Family Beach Trip

We had a wonderful vacation! Here are several posts showing the fun that we had. I took 150 pictures, so I tried to condense them and only post some of the highlights of our trip. Here are a few of the cousins. I couldn't get them all together and looking, the only picture with all four of them I got was of them watching a movie. There are also a few of the girls looking for sea shells, (They took this task very seriously, I think that they thought they were supposed to pick all of them up.) a cute picture of Emma Lee's hair, (Rachel fixed her hair with a little French braid on each side of her head. Obviously, she has much more patience than I do!), and a couple of them flying kites.

My Fish

Of course, my two little fish enjoyed the water. They were a little hesitant and cautious at first - that lasted about 15 min. After that, they were all about playing in the water. There was one little incident where I was holding the two of them, when a big wave came out of nowhere. It washed right over us, but I held on tight to the girls and we all came up coughing and sputtering. It scared them for a little bit, but before too long they were back in the water.

Beach Bums

The girls loved playing in the sand at the beach. They made sand castles, dug holes, filled their buckets, and just enjoyed laying in it, we even buried Emma Lee (Kerri wanted to be buried but didn't have the patience to stay still long enough.) One day, we stayed down at the water for 5 hours. The girls played hard, ate lunch, and took a good nap in a little tent, and played some more. I really think that they could have just camped out down there all week and been completely happy.

Aquarium

We all went took a little trip to the aquarium. It was "shark week," so they had some shark related activities. They had a little question and answer show with two divers swimming in the shark tank. They also had two little "hands on" areas where you could touch the sting rays, starfish, hermit crabs, etc.

Ferry Trip to Ocrocoke

The girls and I decided to take a little trip to Ocrocoke. I mainly wanted them to get the chance to ride the ferry. I knew that they would LOVE it! They had so much fun on the boat. They made me a little nervous at the edge. Who knows? The way they like to climb, I was afraid that the little rope gate would be no challenge for them to get over. (Don't worry, I scoped it out to make sure that there were no holes they could slip through and stayed right by their side!) They fed the sea gulls and toured the boat, and just had fun watching the water with the wind blowing in their hair. Once we got to the island, it started to drizzle. We drove around and checked out the island and then decided to get some ice cream while we waited for it to stop raining. We all enjoyed the ice cream, the girls thought it was a real trip to get to pick what flavor they wanted. After their snack was over, they were dancing around in the rain. It really started pouring down and thundering and lightening, so we decided to end our little adventure. We got really drenched on our dash back to the car!!

Adventures in the Sound

We went to the Sound side one day. The girls had tons of fun swimming around in the calmer water. As far out as you could see, it stayed the same depth. The girls could go as far as they wanted without it coming even close to being over their head.

This picture cracks me up! Don't they look like two little ducks swimming after each other?

4th of July

We had a pretty low key July 4th. We had plans for hanging out at the lake all day, but Andy and I were so tired after getting back from camp the day before. We just decided to take it easy for most of the day. We did take the girls to see some fireworks. They really loved it! Every time one would go off they would both jump, but then smile and talk about how pretty they were.






Emma Lee also had her first sparkler experience. She did really good. The blurry picture is of her holding the sparkler. Sorry, it's not very clear. And no, I wasn't about to give Kerri a chance at it. I didn't want her to try her hand at fire-eating! We are leaving for the beach tomorrow, so I will have those pictures when we get back.
P.S. Some of these picture were taken on the girls new swingset that Andy built for them. Yay!