Beach Rewind

Wow!  Only seven posts in July?  Yikes!  Can't believe August is here already.  So much happened in July that, well, I didn't even have time to write about it.  I guess a good place to begin would be vacation.  Here are some high(and low)lights:

The GPS told us that our trip should take about 10 hours.  We left at 11PM and got to Emerald Isle, NC at 12 PM the next day.  Yes, that is 13 hours.  Of that 13 hours, at least 45 minutes was spent in a McDonalds in a Wal-Mart because we forgot that Chick Fil A was closed on Sundays.  Why 45 minutes?  Well, the kids are unbelievably slow eaters and Everly fell off her chair and needed ice on her head.  (You should have seen the goose egg.  Yikes.)

Cortlan has now been to the beach three times and Everly, twice.  Kids change a lot in a year and it is nearly impossible to predict how they will like something that they haven't experienced in that length of time.  Will they be annoyed by the sand or love it?  Will they run into the waves or away from them?  Will they want to spend five minutes or five hours at the beach on a given day?  There was no telling until we got there.  I am happy to say that they loved the sand and the surf.  Everly enjoyed the waves so much that she was barrel rolling into them and staying under the water for longer-than-I-would-ever-expect amounts of time.  Cortlan had just as much fun (though without his face in quite as much).  They both enjoyed the boogie boards, and they both enjoyed digging in the sand and making sand castles.

Much of our time was spent on the beach due to the perfect weather, and just being in and by the water was really a fun time.  The water was great, and the sun was shining.  One night, we did go to the Pine Knoll Aquarium and really enjoyed that, as well.  It was pirate night.

Post-Mustache, Pre-Eye Patch

In the past, we have taken some of our best family pictures at the beach.  After embarrassing myself a little with an over the top obsession with trying to get my family to cooperate during even one single picture taking attempt, I realized this wasn't going to be the year for good pictures.  It took me until late in the week to give it up, so to my family and friends that were on the trip:  Sorry for my far too many stressful "smile and say cheese" moments.  But family:  next time, could you cooperate even a little?  I mean, had we gotten it right on one of the first several hundred attempts, I wouldn't have had to torture you with several hundred more.   Even though we didn't get quite what I had envisioned, I can't complain about the memories we captured.