Vacation, According to Cortlan

So we left Surf City, NC (which is on Topsail Island) last night at about 8:30, drove through the night with several stops, and arrived home early this morning.  There is much that I could write regarding vacation, which, despite some screaming by Everly and a few minor discipline issues with Cortlan, was a really awesome trip.  But, I thought that it might be interesting to hear Cortlan tell the tale of vacation, and so I sat him on my lap, where he dictated and I typed. Getting a story out of him was a lot more difficult than I anticipated, but I pushed through, thinking that he would ultimately tell the stories of him and his buddy playing in the loft of the beach (town)house and inviting us to a party in their bedroom, us making sand castles and collecting seashells, him spending hours swimming in the ocean, him seeing a big crab walking sideways on the beach.  This is what I got, with my interpretations bracketed:

Cortlan, will you tell me a story about vacation?  We can start it "Once Upon a Time..."
There was a... I smelled some horse poop. 
[So this is the first thing he remembers.  Nice.  There was one point on the last day at the beach that he said he smelled something like poop when we were outside.  It was a two second conversation.]
Wait, you want to tell the story about your vacation, right? 
Uh huh.  The phone was ringing at the beach house where the sand is and the waves.  Everyone had their phone but not us.  Everyone had their phone at the beach.  We had our phone at the beach.  But not where the sand was. 
[Huh?  Maybe he was thinking about them playing with the phones in the bedrooms of the beach house.  They actually plugged into the walls, which was some novelty to them, I think, since they are used to cell phones and cordless ones.  But we rarely heard a phone ring the entire week.  And definitely not at the beach.]
Ok, what else do you want to tell about vacation? 
We made a big hole and me and Wesley got covered up and we made... um... um... it was like a tower and it was like a zoomer that we zoomed down. We just did our hands to zoom down it.  [With some help, they made a huge mound of sand, which they preceded to slide down on their bellies.  Those swimming suits may never be the same again.]
And we made some pork chops. 
We didn't have pork chops at the beach. 
We had pork chops but didn't have pork chops.  We just made a pork chop in the sand.
Oh.  [No, we didn't.  But we did have pork chops for dinner tonight.]
And we had to go to the store but there was nothing at the store.  It was closed.  We were still at the beach but we were at the store.  It was a little bit far away.
[I have no idea about this one.  Though, through the entire trip, he struggled with the term "being at the beach."  We were at the beach in the general sense through the entire trip, but at times we were actually at the beach where the sand and water were.  He thought about that very carefully.]
What else do you want to say? 
Um.  Nothing. 
What about swimming in the ocean and things like that?  Tell me something else about the fun things that you did at the beach!
Um... I am going to tell you about the quads.  Ok, Mommy? 
Ok. Tell me about the quads! 
They have special kind of wheels that they can actually drive in the sand and the mud and they had to go in the water to get the sand off of it.  They were driving around.  We didn't know the people that were driving it.  They went past another quad.  I ripped the waves and Wesley did, too.  I just showed him how to.  When the waves comed, I told Wesley to rip the wave. 
[We saw two quads with beach patrol guys riding down the beach one day.  I wasn't aware of the "ripping" of the waves, but apparently John was there for that one.] 
What does it mean to rip a wave? 
Um. I saw some seashells that we could take home. 
Ok. What does it mean to rip a wave?
Um. To go underwater. To go under a wave!  Can you ride a wave? 
[At the beginning of the week, Cortlan only wanted to play in the sand. By the end of the week, I couldn't believe how much he loved the water.  There was a sand bar that allowed the water to pool a little bit and created an area that had only very small and calm waves for the kids to play in.  He got to the point where he was pulling himself through the water with his hands on the ocean floor and his legs dragging behind him and was going underwater, which he rarely even does in a swimming pool.  So in his head, he was probably ripping the wave.  If that is actually what that means.  Because I didn't know until he just told me.]
Can YOU ride a wave? 
Haha! No!  Can Daddy? Daddy, can you ride a wave??  Mommy, I am all done with my story. 
You don't want to write anything else?
Um. No. 
You don't want to tell about the turtles?  Nothing?
No.  I don't .  Yes, I do!  Yes, I do! 
Ok.  So tell me! 
Once upon a time, there was a big turtle that was huge and Mommy wasn't that big!  The turtle was an inch big! The turtles hurted people, so a forklift had to get they up. 
[We went to the turtle rehabilitation hospital on the island, where we saw a turtle that weighed more than me (as pointed out to him by his father).  As for the forklift, I don't know.  But he had one in his hand during this story telling.]
Wait.  The turtles didn't hurt people, the turtles we saw were hurt. 
Why were they?  Did some get hit by a boat? 
Yeah. 
Why did some get hit by a boat?  How did some of they get hit by a boat? 
It was an accident. 
How did they?  How did they?  How did they, Mommy? 
It was an accident. 
How did they, though? 
The propeller hit them. 
Why did the propeller hit them? 
The boaters didn't know they were in the water.  So what did we see when we went to the turtle hospital? 
We saw the black thingy? Why did they have the black thingy on them? 
What black things? 
The things that were on their, um, the black things that were on them. 
The black things on their shells?  What were they for? 
I don't know what they were for. 
Were they holding their shells together? 
Yeah.  Why were they holding their shells together? 
Because they were broken and they were trying to heal so they could be released back into the ocean.  What else did we see there?  What was it like? 
I'm going to tell you something different.  A forklift needed to pick they up.
Ok.
It smelled stinky in there.  Mommy, did it smell stinky in there? 
Um.  A little bit. 
Why did it a little bit smell stinky in there?  Did some of the turtles smell stinky? 
Some did, I think.  It was hot, too.  So, how does this story end? 
You say stuff.
What is the last thing that you want to say in our story? 
There was some frogs. 
There were some frogs? 
Yeah.  That's the end of our story.
But we didn't see any frogs at the beach. 
But that's the end of our story. 
Ok.  That's the end of our story. 
The End.