What Would?

What would be a vacation without some pictures?

Here are 10 of my favorite snap shots from our vacation to OBX last week. As most of you know Irene tore through and really left some people and businesses hurting, but our amazing rental company, Sun Realty, managed to move us from our original condo to another condo and didn't charge us any extra for the upgrade and we got an extra day. Such a wonderful company!

So this was the boy's first BEACH vacation. We were so excited. I used to vacation down in OBX every year until I was 18 or so, because my grandparents owned a vacation home down there. Stephen and I tried to honeymoon there in 2003, but Isabel had other ideas. We did make it down for our first anniversary though. :)

There are so many good memories associated with the OBX that I wanted to share them with the boys, so here are the pictures. They're in no particular order either. :)

These pictures were at the Wright Brothers Memorial. Harrison and Steve got to spend more time there, because I had to take Devlin to the Outer Banks Hospital, because we thought his pinky was broken after a gust of wind slammed the car door shut on his hand, but thankfully the pinky was not broken, just very badly bruised. The bruise did not stop him from enjoying the park though.

Here is the view of the Atlantic from the top of the hill at the Wright Brothers Memorial. Love the salty sea air and the breeze we had all week, but I'll tell you what - it did nothing for my very curly hair. :)

This was taken from the car while leaving the waterfront of Manteo. This boat is usually about 50 yards back in the parking lot of one of the stores. There was so much damage in this section of town. Only two businesses were open on Tuesday after the hurricane, and both were restaurants. We ate at  the Full Moon Cafe where I had the best sandwich of the week. Yay for French Dips!

 Here's Harrison at the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island. I don't think he's too sure about the alligator behind him. :) The aquarium had a really nice exhibit on Sea Turtles that the boys enjoyed. It was really interactive and they had fun toting their 'turtles' around for examination and recovery.

 We saw this little guy at the entrance to the Queen's Rose Garden at the Elizabethan Gardens. Love all his colors!

 This was also taken at the Elizabethan Gardens. They had a fun Garden Detective activity for the kids to do, which Devlin really enjoyed. There is also an ancient living oak in the garden that was alive when the first settlers arrived which would make it over 400 years old.

 This is by far the best  picture of the trip! We went on a Dolphin Tour and during the trip Harrison came up behind Devlin and hugged him and rested his head on his shoulders. They stayed like this for a few minutes.

 Here's one of the dolphins we saw! We saw a ton of them, including a new one that was just born in May. Baby dolphins are more adorable than full grown dolphins. We took our tour through Kitty Hawk Kites, which experienced a lot of damage in their store in Manteo (it had to be gutted) and at their store just before the causeway to Roanoke Island  from Nags Head. The dock was destroyed, but they were very courteous and went with the flow and had all of the the tour customers drive across the causeway to the public boat launch on Roanoke Island. They were even good-natured when Harrison went nuclear because he was tired. :) Good thing the motion of the boat put him to sleep pretty quickly.

And finally, one of our only beach pictures! Harrison was chilling up with Stephen on the dunes, while Dev played in the surf and tried to convince me to roll around with him. That did not happen, but Devlin had a blast taunting the ocean, and then the ocean tumbled him up the beach and stole his sunglasses. Dev learned that it might not be a good idea to taunt something so much larger than you, but that didn't stop him from playing in the waves and surf. :) Harrison was a little nervous of the waves, but as long as he was on our laps he pretty cool with the water coming up and getting us every so often.

I'm sad that our vacation is over, but oh so happy to be sleeping in my own bed again!

See you guys tomorrow!