Posted by Michelle on Oct 21, 2008 in Hayley, Michelle
Last month we visited my old roommate and dear friend Michele Eager and her daughter Ava. It was the first time our kids met and it almost made me tear up. We don’t see them enough.
Then we hung out for the day with our friends Sara and Landon. Lunch, the park, all the glamorous mom hang outs. We love spending time with them and always end up spending hours with them!
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Tags: friends, photos
Posted by Michelle on Oct 21, 2008 in Hayley
Tags: photos, school
Posted by Michelle on Oct 19, 2008 in Hayley, Jeff
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I still have more beach photos to post but these are some funny ones of Jeff and Hayley being silly late at night in a gazebo overlooking the sound.
Tags: beach, family, fun, photos, travel
Posted by Michelle on Oct 18, 2008 in Hayley, Jeff, Michelle, pups & other pets
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We are still down at the beach. Our eight days here come to an end in the morning. I am not looking forward to packing up this place and heading home but at least we have Jeff here to help – but of course we have three dogs to get home too now.
I’ll post photos from the past few days tonight if I can and then some more from Hayley’s camera after we get home. Hayley and Jeff went to the Wright Brothers monument and have had fun walking on the beach with the dogs down to the pier.
Hayley has decided crab isn’t so bad after all and willingly ate hot crab dip, which I could live on of course. I suppose she held out as long as she could on the anti-seaford since Jeff and I ate it every night. OMG she is eating up a storm again. Gone is the bird eater and ravenous child has returned. It isn’t such desserts, she’s starving about every 2-3 hours it seems. Must be growing again. She got a henna tattoo of two dolphins and she’s insanely happy about it. It should wear off in a week or so but she’s just hoping it is still there on Monday when she goes back to school.
The weather has turned stormy Friday night and today – it has been amazing to watch the power of the ocean. Seeing wide variances in the tides has been fascinating. Hayley has gotten to see a very small version of what weather-related ocean episodes (hurricanes, flooding, etc) can do.
We have a blustery night here for our last evening. Thank goodness pizza delivery was available!
Tags: beach, family, fun, travel
Posted by Michelle on Oct 18, 2008 in Hayley, Jeff
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Jeff and Hayley went to the Wright Brothers Memorial and had a lot of fun.
Hayley stood at all four marks of their flights while Jeff took her photos – you can see them in order in the slideshow. They also ‘re-enacted’ a photo I took of Jeff years ago on top of the monument there aka the Genius Photo. Hayley’s version is much cuter. I’ll try to drag out his at some point.
Tags: beach, family, fun, photos, travel
Posted by Michelle on Oct 17, 2008 in Hayley, Jeff, Michelle, pups & other pets
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Wednesday was a low key day. I had to get some work done so we hung out at the house (which is like a pleasure in itself! I worked outside on the deck and listened to the ocean. Hayley colored and played video games. We went out that afternoon to eat and shop.
Thursday was a great day!
First we had a special morning at the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island in Manteo (about 15 mins away). We got to come in before everyone else for ‘breakfast with the manta rays’ where just Hayley and I that day got to help feed the manta rays and eat breakfast there. For the price it was a steal b/c it included getting into the Aquarium and breakfast – well little did we know it meant a private guided tour, behind the scenes access and so much interesting info from their amazing educator Ann Marie.
One of the coolest things was seeing what the animals ate in the prep kitchens that the staff uses. We laughed so hard that the alligators love to eat marshmallows as snacks! The fridge had a lot of snacks we would eat (peas & strawberries) and stuff we wouldn’t (crickets, dead rats and dead chicks for the snacks – gross!).
After the tour around, we went to the manta ray tank. We got to touch them and help feed them cut up fish. A few times with gross dead fish pieces was enough for me but Hayley had a ball. I finally got her to touch one – she’s resisted at every aquarium we go to. The rays’ mouths are on the underside so they’d just hover over the food and eat it up.
We saw a few more things and then went to breakfast in a classroom where we got to see all sorts of cool rays and shark stuff. We got to feel shark skin, see rays’ jawbone and more while we ate. It was just an unbelievable couple of hours.
With just a bit of work and a reasonable amount of money, we’ve had some experiences of a lifetime this trip.
Thursday evening Jeff arrived with the pups in tow. So we now have three wiggly dogs and Daddy to help keep a lid on the madness here!
Tags: beach, family, photos, travel
Posted by Michelle on Oct 15, 2008 in Hayley, Michelle
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First, I fixed the link to the photo galleries for day one photos
Tuesday was a day for seeing sights that truly blew us away.
We drove about an hour up the coast to Corolla to go on an open top Jeep ride on the beach to see the wild horses, nature and sunset. We picked the open top jeep to see more but also because it was a rougher ride. It was bouncy and bumpy up and down dunes. Hayley and I both loved it, laughing into the wind when it got wild.
Riding all the beach was gorgeous and then we headed up into the dunes. We came across our first wild horse. By wild I mean they aren’t herded in, aren’t fed, no shoes, nothing – truly wild creatures. There are 101 right now and we must have seen about 15 of them. It was amazing. We saw stallions, mares and three month old foals. Hayley was entranced, as any young horse crazy girl would be.
These guys feed 16 hours a day so mostly they were munching. There are houses out there and the horses freely roam through yards – one guy (some famous monster truck driver named Gravedigger) waters his yard but lets the horses basically mow it and fertilizer it for him, lol.
It can’t tell you what it was like to see these creatures. These animals are descendants of mustangs brought to the New World by Spanish explorers, living here from the 16th century on. Since the area is so isolated, their blood lines have stayed pure.
We drove to see the gorgeous sunset and then back on the beach under the full moon. It was amazing. The driver let us break the rules for a bit and stand up, so Hayley and I were in the back, up holding on the rollbar, our faces and hair fly backwards. It was exhilarating and we were both hooting and hollering.
After it was over, we headed to dinner at Awful Arthur’s, one of my favorite places. Hayley even tried some crab! I’ll get her eating seafood yet.
We came back to the house in the dark and decided to go down to the beach to see crabs. We followed some around, mostly Hayley skittering after them. I suspect her laughing clued them in someone was coming!
We sat down to relax and then the ocean and moon combined into an awesome display. It must have been the full moon cascading at just the right angle and hour on the waves but every so often there would be this electric blue spark running down the wave crest horizontally. I don’t mean like a just brighter blue, I mean neon blue! It was stunning and sitting there in the dark watching, well it was like mother earth had shown us two of her most wondrous things with the horses and this streak of blue fire.
Tags: beach, fun, photos, travel
Posted by Michelle on Oct 14, 2008 in Hayley, Michelle
I was laying out on the beach this morning and reading a book as Hayley ran circles around me, looking for all sorts of shells and creatures. She came over to show me her latest find and as I looked up at her with her wind-blown hair, I’d swear her eyes were the exact same color as the sky. They were all lit up with the sun, sand and water.
We came back, hopped in our very own private pool and are chilling eating lunch. Then off to Corolla for Jeep rides on the beach to see all sorts things and most hopefully the wild ponies.
Tags: beach, family, fun, travel
Posted by Michelle on Oct 14, 2008 in Hayley, Michelle
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Monday was a fantastic day. We slept late, hit the hot tub and then headed out on Hwy 12 down the Outer Banks. By the end of the day, we’d visited three lighthouses (Bodie, Hatteras & Ocracoke) and ridden the ferry twice.
Hayley, bless her youthful legs, climbed ALL the way up the Cape Hatteras lighthouse – all 270 steps. Interestingly after our studying the moving of the lighthouse, she was fascinated with the old site. On the stories we read and video we watched, they talked about the quality of the granite the movers found and it is that rock that is left.
Hayley is also entering a contest for the school system for artistic endeavors, so she took my camera and got some shots. Sitting on the bench outside of Bodie Lighthouse, watching her out in the fields with the camera, lining up angles – well let’s just say it was a moment I never want to forget. She’s ten and can already handle $3,000 worth of camera gear. The child has a great eye.
On the final ferry ride back from Ocracoke, she curled up in blankets and got up on my lap. I held her, we sang songs we made up when she was younger and acted silly. The wind blew and the ferry swayed – and I fell in love all over again with my child, with motherhood and the beach.
Tags: beach, family, fun, photos, travel
Posted by Michelle on Oct 12, 2008 in Hayley, Jeff, Michelle
The bags are backed and we are almost out the door for the beach for the week. Hayley and I leave today, then Jeff will come down mid-week with the dogs.
We’ve got an awesome house two lots back from the beach with a hot tub and four bedrooms. Three decks with a great view of the beach and the sound! Every room as a TV so the Wii is packed up to bring! Books, notebooks, scrabble and DVDs too – all you need for a good week at the beach!
The weather should be mid to high 70s so it’ll be pleasant but we have no illusion of sunny beach skies. However Hayley is dying to see lighthouses so we are off to explore for them! Our plans also include seeing the Wright Brothers memorial, breakfast at the aquarium to help feed the rays, hearing the red wolves howl at night, jeep rides on the beach to see the wild horses that live there, riding the ferry and trying to see if the dolphins or sea turtles are around at all, the maritime museum, the dunes at Jockey Ridge and then maybe a few forays down to the beach for walks, especially fun with the pups. Can you tell I’ve been there tons of times already?
Tags: beach, fun, travel
