Fayettville, NC,

Our next weekend was spent in the Fayettville area getting ready for and celebrating my Grandma Cameron's 90th birthday!  We headed down on Thursday, her actual birthday, so I could spend the day with Grandma, just one on one.  We had a great day, just talking, enjoyed lunch at Cracker Barrel and talked more about her childhood, Grandpa Cameron (who passed away when I was 3), her life as a mom, etc...just a wonderful getting to know my Grandma even more.

Mom and Dad had the kids all day and then I met up with them for dinner.  We found this amazing cute little Italian restaurant in Vass, NC called Valenti's.  They had make your own pizza for kids and of course we had to partake!  My little chef's went right to work and made some super yummy ham and pineapple pizzas...with Italian icees for desserts.

On our way home from dinner we saw the makings of a tornado!  We could see the storm coming and then see the funnel cloud forming, reaching for the ground.  It's hard to tell from these pics because we were driving and my view kept getting obstructed.  All the while I was trying to remember my tornado drills in school about what to do when you're in a car!  We made it back to the camper, which was parked at our cousins house just as she was getting mom inside the her house.  Short story, we ended up not in it's path and were safe, but it was a tense 30min or so.  We stayed glued to the EBS going off on TV and the radio telling us to take cover.

The following day Mom and Dad had to start all the work, shopping, decorating to get ready for the party so I took the kids out and about check out Fayetteville.  You know it's hot when your dipping into the ice pop stash at 9am!

We found a cute children's museum downtown that was on our reciprocal program from one of our SF museum memberships so it was free!  It was pretty small but big enough to provide entertainment before lunch.

 Being in Ft. Bragg territory, I wasn't surprised one of the exhibits was an army bunker...

After a fabulous lunch at a fun taco place downtown, we headed over to Airborn & Special Ops Museum at Ft. Bragg.  My son was over the moon excited and what an amazing place it was.  I would insist that if anyone is in that area, please make a special trip to visit this museum.  Just an amazing and moving depiction of what our service men go through and have gone through for our freedom.

The front lawn is covered in American flags, I'm guessing for our fallen heroes, but what was moving for me was Timo, on his own, walked up to them and started saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

All the exhibits were life size, real machines and equipment and truly breath taking.  Timo spent the whole time pointing and yelling "Mommy, look at this!"  The most moving area was the "Black Hawk Down" Mogadishu event.  I had tears in my eyes as we walked through the exhibit depicting the timeline and story. The whole museum was fantastic and real tribute to our service men.

And we got caught in another nasty thunderstorm on the way home...I love me some summer storms!

The Ft. Bragg museum was free but was we walked in, the Veteran who was handing out maps, told me the admission was free but to take the kids into the museum store and buy them something fun as a way to support the museum...so that's exactly what we did. Unfortunately Cameron didn't find anything she liked but Timo zeroed in on a combination of his two favorite things...Legos and army.  He labored over all the tank Lego sets and settled in on a missile firing truck thing, I think.  He could tell you exactly what it's called.  It kept him busy while we listed to the storm and rain the rest of the evening.