#OBX2015

We went to the beach!!!

That was our backyard for a week. Everyone survived, which exceed my expectations.

First we had to squish a whole lot of stuff into our cars. (Yes, cars, plural.)

On top of all this, we had our suit cases, the double stroller and two high chair booster seats.

OBX is about a four hour drive, plus there was a long lunch break each way, at Bojangles. My camera was acting like a psychopath during lunch, and the colors are all messed up, but I still thought this picture was cute enough to share.

Chad liked his meal, but neither Natalie nor Theo were fans. At 19 months old, they still think they can thrive on a purely milk diet.

We wanted to stay in a part of OBX that had a decent town, and not one of the very remote places. We chose Duck, even though we've never been there. We did NO research on which subdivision to stay in, and randomly picked a house in Poteskeet. That ended up being perfect! Our house was ~0.5 mile straight shot from the little strip of stores and the boardwalk and then the Duck trail connected close to there too. Perfect for us to still get our morning runs in, and when we needed time away from the beach we could take walks over to shop and go on a donut run. Or 4 donut runs. Don't judge, it was vacation!!

These are from Duck Donuts. Honestly, I don't think they lived up to their hype. We went twice, and they screwed up our order both times. Do you see chocolate sprinkles on Chad's chocolate glazed donut? Neither do I, and that's no way to please a discerning 4-year-old customer

He stole Andy's lemon and sprinkles donut instead.

 But Donutz on a  Stick... this is a place you need to go to! It's like donut shop meets fro yo topping bar. Here's Chad with Strawberry shortcake donutz covered with marshmallows, jelly beans, malted milk balls and gummi bears.

One morning, Chad and Andy were doing big kid stuff, so Theo and Natalie and I went shopping on the boardwalk. They got a little whiny, so we took a break to get mini donutz on a stick. I added Fruit Loops and Cinnamon Toast Crunch to their bowls, and the stroller was blissfully silent after that. Or maybe I was just too wrapped up in my Cookies 'N Cream donut with plentiful M&Ms added to notice. 

So when we weren't eating donuts, we were at the beach!

All my little ducklings!

One day, we went to the Aquarium on Manteo. It was small, but they had otters and other fun animals.

In the big scary shark tank

That is an albino alligator!! I didn't even know they existed

Someone was unimpressed with the fish.

They had a fun exhibit on sea turtle rescues. You put on a lab coat and picked out a sea turtle. It must have had some sort of chip in it, because you took it to different stations and it would tell you how to diagnose, treat and rehabilitate him. 

This is the diagnosis center. It took an x-ray of the turtle, and asked for a blood sample that you injected into the little port.

 

We did this twice. One of our turtles had "entanglement" and one was recovering from a shark bite!

The treatment station. Ours both needed betadine and honey, and some other minor procedures. There was also a syringe for a turtle enema there, but luckily we did not have to administer that.

Our turtles are better and headed into the recovery tank!

This was the sting ray and shark petting tank. The sting rays had bumpy spines. The sharks were very muscular.

Why is the oldest the hardest to get a decent picture of sometimes?

Look at how chill Theo is in all of these! He was born to be a model

Our house did not have a pool, but we brought our own for toddler pool parties on the back porch.

One night we wanted family pictures. We were going to use the timer and tripod, but then Andy made a friend on the beach who took some pictures for us.

I don't know, I still think a selfie stick would have been useful.

We took some pictures of the other family. They only had one baby and two dogs so their shoot was much easier.

And then I tried getting some pictures of just the kids, but they were not having it.

Our house was quite different from other beach houses we've stayed at. We rented through Twiddy, and it was called "Classy Duck". It was less airy and open, and more cozy log cabin. It had kind of stuffy old lady knick knack decor in the main living areas. And there were so many places to eat. A table on the screened in porch, a table out near the grill in the front, two tables inside and then a breakfast bar that Chad liked.

Looking into the kitchen area

 Dining room and living room

Looking down from the upstairs

The loft area at the front of the house

Daybed for bedtime stories

The three of them shared a room. Chad got the top bunk, and we brought a pack-n-play for Theo, then found one in the house that was probably older than me. It seemed a little small and hard. We threw some pink blankets in the bottom of it and Natalie was fine with it.

If you can't read that, the duck has a speech bubble coming out of his mouth that says, "I am classy."

Our bedroom, which had the hot tub outside it. There were two other bedrooms as well. One we pretty much never went in, one we used just to get to the upper deck area. One night when Natalie was having a hard time going to sleep, and Chad was lying in bed covering both his ears saying, "She's toooooo loud!", we moved him into that room for the night.

The front of the house. It had two grills, a big porch swing, and two plain wooden plank swings hanging behind our cars

Back of the house

Screened in porch eating area and the high deck up top.

Hot tub area!

The bell at the end of our boardwalk. We rang it every morning so all the neighbors would know it was time to get up and go to the beach.

This house was a lot closer to the beach than others we've stayed at. For one thing, there was no pool. Also, our walkway to the beach was quite short. And during high tide the water came quite closet o our steps. Sometimes it would sound like the waves were just outside out bedroom. Then on our last day, the weather got super windy, and the ocean went nuts!

The waves were up to our steps! And look at all that white!

And down the beach they were going right up to the dunes! It was pretty crazy, and I can't imagine how scary it is when there is an actual tropical event out to sea.

Stay tuned for more pics to come! But now it's time to go watch football after a busy day.