Vacation Highlights: Hatteras, Kitty Hawk, and the wild horses

We had all agreed ahead of time that everyone was free to spend their time however they wanted, with no pressure to do "group" sight-seeing.  So we pretty much all did our own thing,  though we had enough "togetherness" to enjoy each other's company as well.  One afternoon, hubby and I decided to take off and visit the famous Hatteras Lighthouse. Cape Hatteras is about 1 1/2 hours from our beach house. 

As soon as we got there and started to walk around, I experienced one of those unexpected moments of emotion and tears as I thought about how much my dad would have loved being here with us.  He loved lighthouses, and had painted many of them, including this one.    

It was so breezy that I couldn't keep my hat on.  This photo gives perspective as to how tall the lighthouse is, and we definitely were not up for climbing the narrow steps!  We toured the keeper's quarters, which is now a museum, and watched a video that explained how this lighthouse was moved inland almost 3000 feet in 1999 to save it from coastal erosion.  It is just an amazing story that I will never be able to comprehend.

This photo was taken standing at the original location of the lighthouse.  Before we left the area, we also enjoyed a park ranger's lecture on pirates!

Another day, the whole group of us took a short ride to Kitty Hawk to see the Wright Brothers Museum.  Being Ohio natives, we have a great sense of pride in Wilbur and Orville Wright, who strategically took their invention to the shores of North Carolina to test it out!

I just can't get my mind wrapped around the fact that only 66 years after this historic event, a man landed on the moon.

 The National Monument...

Here I am with mom and sister Marcella...

One morning, the ladies decided to go on a tour to see the wild horses.  So we all piled into a tour van and had the time of our lives!

The guide, of course, knew right where to take us.  

The horses are Spanish Mustangs, and are protected by the U. S Government.  People are not allowed to approach them or try to feed them.  It was so weird to be driving on this beach so close to the water.  I felt like we were in the middle of "nowhere".  What a breathtaking sight it was though!

from left:  Connie, Lynn, Marcella, Mom, Barb, Marcie, Jacque, and Cindy.

Vacation highlights: side stops on the way there...

On the way to the Outer Banks, we caravanned with one of my brothers and his wife, and mom took turns riding in each of our cars. Our route took us through Somerset, PA and so we stopped there to have a picnic lunch. We also went to nearby Shanksville, the location of the crash of Flight 93 on 9/11/01.

A permanent memorial is in the process of being built.  The wall that can be seen in this photo (click to enlarge) follows the trajectory of the flight.  The grassy area beyond the wall is the hallowed ground and resting place of those who lost their lives there that day.  Read more about the memorial here.

Since it was a two day trip to the beach, we stopped the first night in Fredericksburg, Va. After checking into our hotel, we found a nearby Italian place to eat and the food was excellent!

It was nice not to have to rush the next morning to finish our second travel day and so we took the morning to look around the town...

Definitely my kind of place, and I can't wait to come back and spend a few days seeing the historical sites.  We stumbled into a classic car show on the main street...

and I did cross the street to get one of these:

We came upon this museum, which was an apothecary...

We enjoyed the interesting presentations...

but they can keep these leeches!

I love this picture of my brother and his wife, who recently celebrated 40 years of marriage.

We found a great coffee shop...

and finally we got back on the road.  I was so excited when I saw this on our GPS:

Vacation highlights: two creative activities

We only had 1/2 day of rain the entire week, and it came on Sunday morning, our first full day of vacation.  It didn't bother anyone really, and one of my sisters came prepared with a couple of creative things for us to do!

Would you believe that she taught us all how to etch a stenciled design onto glasses?

My sister Cindy demonstrating how to do it

The hardest part was choosing the stencil I wanted to use



Next step is to trace it onto clear, transparent contact paper

Hubby and I working on ours together.  You peel the contact paper apart
 and carefully smooth it onto the glass.

From left, Sis-in-law Marcie, sister Cindy, mom, and sister Barb

Next, with an Exact-o knife, you cut out the stencil

Using a paint brush, you then apply the glass etching cream

only to the areas to be etched.

After waiting 5 minutes, you rinse the cream off

I thought they came out pretty nice for our first try!

Toward the end of the week, we did one more creative activity. Using photos that everyone had taken through the week, we made these cute albums!

Vacation highlights: food is love.

I just thought about grade school days when every year we would be required to write an essay on what we did with our summer vacation.  Did you used to do that too?

This vacation was truly "historic" in that while we are a close family and get together often, we've never done anything quite like this where we all took a week to be together as adults.  I like to say we had a chance to talk in complete sentences.  (We did have my youngest nephew along with us, but he was the only exception.) 

 The 14 of us had dinner together every night except the last one, when we were on our own.  Each family took a turn preparing the evening meal and doing the clean up. I volunteered to have our night early in the week so as to avoid the pressure of the competition!  My meal was  creamy chicken enchiladas (home made tortillas) with all the toppings.

Other meals prepared by my sibings included grilled Italian sausage sandwiches and all the fixings, Greek pitas,  grilled fresh shrimp & steak, taco salad, and Cincinnati chili.  There was always an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables, a variety of local wines, and yummy desserts.

While we had agreed we'd all be on our own for breakfasts and lunches, it seemed like there was always something someone was making to share or serving up leftovers.  A couple times we brought lunch to the beach.  One morning I was served breakfast in bed!  My favorite dessert was the brownies made in cupcake wrappers and stuffed with a miniature Reece's peanut butter cup.  

It all added up to 4 additional pounds by the end of the week...groan!

Re-entering the real world...

I couldn't possibly tell all that has gone on in the past month in one blog post.  Our vacation has come and gone and my grand-maternity leave will be over in just a few days!  I'm actually looking forward to getting back to life-as-normal, as good as it all has been.  I have so enjoyed the break and the traveling, the company, and the chance to do some things around the house.  Summer is finally here in northeast Ohio and that always makes me happy!  AND I've missed being in touch with so many of you in blogland and I'm looking forward to reconnecting with you!

Just before the Memorial Day weekend, we did hit a bump in the road around here.  For the third time in the past decade hubby became a statistic of our faltering economy and his job was eliminated.  I'll write more about that when we are on the other side of it.  For now, we would appreciate your prayers as we once again lean hard on our knowledge that God is our Provider.  We trust Him completely with our past, our present and our future.  In our human-ness, this is not an easy place to be, as many of you know from your own first hand experiences, but with God, all things are possible.  So we wait on Him.  He has never failed us.

I just loved ALL your comments on my last post!  The bathing suit issue seemed to strike a universal chord and thank you for letting me know I have plenty of "company"!  I want to report that I was actually surprised to see so many "modest" bathing suits at the beach.  I DID see lots of suits with "skirts" and another thing some of the ladies did was wear some kind of "sport shorts" over their suits.  There was only one incident where I wanted to throw a bocce ball at someone, and that was when the highly sculptered and very tanned blond beauty felt the need to play football with her beau right in front of our beach umbrellas, obstructing our view of the ocean and distracting our men with her ill-fitted bikini.  I won't tell you how I hoped a crab would bite her on the toe and send her away squealing.  HA!

Seriously, we had a wonderful time and the weather was perfect!  We had about a 1/2 day of rain at the beginning of the week, but every other day the temps were in the 90's and the sun was out!  We all knew this was a historical week:  All my siblings, (six of us) our spouses and our mom (and one of my nephews, the last of the minors) a good friend who is part of the family, and two dogs.  By pooling together we were able to rent a huge house just a very short walk from the beach.  There was plenty of room for privacy when needed, comfortable bedrooms with bathrooms, and all the necessary furnishings.  We even had a nice heated pool and a jacuzzi which got used every day!  

I'll post a few photos here and in the coming days I'll write about some specific things we did.  I hope you'll hang with me!  It's good to be BACK!

After two days of traveling, I got so excited when the GPS showed our path ended at the ocean!

We arrived at dusk, but of course we had to walk down to the beach!

Here is the huge house we rented.  See the single window in the middle on the top floor? That was our "love nest" as I named it.  It was on the 4th level, and ours was the only room up there so it was very private.

It was perfect and a lot of fun! We had our own bathroom too.

My two brothers and their wives playing bocce

Scandanavian hubby wisely stayed covered up a good bit of the time.

Brother-in-law Rodney who lives to fish, caught a sting-ray, ugh!

We were in Duck, NC, Outer Banks

I just love this photo of my mom

lots of relaxing...that's what it was all about!

me enjoying the morning's first coffee on one of the many balconies

private heated pool

my nephew preferred the pool to the ocean

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven..."

Ecclesiastes. 3:1 NIV