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outer banks

Blog, Family, kids, obx vacation, vacation

#robertstakeontheeastcoast day 4

Wednesday we had planned to spend all day at the beach, taking some breaks. While it didn’t end up happening like that, Wednesday was really fun for us all.

We started the morning by going to the beach. It felt nice while the sun was shining. But it was another windy day. The boys didn’t mind a bit!

Building sand castles

This is a horrible picture but Liam’s face cracks me up

Family beach picture!

Evangeline took a really long nap while we were there. I ended up putting on my cardigan because I was getting goose bumps. But it was still a lot of fun trying to hunt for seashells. We didn’t find many shells but we did see some crabs!

Then we headed back to the house. Don grilled some hot dogs and Liam was able to ride the bike around a bit.

Notice the flip flops. I never thought I’d see my husband wear flip flops!!

A little while later, I noticed that Kingston and Evangeline had red faces. They got sunburnt 🙁 It was my fault because I didn’t put sunscreen on them.

You probably can’t see it too well in this picture, but here she is with her redness, poor girl!

We weren’t sure what to do after hanging out at the house for a while. I wanted to find a place to watch the sunset over the water. We had tried to find somewhere the night before and couldn’t find out how to get there. My dad suggested Jockey’s Ridge. A giant sand dune park. I’m so glad he talked it up. We went there around 6:30 and I’m so glad we did. It was probably my favorite part of the trip. We put jackets on and the weather felt perfect.

These sand dunes are huge. And we walked the whole time barefoot. With all that nice, soft sand between our toes. I’m sure you love that visual Maggi!

The silhouette pictures were so fun to take

We had a beautiful sunset on one side and a full, pretty moon on the other side

Someone kindly got a silhouette picture of our whole family. I love how it turned out–even though you can’t see Kingston or Evangeline.

The boys thoroughly enjoyed playing on the dunes. We would let the run pretty far ahead, which I think they thought was great! We loved the experience so much that we decided to go again in the morning.

I loved the dunes!!

Whew, two posts in one night 🙂

Now I’m off to bed so we can spend another full day exploring DC!

September 21, 2013

Blog, Family, kids, obx vacation, vacation

#robertstakeontheeastcoast day 3

It is hard keeping up with these blog posts while we are still on vacation. We’ve had super full days and I’ve been ready to go to bed at 8 (7pm central.) But, if I don’t write it all as it’s happening, I’ll fall very behind and feel overwhelmed. And I’ll probably forget everything.

Anyway, day 3 of vacation–which also happened to be our first full day at the Outer Banks. That day was super windy, which also made it chilly. We decided that would be a great day to do the other things on our list and avoid the beach. We started out at the Aquarium. The alligators and otters weren’t out that day and the majority of the place was mainly fresh water fish. So that was disappointing. Salt water fish are always much prettier! But they did make up for it with a room where you can touch sting rays, starfish, hermit crabs, etc. And also, a shark tank. That was fun!

Evangeline was ready for a bottle at this point

Liam looks so impressed

And of course, we always have to stop at a penny machine for Maggi! This is the only one we’ve seen so far 🙁

We walked out to the dock

Since 5 year olds aren’t good with cameras, we’ve had to just hold our arms out and take pictures of us together

One of the things that ranked high on my to-do list was a visit to the Bodie Island Lighthouse. Lighthouses fascinate me and I love black and white stripes! It was so pretty and picturesque. Unfortunately, the wind prevented us from staying very long. The lighthouse is open for people to climb up top but we didn’t bother.

husband and wife at black and white lighthouse

I included this lovely picture of us to show just how bad the wind was. I picked a bad day to wear my hair down

But the pictures turned out so pretty, right?

That last picture makes it look like we were the only ones there. There were quite a few people but I captured the picture at the perfect moment.

And of course, it is not possible for me to pass thrift stores and ignore them! So we stopped at a couple. I found a super cute skirt for Evangeline at this one

We went to Jeannette’s Pier that afternoon. It’s a long, long dock that goes pretty far out into the water. We were able to watch some surfers. The waves were huge from all the wind. (Did I mention it was windy?) Well, the wind was especially strong as we walked out on the Pier. There were fish plaques on the boardwalk. Liam ran all the way down them. He claimed that this was one of his favorite parts of vacation.