On Sunday morning, the sky was finally clear and the most gorgeous blue you could imagine!
The air was still cool, but the kids were soon ready to go swimming.
Zac and I took turns watching the kids at the beach and packing up. I took these pics to capture the site before our tent was down. We'll definitely be coming back to this one!
When not in the water, Simon had no problem coming up with fun activities. One thing he liked to do was stir up the fire ash and declare, "I'm making smoke!" So if he has lung cancer later in life, this is why. He also did some more glow stick rolling. None of the rolls in this video went very well, but he did get it to roll all the way down to the beach one time.
I gave everyone a big morning snack (followed by a nice piece of chocolate) to prevent breakdowns upon our arrival at home. We left around 12:30, trying to get home in time to give the kids a proper, and much needed, nap in their own beds.
Of course, they still fell asleep in the van on the way home, despite our best efforts. So we left them in the van while we scurried around getting as much unpacking done as we could before they woke up. They were a bit droopy that afternoon.
Saturday morning came early, as this time it was Simon who awoke at the crack of dawn. Our picnic table was all wet from the night's rain, so we had breakfast in the camp chairs facing the lake.
Then it was time to swim and play at the beach! It would alternate all day between getting dark and having a sprinkling of rain, then the sun would pop out for a few minutes, then it would get dark again and drizzle. But it was manageable.
We enjoyed our beach that was mostly ours, but the neighboring campsites could also use it. Right around naptime on Saturday, a family moved into the site next to ours, bringing a few kids and speed boat. The family was nice, but our pristine view and private cove were compromised by their boat sitting in it.
Simon was delighted that we had a fire. His favorite thing to do is throw things into it to make the sparks fly up in the air. He spend all evening hopping and buzzing around the forest gathering bit of wood to chuck into the fire. He did this even once it was pitch black and we had to put a headlamp on him.
That night, we got out the glow sticks and Alice made two necklaces out of them. Simon figured out he could roll his glowstick loop into the woods in the dark and then chase it. This kid is seriously not afraid of the dark woods at night!
I was a bit nervous spending most of Friday packing up for this camping trip, given that rain and thunderstorms were forecast. But we decided to go for it anyway, since Falls Lake was only 40 minutes away, and thunderstorms were so unpredictable that it seemed pointless to cancel a trip just on the chance of storms. But to put this in perspective, I absolutely HATE packing, and I feel like I spend half of the summer packing up for all our trips. The problem is, I love taking trips, so I've got to pack. But to spend a day packing for something that might not happen was just unfathomable, so that's part of why we decided to just plow ahead.
In a miracle of discipline, I had everything all packed up and ready to go when Zac got home with the kids around 4:30. I'd even ordered our Chinese Food take out that we would pick up along the way and eat at the campsite for supper.
On the drive to the site, I checked the weather compulsively. There was a large front headed our way, but it looked like we might dodge a bullet because the storm was split apart and seemed like we could pull a Moses and have the storms split around us. But, when we arrived, I informed Zac that minutecast was predicting rain starting in about 15 minutes. I told him to set up the tent immediately, while I took the kids down to check out the beach and then got them started on supper.
We'd scouted this site (#129) out about two years ago and noted it because it was lake-front site with a large beach, nice swimming cove, and a nice woodsy lot as well. It was our first time at this site and it did not disappoint! The beach was lovely!
Then I hurried the kids back up to the picnic table and got them started on the Chinese food while Zac finished putting up the tent. Just as he finished, it started pouring down rain. We grabbed our food and had a picnic inside the tent (which luckily didn't have any of our stuff in it yet). When Alice was done eating, she kept jumping over the food so we put her in time out in the corner of the tent and didn't let her out until she read an entire fortune all by herself.
The rain was pretty intense, like a torrential downpour, and the tent started leaking a bit. But the rain soon let up, so we went back outside. I could see on the radar that another storm was coming in about an hour, so we figured we'd let the kids play at the beach a bit, then just get ready for bed early and be back in the tent by the time it came through.
The air was cool, but the water was so warm, that it took a while for the kids to realize they were freezing and turning blue. We got the kids out and dried off and into clean, warm clothes, and it started raining again just as we were getting ready for bed. We brushed our teeth under the shelter of the back van door.
It should be noted that Simon was extremely disappointed that we were camping but did not have a campfire on this first night. In his mind, the entire purpose in camping is to have a fire, so this was a bit baffling for him.
Once in the tent, the kids were bonkers as we tried to set up the beds and make dams out of towels to contain the pools forming in each of the four corners of the tent. It was an adventure! The rain was so loud we had to wait a while before I could even read bedtime stories to the kids. Alice is actually a great little camper when it comes time to sleep. She gets right in her sleeping bag and seems to pass out immediately, or at least does a good job of staying still and not talking. Simon, on the other hand, is much better than the dive-bombing whirling dervish he was when we first took him camping two years ago, but he still wants to snuggle a lot, and lay on you, and squirm around and takes a long time to get situated. After an hour of trying to get him to sleep, he announced he needed to pee, so I took him out. After that, he soon fell asleep and eventually I did as well.
Simon loves to jump and buzz. One time he asked me why he doesn't fly when he flaps his arms. I think he believes that if he just practices enough and tries really hard, he will start flying one of these days.
Alice had been wanting to go fishing again for a while, but never finished supper quickly enough to have enough time for an expedition. But finally, this evening, she ate quickly and she and Zac went down to the pond, while I stayed with Simon until he finished eating. Right when Simon and I got down there, they caught a little blue gill. Later they got a catfish.
This week, Alice is at an afternoon camp called "Mad Lab" from 1-4pm at the Pullen Community Center, where they do science experiments. She came home the first day with some gooey stuff to play with. Yay. More mess.
Although the loves the camp, it's really inconvenient logistically. It doesn't help me much because afternoons were nap time anyway. Also, due the timing, I have to pick her up and drop her off, cutting down on my free time. Next year I think I will only sign her up for full-day camps. But this one seemed too perfect for her to pass up, and indeed, she had a lot of fun.
On Saturday I took the kids to the pool so Zac could hang up some more pictures without the kids underfoot. We tested out the new raft we got Simon for his birthday. The kids were pretty creative in coming up with all sorts of ways to use it. Simon mostly liked to be pushed around on it (which I couldn't video and keep my phone safe).
This was my last week of the summer with Alice home all day. We do activities in the morning, followed by lunch, reading, and nap. Alice can watch videos when she wakes up while I'm getting supper ready. So for the purpose of documenting life, let me outline this week's schedule.
Monday: Laundry and unpacking from beach trip. Let Alice watch Moana on Netflix in the morning so I can get stuff done. Pick up groceries.
Tuesday: Pool.
Wednesday: Pool.
Thursday: Life & Science Museum in Durham with Becky (my coworker), and her kids, Sophia (7) and Sam (2 1/2). We had a great time, where the moms got to visit and the kids ran ahead and played. I failed to properly document the day, but here they are eating lunch. Sam is wearing a hand-me-down shirt from Simon, that was a hand-me-down from Braeden, so that was funny.
Friday: Keep Simon home too and go to our pool with Sarita (my coworker) and her daughter Maya that is Simon's age and in Simon's class at daycare. I failed to take any pictures of that, but it was really fun and we had the pool to ourselves.
It was fun having some downtime with Alice this summer, although she is very demanding and wants to do what she wants to do, which is often to go somewhere or concoct something or do something interactive. She can't stand to be alone in part of the house, so I have to plan my tasks around where she is. When she does come up with her own activities, she's not so good at cleaning up when she's done, so you'll unexpectedly find remnants of her projects all over the house.
We did another round of decorating, hanging up some pictures we had. Simon, always up for a good joke, was happy to pretend to be a picture on the wall as well.
In the end, we decided to go with the one that was already framed, to save money.
And now for the most exciting part of the trip: taking the kids up in a plane for the first time! (Although, to be totally accurate, Alice flew when she was 10 months old, a great source of pride for her even although she has no memory of it.)
Our flight was scheduled for noon, but they weren't busy so they took us out to the plane right when we arrived (more of that Arcaro Travel Luck in action). Since most beach stays are for a week, the weekends are actually their slow time since that's when most tourists are either leaving or arriving for the week and aren't in need of entertainment. I'd originally booked two 15-minute flights back to back since you're only allowed to have three passengers. But the pilot said Simon looked like a two-year old and that we could all fit into one flight, so we did one 30-minute flight instead. For the aviation geeks: it was a Cessna 172.
This first video is when we're just getting lined up on the runway.
This second video is of take-off and being in the air.
Zac and Simon sat up front with the pilot, while Alice and I sat in the back. The one problem was that since the plane headed south along the coast, Alice mostly just had ocean out her window, so she wasn't took interested in the view, and even had the audacity at one point to say that she was bored. This kid!
Simon, meanwhile, was up front flying the plane.
Seriously, Simon was the only one with his hands on the controls a lot of the time. He was a very steady pilot and has great potential.
Alice had the most fun using the headphones to talk.
We flew over the Wright Brother's Memorial.
Jockey's Ridge
Bodie Island Lighthouse
On the way back, the pilot did some sharp turns just for fun, and flew in parabolas twice to give us the sensation of zero gravity. Alice, future daredevil, loved it. Simon did not.
Sunday morning we saw dolphins swimming in the ocean right outside our hotel room. It was a great start to the day. The weather held out too-- a huge storm had passed through early in the morning, leaving many streets flooded, but the sky was clear and bright when we got up.
We had our free hotel breakfast in this charming breakfast room with a great view of the parking lot. The kids were happy to choose a muffin, juice, and a boiled egg.
20 minutes later.... (they don't like yokes).
Then we headed out to the beach for a little walk.
Alice ended up befriending a little girl along the way and playing in the surf with her.
There was some resistance to my family beach selfie.
Turns out the little guy just needed about five more powdered donut holes.
After getting Alice cleaned up and in dry clothes, giving the kids a second breakfast, and packing up, we checked out right at the 11:00 cut-off and headed back to Manteo--this time for the airport!
