Family Vacation

This year my side of the family went on vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We had a wonderful time! My parents went, my Aunt Becky, Uncle Paul, their two kids, Melissa and Matt, Matt's friend, Eros, my cousin Emily from California and her cousin Bridgette and my Grandpa as well. We had a great 7 bedroom house on the sound side and got an amazing deal on it. The Outer Banks is such a perfect spot for a family gathering. Fun for all ages! You are either on the beach, in the pool or at the sound. Very few distractions. We got to know each other so much more, it was a very good time! Everyone there was such a great help with our kids. I think Henry prefers Grandma and Aunt Becky over me now!

We tried to get a family photo out by the sound. It is very difficult to get 5 people to look the right way and smile at the same time! I also included a picture of a jelly fish we saved off the beach. We thought he was dead, but when we put him in the bucket he miraculously came back to life! I thought it looked very cool though.

More fun!

I had to include that first picture. It is a rare shot to catch the kids having fun, together, on their own! Worth it! The whole crew went put-putting and the kids loved it. The bottom picture from left to right: Matt (my cousin), his friend Eros (Greek, super nice kid), Bridgette (my cousin's cousin, does that make since? She was a super helper with the kids...can she come on all vacations?), Melissa (my cousin, Matt's sister), Tom, Meg, Charlie, me, Emily (my cousin). The girls are all 16/17 and were great to have around, I must say. They were all great with the kids and Meg was just loving every second she had with them. Matt and Eros were all time wrestle buddies for Charlie as well. Plus, Tom liked playing pool and Catan with them...beating them mostly, the man takes no prisoners.

Great Grandpa & Henry

Henry made a new friend on vacation...Papa Smith. I thought these were some cute photos of them. Even caught Tom in the waves in the background.

The Beach

The kids loved being at the beach, which made me so happy, because that is what I loved when I was a kid. We had beautiful weather! Tom had a couple days of good waves as well. He has the farmers tan and the war wounds to prove it!

More vacation pics

We sang to Charlie, for turning 4, and to Great Grandpa, for turning 84! I also liked these photos of the boys. Henry is a busy little beaver. You can't take your eyes off of him for a second! He is in to everything! We have lots of steps at our house and he has mastered the art of turning around and going down them on his belly. Well, on our vacation there were also lots of steps, but much more of them and they ended on a hard floor. Well, Henry took this opportunity to try and start walking down the steps the way everyone else does. All of us took a turn at diving for Henry with his little toes dangling off the top of the steps just as he was about to head straight down them! I wish I would have caught a picture of it, but I was too busy grabbing him!

My cute kids...

These were some great photos we got of the kids on the sound. I couldn't believe Henry stood there for them, or Charlie for that matter. We thought for sure Henry was going to try and jump!

What's for dinner?...CRABS!!!

We stayed right on the sound and it was beautiful! We were told by the locals that you can tie a "chicken neck" to a rope, place it in the sound and then a crab will grab on and not let go while you catch it in a net. This was incredible fun! We actually didn't keep them and cook them we just threw them back in so we could catch them again the next night!

As you can see, there were no sides to the little pier and we were very afraid we would lose one of the kids over the edge. You can see Tom with his arm around Meg the whole time. I thought for sure Henry was going over, he is a wild man! Luckily it's only a couple feet deep, but still not something you want to do.

We loved watching people "kiteboard" in the sound as well. They would have a wake board on their feet and would be holding onto a rope attached to a huge kite that would pull them all over the sound and also very high in the air. It was pretty amazing.

We had such a great time!

Funny Pics

These are also pictures from Charlie's birthday party. After a long afternoon of bouncing and having fun, Henry is trying to enjoy some cake and ice cream but is falling asleep on the job! He is trying to fight sleep so he can have more cake, but falls asleep with a mouthful! It was very cute! He wanted to stay awake so bad, but just couldn't do it. Then, Charlie got some old school video games for his birthday that he and Daddy are enjoying. I thought they were so cute!

My Charlie is 4!

These pictures really sum up the celebration! We went to Charlie's favorite place in the world, The World of Bounce! He had a couple good friends come and had a great time. Then we all headed up to the house for the rest of the festivities. Charlie loves the cars from the movie Cars. He especially loves the race cars in that movie and they can be hard to find, but we got some off of Amazon (and then had our credit card info stolen, but that's a whole different story). You can see a portion of the mayhem that occurred while opening presents. He was mostly concerned about his cars. But he did a great job and had a lot of fun. I love the picture of him blowing out his candles, he about burnt his nose!