horticultural displays all lit up with twinkle lights.
And you say goodbye to lit up waterfalls. 
And goodbye to all the mums.  There were a lot of them.  Oh, and notice how this year Mom remembered everyone’s jackets. 
And goodbye to mom dragonflies and half bee face Rosalyns. 

And goodbye to the fair.

On a Sunny Summer Sunday Afternoon

After nearly a year since the last Empey music video here is the newest.

I asked Nick to blog this, but then he started making van Halen references so I kicked him out of the blogging seat.  That’s all.  I hope you enjoyed the video.

What do you do when no one is looking?

…Yeah, me too.

We have little Brits.

Yeah, I spelled it right. I meant to say Brits, not Brats. They love the British show Kipper and have picked up a few British intonations. Watch this short video for an example.

Everett can’t find his horse. He can’t find it.

Now instead of saying “let me have a turn” they say “let me have a go".” And instead of “Ready. Set. Go.” It’s “Ready. Steady Go.”

If you’re unfamiliar with Kipper, here’s one of my more favorite episodes:

Safari in Tarangire

When you last left us we were here:

Which is near the base of Mount Kilimanjaro on the border of Kenya.

We met our drivers Liza and Eddie, piled in our Safari cars and immediately took pictures, like good tourists do:

Then we headed off to Tarangire National Park. On our way we drove through scenery like this:

This is the Masai market in Arusha.

And believe it or not, Nick fell asleep.
We entered Tarangire Park where we stopped while Eddie and Liza popped the tops of the Safari cars up, I took a picture with this elephant skull, we got back in the cars,
and within minutes of being there and hours from the time we landed in Kilimanjaro saw this:
Tembo! (That’s Swahili for elephant)




Don’t we all look like we’re on Safari? Yeah, we are.


Those are baobab trees, which I know about thanks to the Little Prince.

“…Now there were some terrible seeds on the planet that was the home of the little prince; and these were the seeds of the baobab. The soil of that planet was infested with them. A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces . . .”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery from his story "The Little Prince"

There were hundreds of Elephants. It was amazing.


Luckily for us, Martin and Dad had some impressive cameras. Doesn’t Martin look totally rad there using his camera? Yeah, he’s a Dane. Papa Empey had a 600 mm lens. While we were oohhing and ahhhing how close all the animals were, he was taking pictures of warthog nose hair.
Pumba! Swahili for warthog.
Impala
Here are some guinea fowl in the road:
Toward the end of the day we met this Bull on the side of the road. He didn’t give us his name, so I can’t refer to him by name, but we were close enough that we could have become best friends. We happened upon him having a mud party of some sorts, but he got a little upset with all the picture taking and chased us off. Before this experience I could say “I’ve never been charged by an elephant before” and now I can’t say that.

Isn’t he nice looking? Here’s a video of him telling us off:



Evidently the drivers were nervous that we weren’t going to make it back to camp before sun down so we raced the sun to the horizon. It was sooooo much fun. I mean, all of it was fun, but the end of my first day of Safari was settling in and I can’t be poetic enough to do it justice.


That night we stayed at Oliver’s Camp. As we pulled up to the camp there were men there with hot scented towels for us to wipe our faces with.
I highly recommend that you look at the gallery of this place. I mean, the place is so darn beautiful it makes me want to cry. Have you looked at that gallery I linked to yet? You simply must.


We met our hosts, and chatted in the lodge while the sunset. Oliver’s camp isn’t a fenced camp, so they made us sign a form that said we might die and we understood that. That’s not really what the form said, but that’s what they meant by it. Then we were escorted to our tents, thank goodness. Here is what our ‘tent’ looked like.

We were told to radio back up to camp when we were ready to come back up to dinner. On the way we asked our guide if they ever saw animals while they escorted folks to and from. He said “oh yes.” I asked, what kind of animals they saw “oh, elephant, hyena, lion,” real casual like. The fact that he was casual about it and not trembling in fear made me feel like we would survive. And we did.
We sat around a fire before dinner and sipped mango and pineapple juice, then the chef came and announced dinner and we sat down in the lodge to eat some of the most wonderful food I have ever had.

Goodnight!