Beach!

The boys and I headed out around 8:30AM yesterday morning to Wrightsville Beach. It's the closest beach to us at about 2 hours away. The forecast was for partly cloudy, 85, with strong afternoon storms. Well, by 9:30AM we were driving in the rain:-( After getting a radar check and learning that storms were all up and down the coast, we headed to the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher. My hope was that we'd enjoy the aquarium for a couple of hours and then come out to find a sunny day so we could still go swimming. NC Zoo members get in free, so that was sweet. Everyone thought the aquarium would be a good idea on a rainy day, so it was crowded, but not too crowded to enjoy. We ended up spending about 2 hours at the aquarium. We'd had fun there before, and the boys had a really good time this trip too. Joey made a magnet for the fridge, and we saw sharks and an ugly eel in the big tank. We also had fun at the 'touch' area.

It looked clearning but iffy when we came out. Thankfully, as we drove back through Kure beach, it got pretty sunny, and we found some free and close to the beach public access parking. The boys were so excited to get on the beach and go swimming. Both of them just could not wait to get in the water. I was trying to spread the blanket and put more lotion on us and get us ready, and they were READY. Both boys had tons of fun in the surf. Joey was quite the fish wanting to be in up to his shoulders. I had to keep reminding him not to go out too far. We watched the miniature clams (?) redigging themselves back into the sand after each wave passed. We buildt a fun style sand castle with the buckets we'd brought with us. Some other kids showed up later on and played nicely with the boys. I even got to get wet with Joey up to my waste and 'swim'. The water was pretty warm...75 maybe? I felt comfortable. 3 hours later, we said goodbye to the ocean and headed home. Thankfully, no one got burnt. I kept respraying.

The only bummer for me ended up being a dirty camera lense when I was taking the bird pictures. Oh well. In the bubble shot above, you can see me sitting with my straw hat and Joey standing beside me:-) That was my fun pic of the day.

I posted a few of the best pics, but the rest are here.

We're off to the Museum of Life and Science in Durham today. Pics later!