First of all, Rory's make up skills are improving every day. She rocked this bold look to church one week because the mascara was hard to get out of her eyebrows.
In the middle of June, we made our way to North Carolina for a Marsh family reunion in the Outer Banks. They used to vacation in the Outer Banks while they were living in New Jersey, and Bekah being both a party planning genius and a mother sick of flying across the country with her kids, invited us all to join her at a dope beach house for the week. She figured out the house to rent and meal planned for all of us for the entire week and all we had to do was show up. Bless her.
Stephen, Rory, and I ended up on a red eye flight that had us leaving for the airport at 10:30 pm on a Friday night. We tried to put Rory down at 7:30 pm so she would at least get a few hours in before the flight. She talked and played in her crib until she finally dozed off around 10, which meant a 30 minute nap before we had to wake her up to go. We booked our travel through various point systems and were too cheap to pay to pick our seats so we ended up with either Stephen or I sitting with Rory and the other sitting on their own. I volunteered to take the four and a half hour flight to Charlotte sitting next to her. We left at 1:15 am and Rory did not sleep one wink. An hour or two in I finally gave up on the dream of her ever dozing off and let her watch movies on her iPad while she laid on my lap. With the time change we landed in Charlotte around 8:30 am where we made a connection to Norfolk. In the thirty minutes we had to sit and wait to board our tiny plane Rory instantly fell asleep on my lap (go figure) and Stephen was able to keep her asleep all the way through boarding as well as the entire flight. I took the singular seat this time and slept like a baby, though our flight was only an hour.
When we landed in Norfolk we had to wait a little while for John and Lucina to come pick us up from the airport (bless them) as they got stuck in some traffic on the way down. Rory and I shamelessly spread out on some benches in the baggage claim area and napped while Stephen kept watch. It was glorious.
When they picked us up we grabbed a quick lunch and made our way down the long island of the Outer Banks. We got checked in, got the room assignments for the house made, and then went to work unpacking our stuff. Before the night was over we were able to make it down to check out the beach and Rory was in heaven. The water was much colder than I had anticipated, but the sand was so fine and the beach nice and clear that you couldn't consider it anything less than dreamy. Rory is getting too tall for her 2T swimsuits, but her 3T swimsuits don't fit her skinny little buns, so I packed one of her older tankinis last minute for the trip. Turns out the elastic in her bottoms had gone out without me knowing it, so while Rory happily explored the beach she also had to fight to keep her pants on the entire time. It may have had something to do with being exhausted from our day of travel but I could not stop laughing while I watched her.
She had no fear when it came to checking out the ocean, even being the only one out there, and we were so excited that we had made the journey out there because it was clear within the first five minutes at the beach that this was going to be a big hit with Rory. Our cousins all got there later that evening and we all enjoyed a delicious pizza dinner together.
The next day was Sunday and we all got up early so that we could make the hour drive to Kitty Hawk for church. We got there just a little after the meeting started at 10 am only to realize that it was a stake conference. As other tourists filed in after us you could hear row by row whisper to each other, "Ugh, stake conference!" so we knew we were in good company. We not-so-covertly made out way out during the congregational hymn after the first hour and made our way to the Wright Brother Museum.
The Wright Brother museum was pretty interesting, a little inspiring, and a whole lot of walking outside in the heat in church clothes with a bunch of exhausted toddlers. When we got home we all took a very much deserved Sunday nap.
On Monday, my mom and Kendall were able to join in the festivities! Kendall lives in Raleigh, about 4 hours away from the Outer Banks, and my mom was out visiting her since she had a free week to help her get ready for her baby coming in September. Linne and I went out first thing Monday morning to buy some famous Duck Donuts for the house. When my mom and Kendall pulled up 20 minutes after we returned from our excursion, they too had brought Duck Donuts because we all just "get" each other. And yes, the donuts were delicious.
We spent the morning out at the beach chatting and standing around in the water while the kids dug a giant pool and got completely covered in sand. When the afternoon got hot we retreated to the beach house to nap (or watch a show in Rory's case because girlfriend didn't nap all week) and regroup. We spent the late afternoon/ early evening back at the beach and got lots and lots of pictures. Then Stephen, My mom, Kendall, Rory and I headed out to a local place for dinner. We ate lots of yummy food and enjoyed even more chatting time. My mom and Stephen fought for the check in an epic battle, but my man came out victorious. Kendall and Mom were feeling up to the drive home so instead of staying the night as they originally planned they hit the road after dinner.
The rest of our week consisted of lots of laying around, play at the beach, taking turns trying unsuccessfully to put Rory down for bed, and having way too much relaxing fun. It was so fun to see Rory interact with her cousins and to see how much better she has gotten at playing with other kids! She loved being doted on by the older girls, or running around crazily with Cooper, Jackson, and Tanner. For a bunch of kids who were not napping they all did a great job of getting along. There was usually 1-2 bouts of impressive toddler tantrumming at some point during the day, but there was a surprising lack of biting and pinching, so that's a win in my book!
One of the highlights of my trip were the goodies we bought at the Northern Lights Bakery. There breakfast biscuit sandwiches were just to die for. They were so good that after buying and eating one, Stephen went right back inside to purchase another. He bought me no less than three other baked goods I wanted to try to meet my chocolate quota for the day, and didn't even judge me when they were gone within a few hours. Here's to being able to use pregnancy as an excuse to overeat! Huzzah!
One of Rory's (many) highlights was hot tubbing with Dad. She loved that she was able to swim without her floatie and if we had let her she could have spent all day in the hot tub sputtering and swimming around. She could touch the bottom of the hot tub when she stood up, but she still doesn't really know how to plug her nose and hold her breath, so she basically looked like she was about to drown at all times, until she would finally pop her head out of the water, spewing water and grinning like a Cheshire cat. I think she also (not-so-) secretly loved that it was Dad and Rory only in the hot tub since pregnant Mom couldn't get in. I get it.
Another good moment, though you can't tell from the picture, was when we walked home from Grandma's birthday pizza dinner in an insane rainstorm. We were absolutely drenched by the time we made it back and shaking little Rory said, "Thanks so much for the walk Mom and Dad." She was immediately rewarded with hot tub time.
Stephen (and Rory's- I'm telling you, this girl was living her best life this week) main highlight had to be BOO-gie boarding together. Stephen would drag Rory along the shallow waves running as fast as he could and Rory was fearlessly living for it. She made him pull her back and forth until he was exhausted and then she would give him about a second to rest and regain his strength before she demanded that he do it again.
On our last day of vacation, Stephen, Rory and I borrowed a car and took off on a little family adventure. When we had driven down the island on that first day I remembered passing lots of signs for salt water taffy, and I was determined to get some before we went home. So we took off with no real destination in mind since I was sure we were going to pass one million and one candy stores along our drive. We stopped a walked around a couple different shopping centers with no luck. I kept convincing Stephen to drive just "one more mile" down the road, feeling sure we would run into one of the many signs I had seen on the way down and we did not see a single one. My pregnant/ exhausted brain had just completely made it up. So, I didn't end up with any salt water taffy, but we did have a great little time exploring together. Stephen found me a beautiful ornament keepsake to remind us of our trip, we got a Diet Coke from a Brew Thru (drive through gas station), and Rory got her pink ice cream.
Not pictured highlights: Rory went ghost-crabbing with Grandma and the rest of the grandkids and even fearlessly held the bucket of crabs. I swear, she is so much cooler than me. We played Dungeons and Dragons thanks to much preparation by brother John and everyone had a great time, except for Pockets who it turns out is small and weird and a very easy target (Sorry Bekah). We watched Into the Spiderverse with Jackson. I owned the girls in Just Dance for the first time in my life ever and felt like a total rock star. We took some last minute beach family pictures that I'm sure turned out amazingly. And overall, just had way too much fun hanging with the Marshes.
Our drive to the airport was a little precarious as there was a ton of traffic and poor Jackson had to poop the entire time. We finally made it to the airport with perfect timing to make our flight and enjoyed a little lunch before we got on the plane. We connected through Philadelphia on our way back home, so our flight time was a little longer this time. Thankfully, Stephen was able to switch seats with the man next to us on our five hour flight so we had the whole row for our family! Rory did an awesome job of playing, watching movies, and she even dozed for a solid hour or so.
I love vacations, I love spending time with my family, I love exploring new places, and I also love coming home. It was a good reunion.
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