The first week of June brought with it our first annual Friend-cation. Borne over Facebook chats, monthly mom's nights out, and some wine, a few friends and I decided to put the plan in action and meet up for a week at the beach.
Finding a beach house rental? We did it by searching and Facebook chatting each other links. In the end, we found this sweet place in Corolla. Beach houses all have names, and ours was the Full Moon. You probably can't make it out in this picture, but the moon is actually mooning you. In the laundry room, there was a whole series of mooning-related art. Perhaps not the most classy rental house, but it was ours and we loved it.
There were 4 moms and 7 kids. The kids ranged in age from 4 months to 4 years old.
Two dads - Jonathan one of them - joined us for Saturday, Sunday, and half of the day Monday before returning to work. Then it was moms and kids only for the week! And what did we do?
We went to the beach. At least once every day, and most days we went twice. As the week progressed, we took less stuff with us every time. We slowly learned that things like chairs and umbrellas were never going to get used with a pack of toddlers to chase around.
We learned that GOB is helpless to resist the calming sounds of the ocean. He passed out almost every time.
Between beach visits, we squeezed in some food and field trips. The best restaurants of the week? Steamers, for not only their amazing steamed shrimp but also their incredible service. They gave the kids crackers to feed to the turtles while we waited for our food, they never batted an eye when we ordered over the wailing of children, and they accommodated special requests. And Duck Donuts, where we got to watch the donuts being made and then went outside with the wee ones to feast. The maple bacon donut craze has even reached the Outer Banks!
We visited the Currituck Banks boardwalk, where we spied deer and frogs and spiders, egrets and otters and fish.
We split up the cooking responsibilities for the week so that when we weren't sampling the local grub, we each made one home-cooked breakfast and one dinner. Delicioso!
Corolla is so far north on the Outer Banks that we were almost in Virginia, and we were really close to the Colonial Wild Spanish Mustangs, a herd of 117 wild horses living on the beaches there at the tip of the OBX. Evelyn and I joined one other mom and kiddo on a wild horse tour with The Corolla Wild Horse Fund, a conservation group. It was so cool. The kids loved bumping over the dunes, and we got to see a three-day-old foal! The horses weren't out on the beach during our tour, because Tropical Storm Andrea was approaching and they were retreating to the sound and marsh areas to stay safe.
We drove down the road to Duck, NC for their Faire Days festival on Wednesday afternoon, where we got to pet a gentled Spanish Mustang (rescued from the wild herd after she became pregnant at a young age and was malnourished), Evelyn got her first tattoo, and we hung out listening to live music and playing.
And, of course, there was more beach-going. We went in the rain, we went in the sun, we went just after the tropical storm passed and got free full-body exfoliation from the blowing sand.
We hung out on the deck, we ate marshmallows...
We played lots and lots of Shopping List - the favorite game of the week hands-down.
We spied on hermit crabs at Wings.
Stocked up on kites for the kids at Flying Smiles Kites (if you can go to only one store on OBX, go here!).
... visited the beach some more...
... napped on friends...
... went back to the beach...
... read some books...
... and finally passed out. Sometimes on the beach.
Not pictured: that night when we put the kids to bed and then there was scotch and then we found ourselves spreading raw honey on our faces. It makes for surprisingly smooth skin. The homemade ice cream. The times when we had six kids in the jacuzzi tub, trying to rinse off the sand. The waking up early. The fact that the dining table was a pool table in disguise. The stairs. So many stairs. The fox that crossed the street right in front of us. The ghost crabs all over the beach if you held still long enough... It was a pretty amazing week.
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