OBX...OBX...well, it was an interesting trip. The best part was definitely the beach. We absolutely loved that part. The worst part was that morning sickness hit me big time right at the beginning of this trip. :(
Hurricane Matthew was hurling (get it?) up the east coast and was scheduled to hit right when our vacation was suppose to begin. Morgan and I knew we had a narrow window to make it into Outer Banks before the storm hit and we knew there was good chance we'd get flooded out if we waited, so we decided to just go for it. The drive there was perfect, with no issues whatsoever. We settled in, played pool, hot tubbed, watched a few movies and went quickly down to the beach...well the pier, because there was practically no beach because the ocean was super high because of the storm.
That evening the full tropical storm hit with gusts up to 94 mph. The power went out somewhere around 4am and we basically didn't sleep anymore after that because Jack woke up and screamed the rest of the morning (yay...not). Wind has always freaked me out and the shaking of our beach house was kind of a little scary. One cool moment of this experience was when we were up with Jack in the living room trying to calm him down in the middle of the night, it was pitch black and there was no light outside...except for the Corolla light house. I'm sure there is a message in there somewhere.
The next day was Sunday and was incredibly uneventful, we had no power and no activities and we were stormed in. The worst of it though was the fact that we were tired and kids don't make up for lost sleep they just keep going. Here are some pictures from the first part of our trip:
Look at those crazy waves!
The light house.
Our beautiful room!
The sun finally made an appearance Sunday evening and it was beautiful!
The next day (Monday) we were still alone because access was restricted because of flooding. It also happened to be Jack's 1st birthday!
We went out to lunch at a restaurant a few miles away and the waitress was SO great. She gave the kids glow sticks and free cupcakes that the restaurant cook had made during the storm when they were bored. It was perfect. We then headed back to the beach house for presents and a cupcake smash. We got Jack some squeaky, squishy blocks and "The Little Blue Truck". He LOVES them both.
Eva giving her 'thumbs-up' approval of the gifts.
Jack was a little traumatized to be stripped down and set on the table.
Now it's starting to make sense...
He was so hesitant to smash his cupcake. Mr. Tidy really wouldn't dig in and eat until we gave him a fork.
I brought our birthday banner with us for the special day. I think it was a pretty good 1st birthday overall.
And what's a baby cake smashing without cute little baby bath pictures.
Unfortunately that is where the pictures ended (except for the one below that sweet Joanna Freeman took for me). As mentioned above, morning sickness settled in BIG time and Jack refused to sleep the whole week so picture taking was the least of my worries. Add the stress of messes from lots of little kids and lots of noise and pregnancy hormones and I was a wreck.
The rest of our party did finally arrive on Tuesday and we spent the next 4 days playing and going to the beach. The waves calmed down and the weather warmed up and it was overall pretty great. The kids loved the beach. Jack ate his weight in sand and Eva loved the sand and the waves. She's still talking about his trip months later.
