Spring Break

Spring break was such a bummer! It rained all week...including the one day Jeff took off. We went to Panama City for the day and hoped to visit the beach and do a little shopping. It rained the whole day and although we got to do a little shopping and ate some good seafood at a place called "Sharky's" (thus the picture) it was kind of a lousy day.

Rock Ranch

Jeff, Kelly, Michaela and I joined Kelly's Cub Scout pack at Rock Ranch the weekend of November 7th-9th. (Madie had to march in a game Friday night so she spent the weekend with Grandma and Papa...we missed having her with us.) We arrived after dark on Friday night and it was raining so we slept inside one of the Conestoga wagons. That was an adventure!

On Saturday we went over to the main part of the ranch for the "Family Fun Days". They had lots of things for the kids to do...corn box (yes, a box filled with dried corn...similar to a sand box...they thought it was cool!), bouncies, animal petting area, John Deere trikes (Jeff rode too!), corn cannon, family dodge ball, fishing, corn maze...it was a very full day!

That night we all snuggled into our tent...and froze! When we got up the grass was frozen. It got down into the 20's. Brrr! I woke up to chomp, chomp, chomp. I unzipped my tent door to peer outside and there were the cows eating their breakfast. Too cool. Of course I had to take some pictures of the cows.

It was a great weekend and the fall leaves were BEAUTIFUL!

Celebrating Michaela's birthday...

HAPPY 12TH BIRTHDAY MICHAELA!!!

We spent Michaela's birthday at Wild Adventure's this year. The kids wanted to go and see what "Phobia" was all about...basically a corny haunted town, but they still had lots of fun. We drove the go-carts several times, played goofy golf, watched a few of the shows including a cool motorcycle show and an animal show...Michaela and Kelly got to hold a snake and baby alligator afterwards...Madie didn't like the creepy crawlies. And of course we also rode lots of the rides and then when it finally got dark we visited "Hattersville" the haunted town. The best part was playing with all of the characters while waiting to go in. Some of them were a little scary but most were just silly.

Here are some other pictures from our day...

OBX...Outer Banks Vacation!

We had such an awesome vacation!!!

We started out by taking a ferry from Swans Quarter to Ocracoke Island...a 2 1/2 hour trip. While on the island we visited our first lighthouse of the trip and a terrible little museum for Blackbeard who resided on the island (can you say "tourist trap"!)

Then we took another ferry (45 mins) over to Hatteras. There we grabbed lunch at Dirty Dick's Crab Shack....not the best crab cakes I've ever had but the cocktail sauce was yummy. From there we drove to our 2nd lighthouse, Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. We got to climb this one...all 257 stairs! Whew! Our final lighthouse stop of the day was Bodie Lighthouse. We couldn't climb that one either. We finally made it to the house in Corolla about 7 pm. The last 20 miles took us over an hour! Traffic was awful. We saw our 4th lighthouse on the way to the house, Currituck.

Sunday we spent all day at the beach and then after dinner we played this wacky game my brother brought. I will have to find out more about it and post later...got to make one to play here.

Monday we spent at the beach too and then went to a baseball game...the Outbanks Daredevils. Afterwards we all went for Coldstone Ice Cream! Yum!

My niece Libby's favorite saying is "GASP!" and she holds her hand in front of her mouth! Hysterical!

Tuesday we went shopping in Corolla for souvenirs and then spent the evening watching movies. 16 people and two dogs in one small living room...cozy!

Wednesday we spent at the beach again. This time though we talked Mom into coming with us. Andre and Tim drove their 4-wheel vehicles down the beach and we parked right by the water. Mom just had to hop out of the truck and walk a few feet. Moose and Oso also came with us. Oso did not like the water but Moose loved it! He even crawled up on Jeff's boogie board and tried to surf! We also got the kayaks out and went for a ride.

On Thursday we got up early and went fishing. The 4 hour trip was lots of fun. Everyone caught fish although most of them were not big enough to keep. I even caught two at once...don't believe me? While check out the picture below. Later that night we got cleaned up and went to the beach to take family pictures and fly kites. The kids had a blast flying the kites on the beach and sunset was beautiful. See the family pictures on the right.

On Friday Mom and Andre left to go home. After breakfast we went to climb the Currituck Lighthouse and then went to spend our final day at the beach. The waves were really high and we had a blast riding the boogie boards.

Saturday came way too fast and it was time to pack up and head home. What a wonderful week at the beach! One of the best vacations I've ever had....way to go Neen on planning our family vacation.

The traffic was bad trying to get off of the island too so we stopped and shopped some more and then headed down to the Wright Brother Museum for a few hours. We finally made it home at 5:30 am....exhausted!!!

Confession....I took about 1500 pictures over the week!!!