Back from the Banks

Outer Banks, NC September 2007

Well, we finally got home yesterday from our heavenly trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. We had such a wonderful time and are already thinking about going again next summer.

We left on Friday the 21st and drove about half way-we stayed overnight in Pocomoke City in Maryland. I wouldn't recommend the Quality Inn there-we got in to our room and were exhausted and just went straight to bed, it wasn't until the next morning that we realized that the floor was covered with grass-it just felt gross in there!!! Then we got up on Saturday and drove the rest of the way down to Hatteras Village. It was just beautiful. We drove over the Chesapeake Bridge and Tunnel, that thing is long and the drive is beautiful. Abi loved going under the long "tummel."

We finally got to the beach house, Captain's Rest, where we were going to be staying for the week-I must say, we were NOT disappointed. This place was literally right on the beach and it was huge! We had so much fun staying there with some friends. Abi jumped right in on the fun seeing that she was going to be sharing this big playhouse with some of her friends...

She got so excited that she was jumping around in a bathroom with Jacob and hit her head on something (we couldn't figure out what) and got the first injury of the trip...

Like the nice shiner? This is just a few minutes after it happened (well, a few minutes after we got the crying under control).

I took tons of pics, so I am just going to try to highlight the different activities that we did and hope I don't bore you...

Here is the view from the back porch-we were literally right on the beach...it was so fun to look out the window and see this beautiful sight. We all spent a lot of time out on the balcony enjoying the view of the ocean and the dolphins-we saw lots of them, but never close enough to get any pics.

On Monday Steve and I went and rented some boogie boards to play on the waves with. It was so much fun to play out there-I'd never been boogie boarding like this before. Luckily the water temp was great, so we spent so much time doing this.

Some of the waves got pretty big and rough, it was hard to stand up in them...as you can see. Watch out Ashley-here comes another one!If we weren't using the boogie boards, we still liked being in the waterThis was Emma's first time in the ocean, she liked it.

Or if we weren't in the water we could be found in the sand on the beach...

Abi and Dane had fun digging and filling up their buckets.

Allison had just as much fun playing in the sand-here she is looking for Sand Dodgers.

Jacob on the other hand, didn't want anything to do with the sand or the water-he preferred to be in the stroller or on a neat sheet-but he was a good sport and still had fun!

Fortunately (or unfortunately) Abi was up early enough every morning that we got to see the sunrise almost everday. It was so beautiful...

The sunsets and the full moon reflecting in the ocean weren't too bad either!

This is all the fun on the beach, I'll post some more later of other things we did. If you love going to the beach, I would highly recommend this type of vacation, we had such a wonderful time! We can truly say that we are beachbums!!!