We've been going to the Carolina coast with Brad's parents for the better part of a decade now. How crazy is that? We just finished our 6th year living here, and I know we went to Topsail once (or maybe twice?) before that. Blows my mind a little bit.
Our beach town of choice is Surf City on Topsail Island (local pronunciation is TOP-sull). It's not one of the popular Outer Banks locales, but it's a beautiful beach with low crowds (which makes it great for families with small kids). It's about a 3-hour drive from our house, and I might love that the most.
Headed out!
Best practices while visiting a rest stop
And posing with her namesake flowers!
Bill found a great house on VRBO that had gobs of room and lots of children's books and stuffed animals, so we were very happy campers.
I took these about five minutes after we arrived. They settled in fast.
I'll go ahead and give a disclaimer now that I have FAR more pictures of Brynn on the beach than the other two. This is because Brynn was skeptical of the ocean, while the other two hardly ever stopped moving.
We stayed at the one in the middle. Aren't these houses cute?
Morning view from our bedroom
Waiting for sunscreen to dry...and trying to humor mom
It was a little bright.
A few years ago, I decided that my best plan for the beach is to have three swimsuits for each girl: one for the morning, one for the afternoon, and one for the following morning while the other two dry. This formula has yet to let me down. Lily's lemon suit just happened to match this Adirondack so perfectly.
Bill and Brad found this little pool in the basement, and it came in so handy for Brynna.
Waiting for sunscreen to dry on Day 2!
The girls had been so excited about flying kites at the beach, and the first afternoon that we got the kites out and up in the sky, the CRAZIEST and STRONGEST wind storm blew through, destroying the kite, nearly destroying our canopy, pelting all of us with sand, and generally causing utter chaos. Poor Claire was devastated about her kite.
We had to secure the canopy and chairs the best we could, hustle everyone back up to the house, and pray that nothing blew away and injured anyone. By the time we got all of those things squared away, the wind had died down and the beach acted like nothing had even happened. It was nuts.
The next afternoon was rainy. Claire was pretty convinced that the beach was out to ruin everything.
But we got to spend some time working puzzles together!
Later that evening, Brynnie got in on the puzzle action!
She had a blast doing this over and over again.
More to come in the next post!
No comments:
Post a Comment