Alice's colorful hair

Alice loves putting her clip-in colored hair in. Then I have to take a picture to show her what it looks like.

Ever since my hair went haywire last year due to my illness (falling out, turning gray) I've been super jealous of people with nice hair.

Honk!

Julian and Eleanor were in the musical Honk!, so we went to Burlington for the afternoon to watch the play.  The kids enjoyed it!  It's the story of the Ugly Duckling set to the songs and music. The funny part is neither Alice nor Simon could recognize Julian or Eleanor in their costumes.

Bonfire

We invited our really nice neighbors, Mike and Kim, over for supper, partly to thank them for always taking care of our cat, fish and plants when we travel. After supper, we went to their fire pit to enjoy a  large bonfire.

Chicken Wars

Carolina Beach Trip Day 3 - Aquarium

On our third night at the beach, Zac decided to sleep out on the deck. I chose to stay in the comfortable bed.

The day started out a bit cloudy, giving us a bit of a colorful sunrise.

We packed up and left our great condo by 10 am, and headed to the aquarium at Fort Fisher.

The kids had a great time at the touch tank.

Simon was excited to see a huge lobster.

He also enjoyed searching for tiny shark teeth at the fossil dig outdoors.

After the aquarium, we had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the ocean, then walked out on the pier, then drove home.

Carolina Beach Trip Day 2

 Our second full day at the beach was another beautiful day! The kids frolicked in the ocean, collected shells, dug in the sand, and Alice continued to work on her boogie board skills.

Simon loved collecting tiny living clams. He wanted me to send this picture to Ellie.

I found a creative outlet for myself:

We stayed at the beach until sunset and had another dinner on the balcony watching the stars and listening to the surf.

The kids were pretty good when we were out on the beach, but inside they continued to have some behavior problems. (These sentences are from both days.)

Carolina Beach Trip Day 1

Since the kids' school was closed Monday, I decided to plan a 3-day weekend getaway to the beach. I'd had it tentatively planned in my mind for a while, but waited until about a week before to book it that way I could be fairly certain the weather would be nice and there wouldn't be a hurricane.  We ended up with absolutely gorgeous weather the entire time.

We arrived at the condo we'd rented at night, so we just scrambled to assemble the beds and get everyone off to bed. Alice was thrilled to have her own room with her own TV.  I couldn't get it to work at all, but in the morning she somehow had it on the home shopping network or something because she informed me that she learned all about this lotion I could put on my face so I wouldn't look old.  It could have just been a commercial, I suppose.

When we go to the beach, I insist on having the full experience and getting a place with an ocean view. It's always worth it. 

As soon as we got breakfast into everyone, we headed down to the beach. It was a beautiful day, the water was warm, and the beach was not too crowded.

They all had a lot of fun playing in the sand as well.

Our condo unit is on the end, top row, right above my right ear (the side our tent is on).

"Kids, look straight into the sun so I can take your picture!"

Family portrait:

At some point, a dead fish washed up, and Alice made friends with two boys who were stationed nearby as they shared their interest in the dead fish.

They were friends the rest of the evening.

Alice greatly enjoyed making sand sculptures.

Finally, after sunset we went up and had supper in the dark on our deck. Zac has a phone setting that takes pictures at night, so it looks much brighter than it actually was.  It was so fun to eat outside with the sounds of the ocean and great views of the stars.