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sand dunes

obx vacation (part five)

Finally made it to the last post in my vacation series. Thanks for reading along with all of our adventures.

I’ll start where I left off in the last post.
We had just gotten done with “the best beach day ever” and went back to the house for dinner before we headed off to the sand dunes for another sunset. Can anyone see, from reading these posts, why I am still recovering from vacation? We enjoyed getting to see and do everything..but it sure is exhausting.

Our grand plan the next day was to go to the kite festival after breakfast. The sand dunes are not very fun to walk on during the day…even when the temperature isn’t too bad. I’m talking like mid-70’s…gorgeous, perfect weather! But our feet were burning as we trekked through the sand. You think we would have remembered this from our last trip, but I guess we had to re-learn our lesson. This outing was so not pleasant. Hot sand, burning feet, crabby toddler who kept sitting in the sand and saying “don’t wanna walk,” and to top it off….no wind. No wind=no kites. We hiked all the way the dunes to find out that the winds weren’t strong enough to get the big kites out yet. At this point, we were ready to just go back to the house. But not before I got a cute picture of Liam by the water.

Evangeline and Kingston took naps while the rest of us took some time to relax. But the later it got, the more we were pushing it to try the kite festival again before it ended. Liam still wanted to go so I asked him if he’d rather go with me or daddy. He chose me 🙂 So we had a little date. We parked much closer this time and we wore our flip flops. It made for a much more enjoyable time.

Liam got a little kite flying lesson. Now he’s ready to buy one!

Out of all the kites, the rainbow kites were his favorites

I was kind of partial to the giant flying panda

After dinner, we headed out to the beach for a walk at sunset. We brought a bucket to collect seashells. We filled that thing. This was my favorite part of our vacation. Perfect weather, perfect beautiful sky, lots of seashells, and the absolute perfect lighting for pictures! I wanted to get a picture of each of us with the ocean in the background.

but poor Evangeline never got out of that backpack–and she actually left the house with no bow! If you know me, that never happens. I was pretty sad.

it’s like a ‘hidden picture’ game. can you see it?

I have no clue who these men are. But I loved the fisherman vibe for this picture

I wish I could relive that night. It was amazing. The whole trip was amazing. Thank you for letting me share our trip with you! And thanks again to Eileen for making this trip possible!

June 16, 2014

Blog, Family, kids, obx vacation, vacation

obx vacation (part four)

Well here is the second to last Outer Banks post. It’s been difficult to narrow down pictures because I have many more that I’d like to share.

During our last trip to the OBX, we went to see the Bodie Lighthouse on a super windy day. We didn’t even get our kids out of the van last time so I wanted to visit again. So on day 6, we started off with a quick stop there.

we had quite a few people offer to take pictures of our family while we were doing different things. I love all of them–even if they are dark or shot at a strange diagonal angle.

we wanted to go check out Jeanette’s Pier, like we did on our last trip. but there was a $2 charge per person so we just played around before the gate.

I saw an advertisement for “the best donuts in the OBX” so we had to stop to be the judges. Duck Donuts. I will say–they did NOT disappoint! Absolutely amazing. I’m still dreaming about them. After I got home, I saw that they also sell a donut sundae. I know what I’m getting next time!!

We also hit up all those thrift stores that were closed the day before. We scored some good stuff–including a lens for our camera. Unfortunately, that lens has it’s quirks. It drives me crazy but Don loves it.

We were excited to visit the sand dunes for the sunset. That was my favorite part of our last trip. I was happy, this time, to have Don carry Evangeline. She grew to love this carrier.

the dunes are a great place to fly kites–Evangeline loved watching all of them.

the sky was so beautiful–God really is an amazing artist!

We had heard about a festival that was happening the next day, a few miles away from us. We didn’t really know anything about it but we love free things! When we got there, we realized that when they advertised it as “free,” what they really meant was that it was free to watch everyone spend money to do different activities, eat the overpriced festival food, and purchase local (expensive) merchandise at hundreds of booths that were lining the streets of this little town. So basically, we went on a walk, took a few pictures of this little lighthouse, and left.

The good news is that we also found another thrift store and a yard sale while we were out. So that made it worthwhile. On our way back to the house, we saw an awesome kite festival going on at the sand dunes. We had planned to go to see it after lunch…but by the time we were ready, it was over. Liam and I did get to see it the next day though.

Since we missed the kite festival, we packed up and went to the beach instead. Liam declared it “the best beach day ever!” Since the storm had just come through the day before, there were tons of seashells that had washed up on the beach. Not many pictures because I seriously was having too much fun collecting shells with Liam.

And that’s where I’m leaving off this post. Only one more before I’m done. Thanks for the kind words that some of you have shared with me about my posts/pictures!

June 15, 2014

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