Yes, my hands are full! (and so is my heart): North Carolina Vacation

In my attempt to get lots more photos and memories captured on here, I hope that this will be the first of many in a marathon of posts!

Let's hope I can do it!!

Now - back to North Carolina - right where I left off, on our wonderfully warm and sunny summer vacation to the Outer Banks and the Atlantic Ocean.

Our Family, written in the sand...

Tom and the boys in the surf,

Woo Hoo that water was cold!

Quentin's drawing in the sand, I love the little hand prints♥

J is for Jack

by Jack

Q is for Quent

by Quent

Happy Family at the Beach!

More Happy Family pictures!

One of the kids favorite places to be was the hammock on the back porch. I hear tell that the hammock has been a favorite among many in the many years of the beach cottage.

Well, Jack was absolutely in love with the hammock!

Here he is being silly with Roxie, both of them wearing swimming goggles!

Goofy Kids!

Did I mention that the beach was just over the dune from the house?

On top of the dune was a lookout spot that was super cool to check out the beach and the water. Here are my 3 guys with Tony checking out the view.

Roxie and Quent beating the heat in the little pool up by the house. Not sure how all this started out, but I am thinking I was at the store or something and came back to find the kids (mine in their undies) wet and having a blast!

We spent one day visiting the North Carolina Aquarium, a really cool place!! (meaning it was both a very neat aquarium and it was air conditioned too)

Quent checking out the turtles.

And telling Momma some awesome stuff about the turtles!

They had some absolutely gorgeous, very kid-friendly exhibits that my camera just did not do justice in photographing. It could not get the flash/no flash thing right, so some of the pics are a little blurry and lit funny and if I was better at editing I could get them better. Still I want to remember some of the great stuff we saw and did.

The boys were looking at a tank that they could look down in and match up what they saw to what was on the wall - you could practically crawl right onto the tank to see all the stuff inside.

The stingray tanks were a huge hit with our kids and all the kids there!

It just felt like you were so close to them, and they would just drift right on by.

Little did we know that later, we would get even closer to them!

Yikes - we are in a shark cage!

Silly, but the boys thought it was hilarious!

Here's where we actually get to touch the stingrays - boy was that cool!

That's Roxie with her arm in, along with Aunt Mindy behind her.

Quent was willing to give it a try!

We tried and tried with Jack, but he was not wanting to touch them. But he was content on watching them swim around, oh well.

Mindy, Quent, Roxie, Tom, and Jack watching the stingrays.

At a different touch tank, we were looking at sea urchins, starfishes, and lots of other small sea creatures.

Momma was touching trying to get the boys to join in, it was a very cool experience!

Then there was the ginormous shark tanks!!

Whoa - were these things huge and so fascinating to watch!

We had to peel the boys away form the glass after a while to get through the rest of the place. They probably could have stayed there with the sharks all afternoon asking questions and talking about their eyes, fins, gills, teeth, what they might eat, how do they sleep, why don't they eat each other, and so on, and so on.

It was very adorable how interested they were!

This was a globe that had a movie projected onto it about the oceans and water on the earth. Jack was mesmerized! It was kinda cool how it was done.

Another day we took a trip to the Wright Brothers National Memorial which in Kill Devil Hill, on the Outer Banks. How could you not visit this national Park and Monument?!

Maybe my boys were getting some inspiration for a little inventing of their own!

Models of the first planes flown, amazing, just amazing!

The park rangers do a presentation every hour which was really good and has some neat info in it, but is a lot of sitting and listening for a couple of 4 year olds. So, even though Tom and I were intently listening and marveling on all the facts, the boys were not quite as into it.

Jack fell asleep with his head buried under my arm, and Quent laid across Tom having a snack.

Oh, if only they coudl get in there and play on those cool things - don't think they did not try!!

Quent playing dress up in the souvenir store.

Such a cute boy!

The massive monument up on the hill that the Wright Brothers flew from.

We did not climb the hill up to it, because of the heat (about 100+ degrees that day!), but there is loop drive around it, it really is quite a sight.

Our last day on the beach :(

We spent the day playing in the water, making sand castles and watching the ghost crabs run up and down the beach! They were so cool to watch beacuse they did not get into the water, but chase the water down to get all the goodies that they eat, then run back up to their holes away from the tide. We sat and laughed, I mean Jack was belly-laughing at these things, as they went back and forth!

I wish we had been able to get pictures of the dolphins we saw. They are just so fast that its very hard to capture, especially when you are marveling at them with your kids making sure they see the dolphins! The pictures become kinda secondary at that point. The boys did so love seeing them jumping through the water, it was definitely a highlight for us all!

Quent and Jack, showing off the sandcastle they built with Momma.

Oh No! Do you think the water will come up here?!

Whew - our castle is safe right now.

AHHH! The water got us!

Wait for it...its coming...

Oh man, its washing our sand castle away!

There it goes.

And here comes the tide again!

Hey - stop stealing our castle!

So, we explained the tide thing to the boys and that we had plenty of shells to take home to remember our beach time and that we can make a new one next time.

It was an incredible new adventure for our family, our first big family vacation!

An amazing time for us all, we were sad to see it ever end, but we had lots of driving to do to get home! So, we packed up the van again, said our goodbyes to our friends and their amazing beach house, and headed out on Saturday morning to start the trip back home.

Blech - just a little hot on our way through the D.C. area!

Thank goodness for DVD players in he car during this trip with LONG rides in the car - it truly saved us sometimes !!

Along the way we spent 2 nights in hotel-ahs (remember why I call them that? no, read here.)

and they had to have a pool so that we could burn off some energy and have a little fun after such long times sitting in the car! One we stayed at even had an indoor jungle gym/ swing set on a cushiony floor - very cool and just what we needed to see!