Starting the year off right.

We decided we needed to have a little fun together as a family on New Year's Day. The promise of seeing a real movie set led us to spend a few hours at nearby Jekyll Island and we had a blast. The weather was beautiful and it wasn't very crowded.

So, the next X-Men movie is being filmed in part here in Georgia. There's one set within about 3 miles of our house (I've been meaning to take pictures but I keep forgetting my camera when I take Cat to school) and the other one is on JI. (Thanks for tipping us off, Nicole!) We drove around until we found the set. It didn't take long and it wasn't hard to spot. This is what we saw from the road:




And here is what it looks like on the other side of the fence, from the beach side (we didn't take this picture):

If you're interested, you can read more about it and see some good pictures here.

Next we rented a bike for me. (Ben and Cat brought theirs. I'll get my own one of these days.) JI has miles and miles of bike trails and we spent the next 90 minutes or so biking down to the historic district, riding around, and going back to the playground.


Eliza was a trooper and hung out in the trailer the whole time. She didn't even complain when she started slipping through the straps.

Jack got really antsy about halfway through, though, so I put him in the Ergo and carried him the rest of the time. It got a bit precarious at times when he would decide to suddenly lean to one side with all of his body weight, but we managed to get through the trip with no crashes, thankyouverymuch.


Then the kids played on the playground for a while, which is always a good time. I put Eliza in a tunnel that dips down in the middle, thinking she would quickly crawl/pull herself out, but she ended up just hanging out in there for a while. We finally fished her out, but it made for some cute pictures! We were again impressed with Jack's climbing abilities and Cat's monkey-barring abilities.

We finished our visit to JI with some Red Bug Pizza. The kids liked the pizza so much, they decided to share it with the ravens that surrounded us. So we all had a good meal.


When we got home, Ben decided to enjoy the awesome fallish winter weather (we'd been having weather in the 30s for the previous week) by setting up a hammock he picked up on his mission in El Salvador. He hung it between two oak trees in the back yard.


That night we had a little New Year's celebration where I gave the kids a little gift, we toasted with sparkling grape juice, and watched a video montage I made of 2010. (I'll post it here when I finish editing it.) And, of course, a party in our house isn't complete without Cat's decorations, so she and Ben did the house up with pink and purple crepe paper and it looked wonderful. Happy New Year!