AR Loves the Beach!!!



...OMG! My AR is a little beach baby! She loved every part about it...the sand, the ocean, the sandy grapes she had for snacks. She would just sit and play, play, play but occasionally, she'd just get up and decide to head out to sea!

 

Here she is with her plethora of toys.

Mommy and AR at the beach. I forgot my sunglasses this day so I just wore hers. Oh and I did venture out to the beach just the two of us and we did awesome by ourselves!

When she got tired, she'd just lay down and rest. Every single time I carried her home from the beach, she'd lay her head down on my shoulder.

Walking in the sand

These freaky birds would swope down and pick up any of your leftovers. Here's one taking AR's grape!

H did a great job playing with AR and entertaining her

We saw this on Pinterest and well, ours didn't turn out so well.

Papa playing with AR. One thing at the beach, you can't be afraid to get dirty. You just suck it up and get sand...everywhere and anywhere!

Papa even boogie boarded!

This was after the beach, before dinner...can you tell she's in a trance?

And then I said, "AR, it's time for bed. Are you ready to go night, night?" And she laid down!

You would think she would have slept better as hard as she played! She had a great time and I had a great time watching her.

OBX Beach Sunrise...

...On Tuesday, we all got up at the crack of dawn (5am PT, 4am CT) and wouldn't you know it this was the only day that AR slept in. Look at these pics though and you'll see why I'm glad we went.

 

Here's the sun rising...can you say gorgeous???

This is H looking for shells

I did a photoshoot for my sis and her fam. They are big Broncos fans and said they might use this one for a Christmas card. They also shared the saying, "God must be a Broncos fan or why else would be make the sunrise/sunset orange?" True in this picture!

Here's AR and I on the beach in our Cards gear

I don't know why but I love this expression on her face, like, what is this stuff in between my toes?

Another sunrise pic

Here's my girl...loves the Cardinals and the ocean!

I am in love with the waves in this picture.

Here are baby footprints in the sand. This picture doesn't truly capture how adorable they were in person.

Another great shot! Wish I'd gotten up more mornings and took some of these pictures or stayed up late enough for sunset.

NC Aquarium...

...on Monday at OBX, it was a little overcast so we went to a local aquarium. When you walk in, there were these sculptures in water that you could money into. Here's Papa giving AR some change to throw in:

Here's AR with her Great Grandma and a giant frog. This pic turned out adorable!

Lots of turtles!

Gator tails

Then had a section on sea turtles. The kids were to put on labcoats and then pick a (stuffed) sea turtle. You went to each station and they would analyze, clean, feed, etc...AR picked one but it was oh so heavy so she spent the majority of the time looking at the fishies swimming in the tanks.

They had a small pier you could walk out onto. Here's AR and H:

Then you could get in this machine to feel what it was like to be in a hurricane. AR didn't understand why she couldn't be in the machine too.

They had a tank where you could touch stingrays. AR stuck her hand in right away and was splashing around. Once we got her to stop splashing, one slid under her hand and so was not a fan as in meltdown. Once we walked away from the tank though, she was better.

Here's the stingray up close.

Look at the teeth on this shark!

And an ugly fish with a beard as I describe it.

Mommy's hair was a little cray cray this day so it's a good thing this picture was taken from a distance!

Bodie Island Light Station...

...Before we left for vacay, I searched OBX on Pinterest and saw these awesome lighthouse pics. From that moment on, I was obsessed with wanting to see a lighthouse. Finally, on Friday morning at the crack of dawn since my baby had me up, my sis, H, AR and I were on a mission to find a lighthouse.

 

At first we were disappointed when we saw the one we were looking for was over an hour away. No way were we up for a 2 hour drive for a 20 minute gander and photoshoot of a lighthouse and we were NOT climbing it since I'd have to carry AR. Then we stopped an a random visitor's center and saw there was one only 10 miles away-woot, woot!

 

It was the Bodie Island Light Station.

As you can tell from this pic, it was EARLY like 6:30am Pacific so 5:30am Central Time.

I love this pic, just wish it had focused on AR instead of the lighthouse. It was one of the first attempts.

Yeah! I got it right!

AR was thrilled with the lighthouse, can you tell?

Mommy and AR at the lighthouse. Yes, 3 of the 4 of us were wearing tye dye. :-)

And, of course, H had to do a little gymnastics action for us. :-)

Volcano and Beach Writing...

...what's a trip to the beach without some beach writing? I feel like it's a great way to commemorate a trip and let those back home know that you were thinking of them. I'm sure this picture will be on the cover of a photo album:

AR and I missed Daddy so we did some beach writing for him

Every diesel or blue truck, she'd point at and say, "Da da" or "Da da -uck" When he picked us up at the airport, I pointed to him and she started grinning. I set her down to walk to him and she played bashful. Turned around and hid her face in my legs then Daddy picked her up and she was so excited!

Thanks to Pinterest, my sis found a fun activity to make a volcano on the beach. AR wanted to touch the "lava" as it came out.

We used a Hawaiian Punch drop in to make it red and it turned out really good!

AR was intent on watching the entire process

We used an entire bottle of vinegar and baking soda but it was cool and the girls really enjoyed it.

Back from Vacay!!!

...AR and I got back yesterday from Outer Banks, NC after one week of vacay with my dad, grandma, sis, H and a few other peeps. It was a fun week and I loved watching AR at the beach for the first time and getting some sun.

 

I would love to say it was relaxing but my girl has FOUR teeth coming in including 2 molars. Her sleep was AWFUL as in I was up with her one night from 11:30-1:30am, luckily, "Mrs. Doubtfire" was on so that helped past the time and she was up at 4am almost EVERY day. WTH? The week before, she was sleeping in until almost 6! And, she was a SUPER momma's girl, meaning no one else could carry her or hold her. It was REALLY hard to carry a 25 lb baby plus a bag of beach gear and myself to the beach. But it was worth it to see her excitement and I swear she could've played in the sand forever! Here she her first walk on the beach:

I only took 200 pics the whole time we were there. I was worried about carrying it while holding her and messing it up at the beach. Luckily, I get one free camera cleaning a year so I'll be dropping that off this week to be cleaned. I wish I'd taken more pictures especially of scenery, sunsets, etc...to practice my camera skills but I do think I got a few good ones. These are just some "family" shots and I'll have a lot more blog posts in the next few days.

 

Here's my Dad, AR and me on the last day at the beach

Papa and his girls

My sis and H

H is a great model and always willing to play along when I want to play photographer

My sis, dad and me

My sis, H and Papa

Thanks for taking us, Dad! More posts to come. :-)