Our Summer Vacation {another catch up post}

ARE YOU READY FOR THE LONGEST BLOG POST EVER!?!?!??!?!?!?!?
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Saturday, August 28, 2010:
We drove from Buffalo, NY to Northern VA to visit with my sister (and her family) and stay overnight at their house. The drive was long and uneventful. Both boys did awesome.

Once we got to Courtney’s house, we were all very glad to get out and stretch our legs. I didn’t take a ton of pictures because there were 6 adults, 4 children (4 years and younger) and 1 cat in their 1500 square foot house. Chaos, pure and simple. I’m seriously shocked I got the camera out at all. 🙂

Sissy in the jumper:

Courtney and Andrew:

Sunday, August 29, 2010:
We got up at a decent time on Sunday and had a nice breakfast with Courtney and the gang. Since we didn’t get the keys to our condo until around 4PM, we had plenty of time in the morning to just chill. We left the Alt’s around noon, stopped for gas and some lunch and then headed towards North Carolina. This leg of the trip was only 4 and a half hours long but the boys were definitely antsy when we drove up to the condo. 4 and a half hours on top of the 9 hours from the day before is a lot of time to spend in a car!

When we got there, everyone else had already arrived and were waiting for us. We went up to say “hi” and then quickly made our way down to the beach. Mike and I were pretty excited to see Ian and Matthew’s reaction to the beach, sand and waves!

We expected Matthew to completely love every second of it and were not surprised in the least when he did. The real surprise came from Ian. I was worried he’d be completely freaked out by the sand and waves but he wasn’t! He LOVED it!

(That is our rental in the background. Mom and dad and my aunt, uncle and cousin are all on the deck watching us.)

Videos:

We stayed out on the sand for a bit and then went in for dinner and to get settled in for the week. After dinner, Mike and the boys played a little Chutes and Ladders.

The kids went down to bed and the adults went out to watch the sun set and the moon rise.

Me playing with a slow shutter speed on my camera:

Monday, August 30, 2010:
Monday morning couldn’t come fast enough for us. The four of us slept in a pretty tiny room, packed in like sardines. On top of that, we had a suitcase blocking the air conditioning vent and it was HOT in our room. No one slept well.

We got up and ate breakfast quickly. We were all in a hurry to get down to the beach and claim our spot in the sand.

Video:

We played for several hours in the sand, then went out for lunch and came home for naps. We went back out after nap time to do a little souvenir shopping.

Mom and I made dinner while the boys watched Madagascar on the DVD player in our bedroom. Apparently it’s more fun watching a movie from the top bunk. 🙂

And, sunset:

(Do you kind of see the small, hard-to-see group of people directly to the left of the mass of people at the edge of the water? That is mom, dad and the boys crab hunting.)

Tuesday, August 31, 2010:
Tuesday was pretty much a repeat of Monday, except that we all woke up a lot more rested!

We ate breakfast quickly and hurried back down to the beach. We played for several hours in the sand, then went out for lunch and came home for naps. We spent the afternoon being lazy and enjoying the atmosphere. In the evening, the boys went out on the sand to hunt for some crabs in the dark.

Once Matthew figured out how to get his juice out of the cooler, it was impossible to keep him out of it:

Ian hunting for shells while Aunt Sherri looks on:

Who’s this handsome stud?!?!

Matthew finally caught on to the shell-hunting game and is giving them to Aunt Sherri for safe-keeping:

Dad…

Holding down the fort:

Giving surfing lessons:

and burying children in the sand:

I still can’t believe he liked it! LOL

Mike taking the boys for a walk:

Getting ready to crab-hunt:

Off they go!

At this point in the week, Hurricane Earl was becoming a big, fat buzz kill. We had been keeping an eye on the news all along but things were starting to look much more serious. We were spending a lot of time watching the Weather Channel and obsessing over the “what if’s”. We didn’t want to bail on our vacation unnecessarily but at the same time, the indecision was driving us (read: me) crazy.

Since the boys were so young and the situation was unpredictable and potentially dangerous, Mike and I decided that we would be leaving first thing Thursday morning to head back to VA. We figured we would beat any Earl-evacuation traffic that we might run into and it gave us concrete plans to work around. We could spend a day or so in VA with Courtney to salvage the rest of our vacation.

Unfortunately, that meant Wednesday was going to be our last day in the Outer Banks.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010:
Mom got up early to take pictures of the sun rise. And used my camera to take some pictures. Thanks, Mom! 🙂

One of the things we REALLY wanted to do when we planned our trip to OBX was to stop in at Grave Digger’s Dungeon.

Basically, the people that the driving force (haha) behind the Grave Digger monster truck are from the Outer Banks. They have a store, shop and a few other attractions on the main highway. Ian and Matthew aren’t really “into” monster trucks right now but we figured they’d enjoy seeing a few real, full size truck up close and personal. And we were right! 🙂

Ian was in a sour mood pretty much the entire time so ignore his disgruntled expression. 🙂

They had out-of-commission trucks out in a field for you to look at and take pictures with:

You could look in and watch mechanics work on various trucks in the shop. It was really cool seeing all these giant trucks in various states of disassembly!

We went in the store to escape the heat for a bit. There was all sorts of Monster Jam merchandise and the entire store was covered (and I mean COVERED) with all of the various awards that the Grave Digger team had won. They covered the walls, were on shelves, in glass cases and covered pretty much every available surface. I’m not really into the whole car racing thing but even I was impressed with all of the awards.

This is a picture of the Freestyle Champion award that they received at the 2008 World Finals in Las Vegas:

We let the boys pick out trucks.

(Ian ended up wanting a truck that we already have about 3 of at home so we talked him into a different one. Which promptly broke about 5 minutes after we left Digger’s Dungeon. Ian then spent the entire car ride mad and throwing a fit because Matthew wouldn’t give Ian his truck. Gotta love it. Needless to say, there were more naps taken that afternoon. LOL)

Mike took the boys on a off-road monster truck ride.

Video:

They loved it!

After that, we went home for lunch and naps. Much needed naps. 🙂

After nap time, we went down to the beach. It was absolutely dead out there. Lifeguards had posted red, no swimming flags and were not amused when they found people out in the water.

No one out on the sand:

Red flag. Thank you, Hurricane Earl! 🙂

We couldn’t swim because the red flags were up but we played in the sand and illegally got our toes in the water. The waves were really rough due to Hurricane Earl.

We attempted to get a family shot…not too bad:

Ian lost interest quickly but mom got a nice shot with us and Matthew:

Mom drew this in the sand (after MANY attempts were washed away by waves):

And we all took pictures of it:

(Why, yes! We are dorks! Thanks for asking! LOL)

Shortly after all that, a lifeguard came by to take down the no swimming flag and to tell us that we needed to get the hell out of Dodge. In his humble opinion, of course. 🙂

After that, we started hauling our gear up to the house and began the highly enjoyable process of cleaning and packing everything up.

Thursday, September 2, 2010:
We got up bright and early and prepared to head back to Virginia.

About an hour before we left, Dare County (where we were in NC) issued a mandatory evacuation to all visitors and strongly urged residents to leave. Faced with a mandatory evacuation, I’m going to come clean and admit that I freaked out. (Sorry for the panic, house-mates! LOL) I was very worried that we’d get stuck in one of those Hurricane Katrina, sit in traffic for 7 and a half days, humongous traffic jams.

Take a minute for me and imagine how fun one of those traffic jams would be. Now, in that imaginary traffic jam, please add a 4 year old and a 2 year old that are pinned tightly in their car seats. Now, please forgive me for panicking and leaving tire marks in the drive way as we pealed out. 🙂

Thankfully, we hardly hit any traffic at all. We drove back to Court’s house in Virginia in record time. 🙂

Driving. Again.

Friday, September 3, 2010:
We were kind of having a hard time coming up with anything to do for Friday. We didn’t really want to loaf around but at the same time, it was a challenge coming up with something that (1) didn’t involve too much driving (since we were all tired of the car and we had a long drive home the next day), (2) was affordable, (3) cool/indoors (it was HOT out) and (4) something that a 2 and 4 year old would enjoy. Ian and Matthew are still a little young to do much sight-seeing so it didn’t make sense to go into DC to see the monuments.

We eventually decided to spend the morning at the National Air and Space Museum. We went when Matthew was an infant and really enjoyed it. We figured that the “in your face” aspect of the museum would entertain the boys for a bit. We were right! 🙂

I have to STRONGLY encourage ALL visitors to the DC area to visit this museum. It is, hands down, the coolest museum I have EVER seen. Words and pictures cannot express how amazing it is to see so many full-sized aircraft and a FREAKING.SPACE.SHUTTLE. (AND!!! FOR FREE!!!! I mean, I’d pay money to go to a museum this cool and it’s free! Woo hoo!)

When we went a few years back, I think I took 600 pictures. While I felt like taking another 600 this time, I restrained myself and only took about 60 (aka, I ran out of memory cards haha). I didn’t bother editing most of them because it really doesn’t come across how cool it is. I just picked a handful of “keepers”.

(Again: PLEASE GO TO THIS MUSEUM!)

Do you see Matthew looking up at this plane? LOL

I need to go back there sometime without the kids so that I can take one of their tours and read all the little signs that they have up. Just walking around and looking is awesome but I want to read all those nifty little tidbits of info that they share. We haven’t been able to do that during our past visits.

And, the super adorable, kissable, lovable Miss Siss:

That’s pretty much it for Friday. We chilled at Courtney’s house for a while and then went out to dinner. Exciting stuff! 🙂

Saturday, September 4, 2010:
We drove home to Buffalo.

It was uneventful but given the 38,453,184 hours we had already spent in the car over the previous week, it really kind of sucked. As a result, I don’t have any interesting pictures to share.

By the time we rolled up in the drive way, we were all very glad to get home. Surprisingly, home was about 35 degrees cooler than Virginia and North Carolina. Happy September, Buffalo!!!