In the fall of 2011 our friends the Hameloth’s invited us to join them in September 2012 in the Outer Banks, NC. On our first night of driving we made it all the way to Nashville, TN. We arrived after dark on Sunday night and we had such a fun time catching up for the first time on American soil! Lynnea and I “met” online while we waited to be matched in 2010. Then we were in China together to adopt Amelie and Ava.
The next morning we woke to beautiful skies and a practically empty beach. We have always taken beach vacations during the summer and I was in the Outer Banks about 12 hours before I was convinced that off season was the only way to go. In the next 24 hours I was ready to move to the Outer Banks. Ha!
LOOK at the empty beach. It was fantastic!
This photo sums up how happy my heart was on this week of vacation. Seeing the kids playing together and having a blast.
This was Josie’s first trip to the beach and she was so happy and had a ton of fun digging in the sand.
Lena and Nadia were like 2 peas in a pod the whole week and it was adorable to see their friendship blossom.
Steve and the girls playing Uno.
This photo was taken after Travis and Jared showed Nadia the stop motion video they made for her birthday gift. We had a great first day at the beach!
I know it’s 5 months late, but I am finally going through all of our beach vacation photos. I decided I would start this series of posts with my L-O-V-E of Duck Donuts. Thanks to our friends Randy and Jessica we knew to look for this place when we got to the Outer Banks, NC.
This is the key to the wonderfulness that this place is – they make the donuts to order. Once they come out hot, then they add the glaze and topping of your choice in any combination. Let me just say OH.MY!
Dipping station.
The kids eating their first Duck Donuts.
Our first box of Duck Donuts. Now here is a true confession: We went grocery shopping after Duck Donuts. By the time we finished that I was ready for another one so I asked Mike to stop back by for me to get one more before we went home. And that was just the first day! I found my favorite combination on day one – chocolate and peanut butter glaze with peanuts on top.
Then we went nearly every day of the trip. There is a slight chance that I had a momentary addiction to these on our trip 😉
I know I have been remiss in my TT posts, but not because we aren’t thankful, but I just haven’t set aside time lately to blog.
I am thankful that our schedule is such that when it’s a gorgeous day in the middle of February we can take off to the zoo for 2 hours! We have a zoo membership so I didn’t even pack a snack – we just headed out and I decided we would leave in time to get home for lunch. When we arrived there were no school buses in the parking lot and I yelled a big “WOO HOO!”
They wanted to pretend they were kissing the frog. HA!
On the way back to the car Nadia said, “It’s like we had the WHOLE ZOO to ourselves. That was awesome!”
