North Carolina

The best vacation of our summer was definitely Outer Banks. We spent nine glorious days in luxury and relaxation. My parents, Jeff, and Mark/Kimmie flew out from SLC to North Carolina. Alan and Lindsay already live in NC, and we drove down from CT. (Even the drive was great.) The entire family spent a fabulous week together!

Below are a few pics of some of the fun things we did while in the Outer Banks:

Four-wheeling on the beach was one of my favorite activities. Only 4x4 vehicles are allowed on certain beaches, and we could drive/bounce around for miles! The kids had a blast, I laughed for hours, and Jim loved driving thru the sand and surf!

I have to include a pic of "our" beautiful beach house. It was incredible! Whenever we weren't at the beach or out on some fun activity, we were relaxing at the house or swimming in the pool in the backyard. James keeps asking when we can go to "Grandpa's house with the pool". He doesn't realize that the house was a rental.....but we all wish it belonged to my Dad :)

Every day we went to the beach. The water was warm, the sand was soft, the waves were perfect, there were tons of shells to collect, and the beaches were very family friendly. Emi was in the surf continually, Clara collected hundreds of shells, and James loved running back and forth from the waves to the beach. The beach is awesome, the kids just entertain themselves for hours. My brother Alan brought lots of fun kites and also encouraged some serious sand castle building throughout the week!

We spent one afternoon visiting Kitty Hawk (the first flight, the Wright brothers etc.) Neat!

We visited one of the lighthouses on the Outer Banks. The kids all enjoyed climbing to the top...I on the other hand was a bit nervous. Heights aren't my favorite thing in the world. I was just worried that James was going slip through the railing or something! Paranoid I know :)

Other favorite things we did that aren't pictured (I need to get some more pics from Mark and Kimmie) - I loved going crab hunting on the beach at night. You go around 10 pm and there are hundreds of crabs roaming the beach. Kinda creepy, yes.....but very fun to scream and run around trying to catch them (the boys caught them.....the girls just screamed). I loved playing tennis, riding bikes, attempting to play beach volleyball (us Dibb's are not athletically gifted.....Jim was the only one of the bunch that could actually do some damage to the volleyball :). Oh, and enjoying lots and lots of homemade gourmet meals! Fabulous!