North Carolina Beach Week

We took off a couple Sunday's ago to spend some time at Caitlin's house in Wilmington and then head to Oak Island for the rest of the week for a little beach vacation with Jeff's family.

We had a week filled with the pool, napping, putt-putting, boogie-boarding, swimming, a little sightseeing, and shell hunting (of course)!

While we visited with Cait and Caleb, we got to meet up for dinner one night with some friends from college, Lindsey and Lee. We actually turned around after we left home to go meet them that night so I could grab my camera (for blogging purposes)and then took zero pictures, so you'll just have to trust me that the rendezvous happened!

As you probably caught from a blog post back in May, Caleb is a policeman, which is pretty intriguing to Jacob. This time, he brought in his SWAT gear for Jacob (and Jeff) to check out. I also got to do a little gun-slingin' of sorts, where I proved myself not worthy to carry a firearm. I wasn't aware that when pulling back the top thingy (let's call it "cocking it" just for kicks)on the gun, your finger should not be on the trigger. Lesson learned. Luckily, Caleb doesn't keep (no would he now ever let me touch)his guns loaded or whatever, so there was no way I could hurt anyone!

The other main attraction (besides the resort-style pool) at their house is Hoya, their boxer. Naturally, Jacob is scared to death of him, yet adores him from a distance. In fact, when we were at the pool one day, Jacob was pretending he was Hoya, and would "fetch" the random pool ball we found (with his mouth, like all dogs do), and swim it back up to his owner, Cait.

On Wednesday morning, we headed down to Oak Island, which conveniently enough, was only about 45 minutes from their house! We rented a house for a few days that was SUPER nice--so nice, that, as Amy, David and I discussed numerous times, we would never let some random renters touch! Jacob lived in a dream room for a week--two sets of bunk beds, his own "sofa" (a futon with the most awesome sea horse fabric I have ever laid my little eyes on) and a giant flat screen. Oh yes, and his own bathroom the size of our kitchen-no joke. In fact, Jacob's room was probably the size of half of our house--again, no joke.

The other excitement revolving around the accommodations were: 1.) the septic smell after a load of laundry was washed. THANKFULLY for the youngsters, and not so thankfully for the older folks, the smell was coming from under the master bathroom sink--which would be Bryant and Judy's room! So we just locked them in there with the smell to keep our air fresh and breathable. (Don't worry, we didn't lock anyone anywhere) I mean, the rest of us have a couple of fetuses to watch out for! And the 2.) There was a break in at some point before we came and checked in--the owner informed us ahead of time about this--and while we were there a guys came by with a set of keys asking Bryant and Judy if they could try the keys in the house's locks to see if they were the right ones (he had on an "Oak Island Security" t-shirt, which when David googled it, and then even after that when the cops showed up, we found was a non-existent security company. We're thinking that with the description that Judy gave the police, she will have single-handedly put this man away for a few years, AND earn us a free beach vacation back to any house on Oak Island we want--as thanks for her being a good and observant citizen.

Other than that, we played in the ocean, which was like 15 degrees warmer than it was here in VA Beach before we left, visited the historic town of Southport, did a little shopping/browsing in the trinket shops, and did some putt-putting.

As a result of the week out in the sun, Malibu Ken is out in full force. That would be the name some of the nursery workers back in Seneca gave the young, 18 month old Jacob, as it became obvious that he was a golden beach boy over the summer months. I, on the other hand, seem not to be doing so well in the tanning department in my old age. I used to get a pretty tan like Jacob every year, but not now--now, well, I don't really know what has happened, but I don't like it one bit.