The NC Aquarium

On Wednesday of our vacation, we were off to Roanoke Island to visit the North Carolina Aquarium.

Our munchkins outside the entrance to the aquarium.

Our munchkins standing behind the jaws of a very large shark!  Yikes!

No worries, the crocodile is not real!

 We also enjoyed seeing sea horses, crabs, turtles, an octopus, and sting rays.  Jon and I touched the rays, but the munchkins were a little too scared to even try, maybe next time. 

As we wandered around the aquarium, we came to a huge room with a glass wall and viewed some real live sharks swimming in a big tank.  I wasn't able to get a great picture of them since it was so dark and they were swimming a little bit too fast...  It was really cool to see the sharks up close, though!

Once we had our fill of seeing all the sea animals, we walked outside to get a few more pictures.

It was a really beautiful place to visit.

We had a great time and enjoyed our visit to the North Carolina Aquarium.

OBX - Sunrise

On Tuesday morning, I woke up at 5AM (before anyone else was awake) to head to the beach to catch the sunrise over the ocean, and I'm so glad I did!

Here's the sky before the sun peaked out.

Here's the first glimpse of the sun.

This is one of my favorites!

It was an amazing sunrise...

just beautiful!

One last picture before I headed back to the house

These pictures remind me of the chorus of a Rebecca St. James song, "Song of Love."

"The heavens declare You are God

and the mountains rejoice

the oceans cry, 'Alleluia!' 

as we worship You, Lord

for this is our song of love..."

The pictures also remind me of a couple of verses I read that morning on the beach...

"The sea is His for he made it,

and His hands formed the dry land." Psalm 95:5

"Mightier than the thunder of the great waters, 

mightier than the breakers of the sea-

the LORD on high is mighty." Psalm 93:4

OBX- Beach

Saturday, August 6th, our family headed down to the Outer Banks (OBX) of North Carolina for a week long vacation. We stayed in Kill Devil Hills, NC.  This was our first time being in the OBX.  

We absolutely loved staying in this area.  It was beautiful and relaxing.

The house we stayed at belonged to a friend of ours from church.  She graciously invited us to stay there all week for a very small fee.  It was a great house for our family and very spacious!  We had more than enough room and it was only a 10-15 minute drive to the beach!

This is pretty much what happened every evening when we returned to the house after being at the beach most of the day... tired munchkins!

So, like I said, we hit the beach every day we were there.

The munchkins had a blast!

They both loved playing in the sand...

and walking down to see the pier.

Our family on top of the pier.

On Thursday, we drove about 45 minutes south to check out another beach on Pea Island.
This was the bridge that we crossed to get there.

Pea Island was pretty much deserted.  There were maybe 3 or 4 other families there.  It was a beautiful beach and the waves were much gentler there than at the other beach.

There was lots of sand to play with there, imagine that!

Buddy all decked out with his daddy's sunglasses on.  Too funny!

Buddy loved going under water, even if it was only two feet deep.

Sissy loved collecting sea shells at this beach and there were a lot of them to snatch up.

This is one of my favorite beach pictures of her...

On the last day of our vacation, Jon and the munchkins built sand castles using some of the sea shells we collected at Pea Island.

Sissy was so proud of her creation.

And so was Buddy.

Sissy decided to take a little rest on my legs as I was catching my last rays of sun before leaving the next day.

The munchkins splashing around in the water one last time before we had to say good bye to the beach.

We really enjoyed our time at Kill Devil Hills!  We are hoping to be invited back again next year.

The Beach!

This past Thursday, our family headed about 3.5 hours east to Ocean City, MD to hang out at the beach.  We left on Thursday morning and returned home late Friday evening.  It was a quick trip, but we all had a really fun time!

Jon and I went to Virginia Beach last summer for a wedding, but before that, we had not been to a beach since our honeymoon. (Aruba, almost 9 years ago.)  Jon lived in California for about 10 years before we were married and said he went to the beach almost every day to surf.  Needless to say, he missed the beach and everything about it and was extremely excited to go back! 

This was the munchkins' very first time to see and experience the ocean and they loved it!  They had a healthy fear of the water and loved playing in the sand!

This is where we found Buddy pretty much the whole time we were at the beach, digging in sand!  He was entertained for a very...

long...

time!

A few black and white pictures...  

 Here's the view from our hotel room.  We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express and had a great experience there.

  Here are the munchkins with their dad on the boardwalk.  We walked along the boardwalk on Friday afternoon before heading back home.

 A kind, random stranger came along and took our family's picture.  He said he knows what it's like to go on vacation and not have a single picture of your entire family.  It was so nice of him to take this for us!

 The Bay Bridge... on our way home, we crossed it at just the right time to see the sun set.  It was so beautiful!

We had such a great time at Ocean City, I think we'll make it an annual summer trip.  The weather was just right... clear skies and temps in the high 70's to low 80's.  We made some sweet memories as a family and look forward to visiting the beach again!