OBX Vacation

We hit the road right after Tyler and Kristin's wedding reception...we were headed to the beach for a week of vacation in Nags Head! The boys slept well overnight and by the time the sun came up, we had a good number of hours under our belts already.

We pulled into our beach house mid-afternoon.  The sun was shining and we were so happy to be there!

We changed into our suits right away and headed to the beach.  This is a view of the back of our house.  It had a private pool and three decks - the house was great and more than met our needs for the week!

There were so many of these little sand crabs everywhere.  Hudson loved to catch them!

Marissa and I headed to get groceries for the week.  Priorities!

Monday it was overcast, but not raining, so we headed to the beach in the morning.  The wind was picking up so the water was too rough to swim in, but the kids had fun digging in the sand.

Hudson is a little fish and swims all over the pool with his piddle jumper on.  Opposite of Carson who is super cautious and won't leave the edge without an adult!

Monday morning marked the last of our nice weather.  By the afternoon, the clouds rolled in, the wind picked up, and it started raining.  And it never stopped.  Literally for the whole rest of the week it was overcast, super windy, and raining almost nonstop.  :(

We tried to go watch the sunset several mornings - but it was too cloudy to see the sun come up.  Notice how windy it was!

Duck Donuts...sooooo good!

Each couple took a turn cooking a meal, and the other nights we tried local restaurants.  Hudson was so happy to have Sprite!

It was so windy that the waves would crash on the shore and foam would blow off across the beach.

Both boys were up early on this day, so we all headed out to catch the sunrise.  It was super windy and the boys fussed some because their legs were being pelted with blowing sand, but it ended up being a beautiful sunrise.  I'm so glad we caught it!

They were having a surfing competition at one of the piers so a few of us went to check it out.  The kids were more interested in the turtle statue!

Because we couldn't go to the beach, we tried to find other indoor activities to fill our days.  We went to the aquarium one morning.  They had a turtle rescue exhibit and the kids loved nursing the pretend turtles back to health.  Carson asked three times to go back and do it again! :)

The sun popped out one afternoon and we tried to go to the pool.  Fail - it was so windy sand was blowing from the beach into the pool area.

Red flags on the beach.  No swimming allowed :(

We went to see the Cape Hatteras lighthouse one morning.  There was so much blowing sand across the road that they had excavators and plows clearing the roads.  It was so interesting to see!

You had to be 3 or older to climb the stairs to the top, so I gladly volunteered to stay down with Hudson.  Carson was so excited and climbed all the way up without stopping! 

No fear of heights here.

On the drive home we passed a beach access so we decided to check it out.  It started raining again when we were on our way across the walkway so the beach visit was short and sweet!

Soaked upon returning to the car.

We watched lots of movies that week!

Ben was showing off his donut belly in this running selfie we took to send to our friends ;)

It was so nice to be able to run every morning!

Ben was trying to decide what kind to eat that night - ha!

On our last evening there we ate dinner on the water.  There wasn't much activity because of the weather, but the boys had fun checking out the docked boats.

This was how many cartons of ice cream consumed in one week.  Yikes!

Kyle dared Ben to go jump in the pool when it was pouring down rain.  Ben was so bored he went for it :)

We left before sunrise to start the drive home.  To the right of the white line is the sidewalk I had been running on all week.  It was completely flooded and under a pond of water!  There was so much rain!

Emergency pit stop on the way home!

We arrived home right at dinner time, so we grabbed Dariette for dinner before going home.  

So happy to be home!  Even though the weather was not good, we had fun all being together for a week.  Can't wait until our next family vacation!