Aaaaahhhhh, vacation week!  Can we go back already?! We look forward to this week all year long. Seems hard to believe that this year is our fifth year heading to Ocean Isle Beach.  Five years, what?! Wishing time would slow down.

We have so many pictures to share. I had a hard time narrowing down all the photos. While many may seem the same, when I look at them I see different things. They way they show Griffin’s personality, or what he is in to playing with this year. All of the interactions with everyone throughout the week. It’s just a fun time and we are grateful to my parents for providing this week for us each year!

As always, we began our trip with our traditional stop at Sharky’s for pizza, sweet potato fries, and beer. Mom and Dad joined us this year too 🙂 Then once everyone arrived and unloaded at the house we walked down to check out the ocean.

Grandma found the most awesome toy this year for all of the kiddos – a set of over 700 straws and connectors.  Throughout the week the kids (and Grandpa and Grandma and other adults too, lol) made several really cool pieces of art!  Sometimes being corrected is rough. Finn is really sensitive and often gets teary when he gets corrected or feels he disappointed someone. Kevin and I are realizing we’re being far to “adultish” on him and need to be much better about letting him be a 3 year old and do what 3 year olds do – and not correcting him so much. That’s not what’s happening here, Grandpa was just having a talk with Finn, but I thought it was a good way to capture his expressions. He has really mastered the sassy-lip face, almost making his lips look like the beak of a duck! Though it is hard to tell, this is Dad and me, heading out pretty far into the ocean. The water was quite warm and nice this year! This year we found a little, tiny, sand crab! Finn thought it was so cute and wanted to hold it.  Here “Spidey” is throwing his webs at Grandpa! This year we took a road trip to Southport, NC, about a 40 minute drive away. It is a cute little town with many shops and restaurants. We took a picnic lunch, and then walked around for a bit and shopped and went to a maritime museum before, you guessed it, meeting everyone to eat again for dinner! Finn has his dinner a bit early at Fishy Fishy! This is the first year we tried out the surf boards. At low tide it was awesome to teach the kiddos how to ride in the waves.  Oh, and they thought it was pretty fun to zoom down the beach on an inch or two of water. They even pulled each other! We enjoyed an nice date night again this year at the Sugar Shack followed with enjoying the nice evening on the upper deck at the Ocean Isle Fish Company! This years take home lovie was a shark. Finn fell asleep on the way home from a quick trip to Callahan’s in Calabash. This year he slept in a big boy bed at night and the cot during the day for naps. Not sure why, but that is what he consistently chose each day.  I checked on him one night before going to bed and below is what I found! When we were at the store, he wanted to give lovies to each of his cousins too – so the last morning we took the annual jammie photo with each of their lovies.

It was nice weather on our drive home, however, Powell was getting big storms. So we decided to stop in southern Ohio at my old stomping grounds, Ohio University, and have a nice dinner. We had drinks on the patio at Jackie O’s Brewery (which wasn’t there when I was!) and dinner downstairs. Their beers are served throughout Ohio and in Columbus but I’d not had one before being there. I had a raspberry wheat and it was yum! We walked around a bit too, took photos of some familiar places, and had ice cream at a coffee shop that I went to all the time when I was in school.  Dad and Mom gave us copies of all the photos they took too – there were so many great ones! So I’m including a bunch of them here 🙂  He really captured everyone’s personalities quite well. Some were taken with his waterproof camera from out in the ocean!

Amy setup her cameras on the back deck and we did our annual round of family photos on our last night there. They turned out great! Then we headed to the beach with her for some Armstrong family photos. It was CRAZY windy and super bright, as you can see in the photos. We are lucky to have such a talented photography in the family 🙂

And here are some videos from the week.