The Beach

Two weeks ago we went to Ocean Isle Beach with my parents and Sara, Mark, and Anna.  We took a couple days of work and Avery had a blast playing with her cousin, while we enjoyed having dessert with lunch, mid-afternoon dessert, and dessert with dinner. (Thanks Mom!)

Ocean Isle was having a festival that we walked down to the first 2 days.  Home Depot had some kits to build birdhouses, so that is where we started.

Ready to do some damage!

 Avery was a brave girl and held the nails while I pounded them in.  Anna was more of in a management position for the building of her birdhouse.

 Next up was painting the houses.  Avery and Laura took on this key task.

Carter was less interested in a bird house.

 On the way back to the house, the two girls were plenty warmed up to each other.

I think they had a good time.

We spend the afternoon at the beach.  While it was too cold to get into the water, the girls did a good job getting very close to it.

And since there was grand parents around, there were plenty of active participants to help dig holes and make sandcastles for the girls to smash.

Carter had a tough time napping, so he took a lot of naps in the carrier on Laura.  I think Laura was pretty happy to get some extra snuggles.

On Sunday, we went back to the Oyster festival and spent some time at the playground.  Anna was pretty stoked.

It was great to have Uncle Mark as a playground buddy.

Silly Uncle Mark....when I tried this by myself, the horse fell over and refused to spring back.  Avery was not happy about it.

After the festival ended, we spent most of the time at the beach enjoying some sun and sand.  (But not the water)

Carter had a good time just enjoying being outside.  When we set him down, he just kind of laid out and relaxed.

Laughing at something silly the girls were likely doing.

This was really fun to watch him discovering sand.  Usually the first thing he does when he grabs something new is to put it immediately in his mouth.  Here he kept grabbing handfuls of sand, but would squeeze hard and it would slide out of his hands.  He would give it a puzzled look then try to grab another big handful and give it another puzzled look.  Don't get me wrong, he eventually took a big ol chomp, but it was a lot of fun to watch the discovery process.

We also took some long walks on the beach when it was too cold to get near the water.

Avery and Anna mostly ran around like crazy people.  If you had GPS tracking on them, it would have looked like one of those Family Circius cartoons where they cover 10 times the distance necessary to get somewhere.  You can tell by their faces though, they had a blast.

They wouldn't take a picture with us, but this is us at the end of the inlet.  Carter is in there somewhere.

There he is.  He was really enjoying his snuggle time with Laura, but always has a smile for Daddy.