Not Just a Day at the Beach

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Whenever the boys track out from their year round school schedule, we try to make at least one day trip to the beach.  Often, our destination is either Wrightsville Beach or over to Carolina/Kure Beach and Fort Fisher where one of the NC Aquariums is.  Yesterday we made such a trip winding our way on NC 132 through Wilmington and over to the aquarium.  Typically, we eat lunch, enjoy a casual stroll through the aquarium, and then go to either the Fort Fisher recreation area or one of the other public access spots nearby.  This way we aren't out in the sun during the hottest part of the day.  Being October, and the weather turned out great but was questionable at the start of the day, nothing was crowded.  We enjoyed the aquarium and recreation area with a handful of other people.  I took about 600 pictures and cleaned it out to around 300 putting together a collage of favorite aquarium and beach shots.  I chose to post the aquarium collage because it has so many nice colors and varying shots, but I really like the beach collage too.

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The lower right picture shows Joey's hand holding a piece of a sand dollar.  He was delighted to be finding such good luck on the beach.  I tried to help him find a whole one, but we weren't that lucky.  I have found one or two on this stretch of beach before.  I'm a shell girl.  Each trip I bring back one or two gallon Ziploc bags of shells for crafts or to put on display in the yard or in a bowl to remind me of my happy trips to the beach.  I was very happy that Joey showed such an interest yesterday in shell collecting with me.  We found a sea urchin, saw a tiny crab, got a few crab 'shells', and found some other unusual sea creatures...things we don't find back over at Wrightsville Beach where they've had to pump in so much sand for beach replenishment.  Fort Fisher always has a nice variety.

Johnny crashed and crashed and crash in the waves.  I'm so proud of how both boys handle the ocean water. I was much more afraid at their age.

Although the water was 73 and the air temp around 80, we were all in it 4 times frolicking in the sun.  The wind gave a bit of a chill, but we were able to enjoy the water anyway.

Apparently the movie Arthur Newman, Golf Pro was being filmed just up the beach from us!  I don't know if Emily Blunt or Colin Firth were there, but they were filming some sort of police scene.

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Saving this shot of the aquarium wall for a possible future collage background:-)

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Really like this picture of  my boys...

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I'm saving butterfly, turtle, and gull shots just in case I need something to post tomorrow or over the weekend:-)   Hope you enjoyed a quick view of our trip to the beach...