The Outerbanks

To begin with, the draft of this post looks much better than when it posted. The pictures are all messed up now . . . I'm not sure why. Oh well, just know that I tried hard to make it look cute, and that I don't have the patience or know-how to fix it!!


Ohh . . . what a dream. I just smile thinking about it. We spent Spring break in a beach house with our great friends (or "fr-amily" as the Chipmans would say) the Brimhalls, the Rogers', and the Chipmans.

We left in the afternoon on Friday, March 27th. The plan was to stay for two nights in Washington D.C. since we couldn't check into the beach house until Sunday afternoon. We stopped at a travel plaza in Somerset, PA to eat dinner and to burn off some energy. The kids were sad, and a little fascinated, with a dead blackbird they found while running up and down a hill.

We finally made it to our hotel just before midnight, thanks to the dark, the rain, and the insane individual who designed the DC roads.

This is what our kids looked like for the last couple of hours that Chris and I were driving, bleary-eyed, to our hotel. We were so excited when they all woke up at midnight, ready for action.

After a not-so-great night's sleep, we explored DC . . . all day. We had a great time, but we were so exhausted by the end of the day.

On the subway, the cherry blossoms, and on the top of the Washington Monument

This is in part of the Smithsonian - if you look close at the fossil behind us, you can see a smaller fish inside it.

Washington monument, at the WWII memorial, and at the Lincoln memorial.

The next day was Sunday, so we found a church where we could go to Sacrament meeting, and then we drove the last few hours to Duck Beach, in the Outerbanks. We stayed until Saturday morning.

Good times on the beach (the water was pretty cold, but we had a great time on the sand)

This was a dead sting ray that washed up one morning; the kids were fascinated! The other picture is of all of Noah's beachcombing treasures.

On Tuesday afternoon we went to Jockey's Ridge State Park, which is a bunch of sand dunes. We had a great time, and we would have liked to stay longer than we did, but it was a bit too windy and cold.

Flying kites:

Eating sand:

Races up the dunes:

Crazy dads - Chris, Jeff, and Greg:

There was a clubhouse by our group of beach houses, so we spent some time swimming in the pool, and playing tennis:

After about two minutes of playing tennis, Brig got tired of it, so then he just played in the nets.

We also went to Kill Devil Hill:

Chris had the kids race against the time it took the first

airplane to go the same distance.

Good times at the beach house:

Bowling, playing the Wii, matching bracelets, posing outside the beach house, and playing on the playground.

One of the highlights of the whole trip was the treasure hunt. On the way down Chris told a story of one of Blackbeard's men hiding some treasure somewhere along the beaches of North Carolina - treasure that has yet to be discovered. On Thursday morning we all went on a walk on the beach, when the kids found a bottle, which had a treasure map inside of it. The kids had to follow some complicated directions, and they finally found the right spot to dig, where they found buried treasure! They were sooo excited. After they opened the treasure chest and saw all the "gold" coins, Will Chipman bit one and yelled, "It's real!!" I can't believe all the work Chris went to to make this happen. I must admit, my kids have the coolest dad.

Finding the bottle, and then reading the map inside.

Counting the number of steps to get to the right spot; digging, and digging . . .


. . . and digging! Finding the treasure box! Reading the warning message in the box.

Dividing the spoils.

The last night we were there we turned on some music and had a dance party. There was some sweet dance moves, and all the kids also had a chance to stage jump. . . multiple times.

One of our favorite parts of the trip was that after the kids went to bed, the adults stayed up and talked or played games. This also included doughnuts . . . a lot of them . . . every night. Because of this, it was so fun when Greg and Stacey surprised the rest of us with these OBX bumper stickers with a doughnut in place of the "O."

We packed up and reluctantly left on Saturday, April 4th. We left a little before the other families, and began the longest two days of our lives. We planned to drive to Shippensburg, PA that day to stay with our friends, Nathan and Valerie Goates. Because of multiple traffic jams we got to their house 4 hours later than we planned. The next day we were stuck in more traffic. We were so frazzled by all the driving, and I forgot to take any pictures of our time with the Goates :( It was so fun to see them, though.

Whew! What a post! This took me much much longer than it should have. Despite the bummer ending this was one of the best vacations we have been on. Thanks, Huffmans for the idea! We wish we could have done this with you guys the year before too!