Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Spring Break Fun at Blackbeard Island!

To end our week of Spring break fun, we spent the Weekend at Tom and YaYa's along with the whole Wailes family.  We planned a Saturday boat ride over to Blackbeard Island.  Blackbeard Island is only accessible by boat and is names Blackbeard after one of the most notorious pirates that captained the waters off the eastern seaboard in the late 1800s.  We of course learned this later through a little research since we considered this a field trip for Aubrey's school year!  

We packed some sandwiches, treats, and drinks and headed off around lunch time. 

The captain and his first mate!


We made it!  
The island was beautiful and mostly deserted except for one or two boats off the coast in the distance.


We found our own shipwrecked boat!  
Needless to say, there was no treasure to be found!

We found a lot of awesome shells, coral and crabs.

We decided to take off on a little exploring adventure and we found all this beautiful drift wood.

By late afternoon, the dolphins were coming around and gave us a little show.



 Just a few more cute pics that I took of my littlest babe!


What I didn't mention at the beginning of this post was that shortly after we got there, we realized the tide was going out.  We didn't pull the boat all the way up and all got out of the boat and waded through the water to get on shore.  However, the tide was going out quickly!  Not great thinking on any of our parts!  Before we knew it, the front part of the boat was coming out of the water.  At that point, it was too late! The boat was obviously too heavy for us to push back (although some husbands...and a wife or two that will go unnamed tried to push it back into the water). We referred to our phones for a trusty tide report and discovered that the tide wouldn't come back in until early evening!  We settled in for a longer than planned visit to Blackbeard Island!  We rationed the drinks, chips and sandwiches.  Thank goodness we packed more than enough to last us.  Don't get me wrong.  Every morsel had been eaten by the time we left the island, but it was plenty that we weren't starving and light snacked through the afternoon. Of course to document the fun adventure, we got a rare picture of everyone enjoying the boat...completely out of the boat!  Who needs water for a good time?
We did manage to get the boat pushed back into the water around 7:00 or 7:30 that evening and then high-tailed it back to the house before it got too dark! 

We will always have the family story of  "remember that time when we went to Blackbeard Island and beached the boat!"

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Spring Break Fun at the Zoo!

Our trips to the zoo are normally on weekdays since it is much less crowded then and you can really get to spend some quality watching the animals.  With this being said, it's not often that Dad get to go to the zoo with us.  Danny took the day off on Friday (the last day of spring break with Lydia) and we decided to stop by the zoo to visit our favorite animals on the way to YaYa's house for the weekend. 

We were excited that we got to see a lot of our family animals out and about!


This jaguar was obviously very tired!  
She was was breathing, but the only movement to her was her chest rising and falling!

The girls decided they needed to be monkeys instead of just watching the monkeys!

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Birthday Bowling Fun!

It doesn't happen often, well, it's never happened, but we got to celebrate Anna and Davis' birthdays together!  Their birthdays are only one day apart, but them living 5+ hours away makes it difficult for us to celebrate them together.  We were super excited when we found out that the cousin's school spring break fell on the same week as both Anna and Davis birthday. 

We made plans for Lydia to come and spend the week with us, while Davis and Matthew went to YaYa's for the week.  Once we celebrated Anna's birthday, the next day, YaYa came to town with the boys and we had some bowling fun! 



Bowlers in the making!






The Birthday Boy and Girl!


YaYa and her first grand-girl.

Daddy and his baby girl.

Her model pose.

After bowling, we headed to the game room for more fun! 
 These two are some serious gamers!

Daddy and the birthday girl! 
I think she had just beat me in a driving competition!

The night was topped off with an Angry Birds cake for Davis and lots of present opening!