North Topsail, NC 2009 with Jefferies

After a pretty uneventful car ride we arrived in North Topsail ready to relax. And relax we did. We spent a week at the beach. That's pretty much it and it was wonderful. Lucy spent as much of the week as she could in the waves or building wet sand castles. She wore Ian out so much that he was falling asleep just minutes after the girls nearly every night. They even spent hours out in the ocean on rainy days in 75 degree weather. They turned blue, but they were in the ocean and Lucy was loving it. Lu loved collecting shells and rocks, rolling around in the smaller waves and "feeding the fish" sand that she tossed out into the ocean.

Harper ran around, chased seagulls and stayed away from the waves. She did not like the look of the waves- at all. She eventually decided that she liked the wet sand in the evenings and the puddles that were left behind at low tide. She ate sand, destroyed sand castles and collected shells. She also loved deconstructing seaweed.

While not at the beach they both enjoyed reading with Gramzie and Pop Pop, playing in the curtains in the rooms, taking long showers, and watching the waves and seagulls from the balcony. Lucy loved going to the turtle hospital with Gramzie and Pop Pop and Harper just plained loved Pop Pop. In fact, Harper would say over and over again at every meal "sit down Pop Pop, sit down". He also got extra hugs and kisses and she treated him like a jungle gym. Lucy and Gramzie had their own lovefest playing with a dollhouse and doing crafts. Lucy entertained us all one night with her version of "Don't stop believin'". In fact, Harper liked it so much that she danced and clapped and thought she was part of the show.
Lucy also enjoyed a treasure hunt and loved spying "pirate ships" each and every day out in the ocean. And one of her "summer list" items was fulfilled- to get ice cream from the ice cream truck. She chose a gigantic popsicle from "Pop Pop's ice cream" (the real name of the truck!) and Harper got a Tweedy bird ice cream- as big as her head. Both girls liked to see the helicopters that breezed along the shoreline every day.

All in all it was a great vacation. Ian caught up on sleep in the evenings and I did so in the mornings. We got to spend time together in the afternoons while the girls napped and I didn't go into labor, so that was definitely a great thing- although little man did like to keep me up in the middle of the night!

We made it home in decent time on Saturday with a pretty uneventful ride home. Lucy was ready to call friends an hour after we got home and Harper was ready for a good nap. Being away from home served us all well- now we have more energy to pull the house together, get ready for the birthdays, baby and school that are looming and dream of our next beach trip!

wit