Signs of a Good Vacation

Ok, I think I only made it to Day 4 yesterday.

Remember, this is a record not just about debt-reduction and how we got there, but also it has slowly evolved into recounting God's unique faithfulness in our family's life even on this holiday, including things we've learned, people we've met and so on.  I don't expect everyone to read all the details of our life if they don't want to.  It's as much for us and my children's children as it is for anyone else. That's the disclaimer if this is too boring.....

Day 5 - Finally!  We woke up and were officially on our way to the Outer Banks!  Our younger children were starting to not believe us that we were going as we kept stopping at farms and friend's houses (people that they had never met!).  They were excited to think they were actually going now. We'd gotten some good advice from our friends who had actually been to the Outer Banks, so we had a much better idea what to expect, what places to see, where to go, etc.....

We got there in just a few hours and our mouths started to drop almost immediately.  We were driving over thin bridges connecting us to the mainland more than once and it seemed we would end up on a strip of land no wider than a toothpick.  That's what it looks like on all the maps!  Finally we got on the strip where our house was located and it was narrow - water on both sides of the road!

We found our house on Ocean Drive, so beautiful.  Three stories, decks all around, sand everywhere, lovely beach grasses for landscaping.  We thought we had died and gone to heaven.  Within minutes the kids had checked out the house, picked their rooms and ran to the beach.  That night we enjoyed settling in, catching crabs on the beach and we ate our first meal of shrimp that I cooked in the kitchen.

Day 6 - The first day of skim boarding, catching waves, swimming in the pool and generally getting sunburned and full of sore muscles....all signs of a good vacation!  I had already gotten my share of sore muscles and was just starting to walk normal again.  When I had stayed with my friend, Stacey, I joined one of her fitness classes that was called "This Will Kill You" or "Take This Class and Feel Like Dying After", can't remember which, but I thought it would be fun to do something like that together.  So we got up at 5:30 am (yes, even on my vacation) and went to her gym where a few die-hards worked out doing a ridiculous set of circuits meant to get results.  Stacey and her husband, Jeff, are in great shape and run and work out regularly.  I was not about to be outdone.  I did the whole thing as if I worked out all the time, too.  The next day, I nearly died, thus the name of the class.  I was in so much pain for several days.  That's what you get for trying to keep up with the fit people.  However, it inspired me to get back at it and I am quite determined to get back into it if I ever meet up with Stacey and her gym friends again!

Day 7- No one could walk from all the skim boarding.  Everyone had chewed up knees from the shells and all the falling.  But there was no stopping people.  We bought some body boards and started to catch waves with those.  You can still get quite beat up as they are big waves! But so much fun!  I felt like a kid trying to do it, too.

We also picked up some ocean fishing rods which was the best investment and started fishing twice a day.  There is a private pier right near the house we're staying at and our place came with free passes to get on and fish.  My older boys and RM have been catching fish all week.  We even ate our first freshly caught fish meal that night!

Day 8 - More fishing, more swimming, more ocean wave catching.....caught a puffer fish and watched it puff up!

Day 9 - Same, same, same!  Except this time, we started seeing cool fish right off the pier, including giant sting rays!  Now, my younger boy, Jonas, is going to the pier, too, wanting to fish and catching some!  Later that morning, RM actually caught a small stingray!  Everyone on the pier ran over and started taking pictures while my son had his flip-flopped foot on the tail so it wouldn't sting anyone. Yikes!

Late that night we went out to the beach as we'd seen some guy catching his own bait that he dug out of the sand.  When we asked him what he was looking for, he told us about sand fleas.  Ok, these things are the most disgusting things I've seen, but cool at the same time.  They are giant armour-covered flea-like bugs.  Maybe not bugs exactly, but they look like bugs.  Perhaps more in the crustacean family.  They are under the surface of the sand and as soon as the water goes out, if you start digging you'll see millions of these little things.  They get to be about and inch and a half long. All the kids went out there and collected a ton of them which are apparently great free bait, so that's what we'll be using now and I know what my kids will be doing at night!

Day 10 - Today it is a little overcast, but still nice and warm.  I'm out on the deck enjoying the sounds of the crashing waves.  Pelicans are landing all around.

If it rains, we're minutes from an awesome aquarium which we plan on visiting.  We're also minutes from Kitty Hawk where Orville and Wilbur Wright tested their first planes.  We studied them in American History so we can't wait to actually go and see where that all happened.  Everything is quite reasonably priced, so still within the budget.

Ok, I'll include some pictures soon!