Corolla Beach, North Carolina

This trip had been in the making for a couple years now, and it was a BLAST! We had a little drama getting there, but nothing was going to stop us! A couple days before we were scheduled to leave, there was a hail storm in Denver that damaged several plans. As a result, our flight was completely canceled! It was a hassle getting everything figured out, but we got there and it was worth it!

We met my East coast family in North Carolina for a week this past July. There were 26 of us, 12 of those were kids ages 10 and under! We all stayed under one roof for 7 days, and no one died! HAHA. It went actually really well. I think the kids were all exhausted. Swimming in the pool all day long, or playing at the beach for hours on end, that will wear anyone out. So, each family had a room with a bathroom in it. There were two bunk rooms for the kids, one for boys and one for girls. They all loved that. I know the girls had a hard time sleeping with Berklie who insisted on a princess story every night and song after song after song.....and not to mention her noisy sleeping habits. (she sucks her thumb and hums. It's cute, as long as you aren't trying to sleep). There were two kitchens, one on the third level and one on the basement level. We spent a lot of our time on the top level eating and socializing.

We had dinners together everyday, most of which, Gram prepared before hand and brought frozen. Pretty impressive! We ate really well!

We all loved having a pool right out the back door and took full advantage of that. The beach was a 3 minute walk down the road. The sand was amazing, and the water was beautiful.

When it was time to leave, I didn't want to go! We had such a good time and made some good memories. Let's do it again SOON!

I tried my best to narrow down the pictures that I posted. Here is what I got:

(until I get a chance to fix this, some of the pictures got cut off. But, if you click on the picture, you can see the whole image.)

Oceans Nine house!

She loved finding treasures on the beach, shells and pretty rocks were her favorite. Notice her body COVERED in sand. She rolled in it and made sand angels. I still can't get it out of her suits.

Berklie and one of her beach finds.

Oaks loving the beach.

Chris, Abby, Carter and I think Ella is there too. They would dig holes in the sand and put the things they caught in them so they could watch them.

The whole family!

Oaks loving the sand and water.

Christopher and Carter hunting for jelly-fish.

Berklie, Lucy and Abby playing in the sand.

Abby

Mom, Pops and Crew. (I have no idea what happened to the quality of these pictures when I uploaded them. I am sure I could fix it, but I'm lazy!)

Mom and the girls

A sand crab! They were crazy little things that only came out at night. The blended in with the sand and could run away really fast and burrow in the sand to get away. They were funny to watch. I have to admit, I was a little creeped out by them. So, no, I didn't touch one. Just watched and hoped they didn't crawl over my feet or something. There were so many of them!

Abigail with her sand crab. She wasn't afraid of them at all!

Pops and Oaklie in one of their "talks" while Oaklie ate. It was during one of these talks, that she started calling him Popcorn. She still talks about Popcorn. It's pretty cute.

Carter driving the boat, look at the serious face!

Mark and Molly on the boat.

We made tie died t-shirts with the kids and surprised Gram and Pops with one too. I love this picture. For some reason it uploaded like this and won't rotate. You can turn your head a little bit. :)