A Trip to Topsail

So, I may not have mentioned it, but last week, Doc and I went on vacation!  And what a glorious, lazy vacation it was (lazy vacations are my absolute favorite!).  Doc's parents actually planned their vacation first, and part of it included a week stay in Topsail Beach, NC.  They had a 3-bedroom house all to themselves, and extended an invitation to us to join them.  Did I mention that the house was right on the beach?  Um, yes please!  It didn't hurt that we also had a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for a free plane ticket that was about to expire.  Dontcha just love it when everything aligns like that? I would say that 90% of my beach experiences have been on Florida's white sandy beaches.  Not having ever been to a beach in North Carolina, especially in October, I didn't really know what to expect.  The verdict?  I can't wait to go back.   Doc and I were only able to get away for an extended weekend, so we had just 3 full days of beach time at the end of the week's rental.  Bill and Pat relayed the weatherman's message that cooler weather was a'comin, so we packed our warm clothes.  We lucked out, though, and our first beach day was in the 80s, nice and sunny with a good breeze.

This was the from right outside the living room doors.

Since it was October, there weren't many other beach-goers.  We didn't have it completely to ourselves, but we definitely didn't have to fight for a prime spot to put our chairs.

Did I mention that we packed our warm clothes?  Doc had thrown in some workout clothes but my bag was nothing but warm pants and fleece pullovers.  I may have had to borrow his shorts for the day so I didn't roast on the beach.  Real cute...  As keeper of the camera, I made sure there were no pictures of that.

Here's a view of the house from the beach.  Topsail Beach is on a small strip of an island in the Atlantic ocean.  You can't really tell from this picture but all the houses on the island are built up on stilts.  Several were still boarded up from Irene's visit a few weeks ago.  There were houses on both sides of us, but they're cropped out of this picture.

The crazy thing to me about this beach was the big difference between high tide and low tide.  One morning, when we woke up, the ocean was all the way up past where we'd been sitting the day before.

But then, by that afternoon, it was back down.

The differences in the tides made the sand on the beach a lot more packed down and firmer to walk on.

The high tide also washed up lots and lots of seashells.  When we arrived, Pat already had a great collection going, and she was nice enough to let me pick out some of my favorites to take home.

You know what else I thought was weird?  When the waves crashed onto the beach, they were really foamy.  Maybe it's like that everywhere and I've just never noticed, I don't know.

I could probably be ok spending everyday like this.

On the other side of the strip of island is the intercoastal waterway.  One evening we walked out on a long pier over the waterway so we could watch the sunset.

The Boy and The Dad.

We got there just in time to see the sun go down, and then we started losing light fast.

My lighting in this picture is not very good at all, but I kinda like it that way.  We were watching all the crabs in the water.

Speaking of the waterway, here's a fun fact for ya: one of the only two ways onto the island is over a swing bridge.  The other entrance has a draw bridge.  Instead of pulling up like a draw bridge, a swing bridge swings to the side.  This particular swing bridge swings every hour (I think) so that boats in the waterway can pass by.

This is a dry dock near the swing bridge.  I wonder how they get the boats up there and back down into the water.

One morning when we woke up, the fog was so bad we could barely see the ocean.  You can't even see it behind us in the picture below.

As predicted, the cold weather moved in.  We were still able to take walks on the beach each day, but it was a little too chilly to just sit out there.  That was ok, though, since we needed to be inside anyway to watch the ND/Navy game...

Now, I admit that I'm not the biggest football fanatic so maybe this make sense to die hard fans, but here's what I don't get...see this pile of players?

The ones in the navy uniforms aren't the Navy team.  What??  How am I suppose to even try to understand what's going on when the announcers keep talking about Navy and I automatically look at the guys in the navy uniform but that's not them?  Wouldn't it make more sense that way?  In stead, Navy is the team wearing a white jersey that says "Navy" on it.

It's like they're trying to convince you that their jersey is navy blue.  (Like all those Victoria Secret Pink clothes that say pink all over them when really you just want to say, "um no, that's blue.")  Clearly a female was not consulted when they were deciding who would wear what color jersey for this game.  (And don't even get me started on the fact that the Fighting Irish don't wear any green...)

So, since the Navy team wasn't actually the navy team and therefore I couldn't follow it, what did I do instead?  I finally finished this beast of a book.

Life by Keith Richards.  I say "beast" because it took me FOR-EH-VER (name that movie) to finish it.  I read it on my kindle so I didn't know how big it was when I started it.  It has to be a million pages long.  (Just looked it up and it says it has 564 pages.  Pretty sure there's a digit left off that number.)  Don't get me wrong - it's a fine book and I'm sure some people love it.  But for me?  Torture.  I was determined to finish it as part of my resolution but I wanted to quit so many times.  I guess I just don't have a lot of interest in guitars and drugs and rock and roll.  And I'm sure Keith Richards doesn't have any interest in woodworking, sock monsters, or fall decorations so he probably wouldn't like a book about me either.  Me and Keith?  We're just two totally different people.

On our last night of vacation, I snapped this shot as the sun was going down.  Can you see the moon?  It was so pretty that night!

Sunday morning we had to get up and hit the road early so we could make it home in time for Trunk or Treating.  That didn't stop me from setting up my camera and the timer so we could get one picture with all four of us in it.  Proof that were there together.

Thanks for inviting us, Bill and Pat!  We had a great time and can't wait to do it again.  :)

A Happy Halloween

Raise your hand if you can't believe it's already November.  Mine is up high!  I had a mini freakout when I started receiving emails last week about what I want for Christmas.  It's time for that already?!  Suddenly I feel behind - I haven't even started my shopping yet!  Deep breaths.  We haven't even had Thanksgiving yet. Another successful halloween is in the books.  First, let's start with our kids.  I didn't get to see them in costumes in person, so Doc had to send me a picture.  Wyatt is a dementor (from Harry Potter but I have no idea what that really means) and Anna is a greek goddess, maybe Athena?  I asked Anna who Athena is but I don't think she really even knows...I'm pretty sure the costume was chosen for its cuteness.  Nothing wrong with that!

I have to confess that I was the Halloween scrooge Monday night.  I didn't think I would be at home during our neighborhood's trick-or-treating hours, so I didn't buy any candy.  Then I found myself at home alone with still an hour and a half left to go.  I turned off all the lights and hid in the bedroom.  Lolli barked her head off every time the doorbell rang.  I hate that I missed all the cute trick-or-treaters, but I didn't have anything to give them!

Our church had its annual Trunk or Treat event on Sunday night, so we were able to go see the niece and nephews all dressed up.  Just like on his birthday, Parker dressed up as Spiderman.  I asked him to give me a smile but this is the best I could get.  His lopsided spider eyes cracked me up all night.  I have no idea how he saw anything because they were never lined up with his eyes!

By the time I made it to the church, little Bren had already made the rounds filling up her bag, and parked it in her Mom's trunk to eat all her candy.  I tried every way possible to coax her out to play with me, but she was too busy.  I can't compete with a bag full of candy!  After changing her mind 1,284 times, she ended up as Pinkalicious.

It took me a while to find Jett.  He was off running from trunk to trunk, getting more candy and playing all the games.  Of course, the fact that he was camouflaged didn't make it any easier for me to spot him.

Speaking of games, here's Parker trying to play basketball like the bigger boys.

Ramer made an appearance at Trunk-or-Treat too.

I just now realized I never got a full shot of him in his monster get-up.  Darn.  It was really sunny that day, so most of my pictures look pretty bad.

Go figure that as soon as Ramer arrived, Bren finally hopped out of the car.  I'm not sure that she loved the idea of her Mom holding another baby.

Quick family photo of my brother Ben's family.  There may be more closed eyes than open ones, I can't really tell.

My parents with the youngest grandchildren.  And look, Ramer's waving to the camera!

The other two kids jumped in for a picture, too.

Doc was standing with my two brothers, so I told them to get together for a picture.  Typical guys, they stood about three feet away from each other.  I asked them to get closer - it was even ok if they touched - so I could fit them all in the frame.  So, of course, they gave me this.  I feel like it should be on some kind of awkward family photo website.

I let them have a re-do.  Cause I'm nice like that.

Got one of the girls too!  Except that I look like I need a nap.

And that wraps up our halloween!  How was yours?

A Day at the Park

October has been kinda crazy.  My husband has been on 11 planes this month and still has two more to go, which is to say I haven't seen him very much.  There was also a weekend road trip mixed in there too.  I don't remember the last time he was home for more than 2 days at a time.  He is doing great at his new job, though, so it's all been worthwhile.  I'm a proud wife.  Oh, and the good news is there's no travel planned for November.  Hooray! I'm really behind on posts, so for now I'm just going to catch up on some happenings from last weekend.  We had our kids and for a little while on Saturday, all six of my parents' grandchildren were at our house.

I know I'm biased, but those are some of the cutest kids I know, even if I can't get them all to smile for the camera at the same time.  (Sorry for the cutoffs on the edge, the real picture isn't like that.)

As you can tell, the little kids found a bag of balloons and needed them to be blown up.  Whatever it takes to keep them happy, I guess.  We took a walk to the park and the balloons had to come with us.

Thank goodness for Anna.  She was our resident balloon-blower-upper.

Look who decided to smile for my camera!

Parker couldn't be bothered for a smile.  He was too busy watching Jett and Wyatt throw the football and trying to figure out how to get them to let him play.

Once at the park, the big boys made up football obstacles like throwing from the tire swing or throwing over the whole playset.

This may come as a surprise to anyone who knows Bren, but she actually walked past the swings first and went straight for the slide.

Parker gave up on trying to play football with the big boys and climbed up to the fort.

In addition to being the resident balloon-blower-upper, Anna is also our resident monkey.  She is always hanging upside down from something.

Of course, Parker saw her flipping and needed to do that too.  It's hard to get up there when you're short, though.

It's good to have big cousins that will give you a little boost.

After hanging out for a minute, he decided the swings were more his thing.

I guess playgrounds get old after awhile, because before I knew it, we were having races rolling down the hill.

That was fun until we had a head-on collision.  Ouch!  Thankfully, everyone survived.

The girls had already gone home so we decided to join them.  It was getting dark anyway.  It was a good day at the park!

Pumpkin Treats

I'm back with yet another fall project.  This one was more than just fun and easy...it was tasty too! Saturday morning, I whipped up a batch of pumpkin rice krispie treats.  I've seen different versions of these all over the web, so I'm not sure where the idea originated (rice krispie website, maybe?).  I first saw them here.  I'm sure there are tons of different ways to do them, but here's my method (and I bet it's the easiest!).

I had generic crispy rice cereal on hand, so it's what I used.  I think they were called Krispy Rice, or something like that.  I also used a whole bag of jumbo marshmallows.  I like my rice krispie treats to be extra ooey, gooey, and marshmallow-y, so I went all in. :)  Here are my supplies.  Not pictured is the butter.

I melted less than a half a stick of butter on the stove, and added the bag of marshmallows to the pot.  Once they were mostly melted, I added some Wilton orange food coloring.  Red and yellow would work fine too.

It turned my mixture a nice shade of orange.  In hindsight, I could've probably gone a little oranger.

I don't know exactly how much of the crispy rice cereal I added - maybe 5 cups?  I just kept added until I was ok with the consistency.

Anna was my helper for the assembly process.  She unwrapped the tootsie rolls while I rolled the pumpkin balls.  The marshmallow mix was still pretty warm.

As I rolled the pumpkins, I used my finger to make a small indention for her to stick the tootsie roll.

I had a small can of frosting already, so I added some green food coloring to it to make a few leaves.  I didn't really try hard so they don't look exactly like leaves, but I think the extra color still helps.

My finished plate of pumpkins.  The best part was definitely eating them up!

Beach House Won'ts

  I'll admit that, with my southern accent, a lot of times my wants sound like won'ts and vice versa.  I can't help it, they just kinda come out the same.  When it comes to the beach house, I can talk about my wants all day long.  I want a vacation house (check!), I want plenty of bedrooms (check!), I want horizontal paneled walls (check!).  But by no means do I get everything I want.  I want a house on the beach (not in this lifetime!), I want a third floor (not with our budget!), I want dark hardware (vetoed by everyone else!).

But the wants aren't what this post is all about.  Today, I'm here to write about the won'ts...the things you won't see in our beach house (at least not as long as I have a say-so in the decorating!).  When Doc and I were in Florida last, the condo we stayed in had lots of things that won't be in our beach house, so I was able to snap pictures for examples.  The condo was perfectly fine and lovely for us to stay in, it's just very different from what we're planning.

Our bedding purchases have already been made, so I can tell you for certain, there won't be any beach-themed bedspreads.  This one, as you can see, was polka-dotted with palm trees, surfboards, flowers, and dune buggies.

We don't quite have all the artwork picked out or made, but I do know that there won't be any surfers hanging above any beds.

You won't be able to find palm trees on any of the lamps in our beach house.

In the living room, we won't decorate the top of the entertainment center with just two tiny knick-knacks.

We won't have any beach chair picture frames, and any picture frames that we do have won't be left empty.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty certain we won't stick seashells in any short, clear vases.

Any dish we set out on the coffee table won't be shaped like a Hawaiian shirt.

Sadly, in our house, we won't have any seashells-on-a-candlestick.

And finally, for the dining table, our centerpiece won't be an oversized margarita glass filled with seashells and faux grass.

I hope I haven't disappointed anyone too much.  Is there anything else we should add to the won't list?

My brother and his wife are going to check on the house this weekend.  They'll be giving our paint color choices, picking out tile for the bathrooms, and selecting our hardwood for the floors!  Hopefully I'll have updated pictures soon.