The Last Hurrah!

The last week of summer was lined up to be fun in the sun at the beach before school started. Due to Hurricane Irene our plans were set back a few days. We were allowed to check into the beach house in the Outer Banks, NC on Tuesday evening (instead of Sunday). But, by the time we got there we were ready for fun. There was still evidence of Irene all over . . . as seen here in the background.

We spent a lot of the next four days on the beach. The weather was beautiful and the kids had lots of friends to play with.

The boys decided to have a race out into the water . . . run as far as they could. . . without falling down.

The beach house also had a hot tub, which the kids loved. I loved it too! Especially after my kids were asleep and I was eating my ice cream/cookie sandwich.

One day we went to Kitty Hawk and spent some time at the Wright Brothers National Memorial. It was pretty educational (especially because Michael will be studying this during the first part of school this year).

Here is our group picture. I think we are only missing Brooks in this picture. We are so lucky to have such wonderful friends. This group made the whole week so fun, easy, pleasant and memorable.

After a couple of days we got some boogie boards. I think this was my favorite part of playing in the water. There were some pretty big waves. I even got to ride some with Brittany (maybe we can talk Shirley into it next time). Brooks also brought his surf boards. Thanks to our friends watching our kiddos, Ben and I were also able to ride the waves/swim together. Everyone had lots of fun in the water.

We did have a horrible 15 minutes were we lost Sarah. She had been hauling buckets of water from the ocean up to a hole on the beach. On her way from the water back up to our umbrellas she walked too far to the left and couldn't find us, so she kept walking down the beach looking for our umbrellas. It was awful discovering that she was not were I thought she was (down in the hole with the other kids), and not being able to spot her as we scanned the beach. We eventually got the lifeguards to drive down the beach on their 4-wheeler. They found our cute little girl with blonde braids about a 1/4 of a mile down the beach. They got her on the 4-wheeler and brought her back to us. We hugged her and hugged her and cried. She wasn't one bit worried -- thank heaven for her being four and not realizing what could have been.

Anyway . . .

Other than that we had a wonderful time on the sand in the sun.