Vacation Snapshots: Corolla, North Carolina

We snuck off for a vacation last week. It felt very decadent, pulling the kids out of school for a week and taking off of work just to get away. But friends of ours had rented a huge, beautiful house on the Outer Banks and, in addition to the great company and beautiful scenery that the trip offered, we were thrilled to get away from the dust and chaos at home.

So off we went. We did some walking, running, kite flying, hot tubbing, even a bit of swimming, cocktail sipping, card playing, shell gathering, treasure hunting, and lots and lots of lounging. On top of all of that, one of our friends is a marine biologist and she answered all of our questions about the treasures that washed up on the shore. Just one example: after years of thinking these black pouches were some type of sea vegetation, I learned that they are shark egg pods!

Looking at these pictures it almost looks like it was summer down there. We did have a few warm days sprinkled in between wind storms, but even on the cold days nothing stopped the kids from getting into that water and swimming and swimming. We adults each braved the water at least once, but most of the time, we looked like this: