OBX: Jockey's Ridge

My friend Jill also supervised Rachel's field trip a couple of weeks ago and when we were talking about spring break I mentioned that we'd be heading to the Outer Banks so she said we just had to visit Jockey's Ridge State Park. I told her we'd try and then mentioned it to Karen while she was making her list of things to do out here.

Incidentally, Jill is the friend who gave me the hand-me-down toys that I gave to the kids for Easter. Incidentally, Jill is Jewish, but I know she totally won't mind I used her things for Easter gifts. Incidentally, Jill's brother is a film editor out in California and back when he was freelancing he worked on God's Army and Brigham City, two very Mormon films. Incidentally, I haven't seen either movie. Jill figured I probably would have...but nope. So we talked more about the Outer Banks than movies.

Anyway, I'm so glad Jill told me about Jockey's Ridge because it was a ton of fun. Basically it's just a sand dune--but it's ginormous! And frankly, the weather's perfect for it right now because it's not scorching hot.

OBX: Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills

I had to look this up because I was super confused about it. We left Fort Raleigh (the lost colony) and put "Kitty Hawk" into our GPS because that's where the Wright Brothers made their first flight, right? So we're driving down the road and the GPS is telling us we still have several more miles to go when we see a sign for the Wright Brothers monument, so we ditched the GPS and turned down Wright Memorial street. We weren't even in Kitty Hawk yet! We were still in Kill Devil Hills.

As it turns out, Kill Devil Hills didn't exist when the Wright Brothers took to the sky. They were just out in the middle of nowhere and had to walk four miles into Kitty Hawk to send the telegram telling their family that they'd done it. Kill Devil Hills didn't spring up until the 1950s.

Kill Devil Hills claims to be "the birthplace of aviation," while Kitty Hawk says it is "first in flight." I suppose they're both right. And wherever we were (Kill Devil Hills, it turns out), we had a fun time at the Wright Brothers Memorial.

It was so windy (it's always windy--so windy that in October 25, 1911 (exactly 98 years before Miriam was born) Orville Wright managed to float in a glider for over ten minutes (he took off into the air and then just hovered there because the wind is that full of lift (and his glider design probably helped a bit, too))) and we couldn't find a picnic table around so we decided to picnic in our van. We put the backseat down and the kids sat there and ate before going to check out the museum (which I missed because I stayed behind to nurse Zoë).

Here's a picture of the monument and in the lower righ-thand corner is Grandpa with the three older kids:

Breaking News: First step!

Even with six other people around to entertain her, Zoë had her heart set on being held by me this evening. She kept crawling over to the stool I was sitting on, pulling herself to standing, and begging to be picked up. So after I finished choosing pictures (for that Roanoke post) I got down from my stool so that I could spend some time with her. I sat on the floor and said, "Come here, Baby. I'll hold you."

She wasn't too happy about being told to "come here" (you should see how she throws herself on the ground sometimes when I tell her that, like, "Mom! I can't move one more inch. You come to me!") but she decided she could make an effort.

She moved around the stool so she was closer to me, but she still wasn't close enough so she let go of the stool, and there she stood. And then she picked up her foot and took one little step toward me, caught her balance again, and then lunged onto my lap.

I don't know if she'll take another step ever again because, as you can see from the picture above, she's not always happy about walking, but this evening she took her first solo step without any prodding at all.

How is she this old already?! I'm still telling people I "just" had a baby.

I should probably stop saying that...

OBX: The Lost Colony

We tried to go to the aquarium this morning but it's closed for renovations, apparently. Andrew looked up the hours online but didn't visit the actual website where it quite clearly says that it's closed. No one was too broken up about that. Instead we headed straight for the next item on our itinerary: Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, which is the site of the lost colony of Roanoke.

The rest of Easter

The rest of our Easter Sunday was beautiful--we all went down for a nice, long rest time, and it was divine. Here we are before rest time:

Easter Egg Smackdown 2016

We dyed Easter eggs on Saturday afternoon, a task my children took very seriously so don't mind their lack of smiles!

OBX: Bodie Island

It was ridiculously cold and windy on Saturday, but everyone headed to the beach nonetheless (well, everyone aside from the women and babies). No one stayed very long or got very wet. Here's Daddy and Benjamin walking back from the beach:

OBX: The Outer Banks, day 1

Our goal was to leave the house by 11:00 on Friday morning. We left at 11:07, so not bad in our book, but we had to pull off at a gas station half an hour into our drive. Half the kids--Miriam and Benjamin--rode with Grandma and Grandpa in the rental car. Andrew and I took Rachel and Zoë so that the oldest could help take care of the youngest in the backseat. This was mostly accomplished by looking up from her kindle every now and again to throw a toy or some food in her direction, but ultimately proved most useful when Rachel yelled, "Oh, no!!!"

"What?" I asked, whipping around in my seat as Andrew reflexively stepped on the breaks.

"Just,"Rachel said, a bit calmer now, "Zoë has yellow stuff all over her legs for some reason. She's smearing it all around. I'm not sure how it got there but..."

"Lovely," I sighed, craning my neck to investigate. "That's poop."

Clean up was fun and soon we were on the road again (and without further mishap, though we did have to stop again to nurse a screaming baby). For the most part I ignored the quickly passing scenery, engrossed in the book Into Thin Air. I had to get down from Everest before I could focus on anything else, though I did look up when Andrew slowed the car down for a long line of other cars rubber-necking at an alligator on the side of the road (it was humongous) and to shudder a time or two while driving over miles and miles of bridge spanning the open ocean (or sound or whatever (so many miles of bridge)).

The kids were all too happy to pile out of the vehicles when we arrived at the beach house and while Daddy and Grandma went to the store to purchase provisions, Grandpa and I took the kids to the beach. It was a beautiful day, though a little chilly and terribly, terribly windy. But I suppose that's to be expected around these parts--because that's the reason the Wright Brothers chose this area to try out their flight machine for the first time. The wind never lets up.

Lethbridge ain't got nothing on the Outer Banks!

The wind whipped the sand painfully against our bare legs, and the ocean is still icy cold from the winter currents, but we endured a happy hour or so at the beach, skipping in the waves and playing in the sand. We did not attempt boogie boarding because the minute we stepped over the dune our boogie boards lifted in the air like kites. Rachel accidentally let go of her strap and had to chase her board down the beach quite a ways before she caught up with it (so Grandpa walked them back to the house for us).

And not that this has anything to do with our first day at the beach, but overnight one of Benjamin's brand-new crocs blew away. We eventually found it (far, far away from where it was left) but it took quite a long time with several of us looking.

Anyway, here's a picture of Zoë enjoying the beach:

It's always fun when Grandpa comes

Zoë took about a week to warm up to Grandma. I left the kids with Grandma on Wednesday last week because I had dance practice, which means two solid hours of dancing. I've been getting away with holding Zoë on stage through most of these rehearsals but I simply can't dance for two hours while holding her. So even though she'd just met Grandma, I left her anyway, all alone (Andrew was out of town). 

She screamed and screamed and screamed. 

So I took her to rehearsal with me on Thursday. 

Slowly, though Zo came around to Grandma. She learned that Grandma's arms kept her out of Benjamin's reach. She learned that Grandma will give her Cheerios and Veggie Straws. She learned that Grandma is phenomenally great at the game peek-a-boo. And she decided that Grandma was pretty okay.

"She's just gotten used to me and now we're going to introduce her to another new person," Grandma said. 

And then we wondered how Zoë would react when she (re)met her grandpa. Would she be shy of him for the whole week? Or would his baby-whispering ways win her heart outright?

We found out today when Grandpa texted Grandma around 10:30 this morning. 

"Eduardo," he wrote.

"What?" Grandma asked.

"RDU," Grandpa wrote back.

Museum with Grandma

Grandma and I took the kids to the museum yesterday afternoon. I'd promised the girls that we could go during spring break (they're always so disappointed whenever Benjamin tells them that I took him to the museum while they were at school) and our spring break is disappearing at an alarming rate!

It didn't help that the first three days of spring break were designated snow make-up days. Nor does it help that our entire life seems to revolve around rehearsals for the musical. I've spent eleven hours either rehearsing or driving to/from rehearsal just in the past three days.

That's like 1/6 of my time!

Maybe that doesn't sound like very much time to be away from the house doing other things but, I assure you, to my nursing baby it feels like basically an eternity. And then, because I've been starving her (ha! this child is so far from starving) she wants to eat and eat and eat when I get home. And then wants to eat and eat and eat all night long, which means that I'm sleepy.

But I powered through the afternoon at the museum anyway (and I think, if I'm not mistaken, that Grandma actually dropped Zoë and I off at home to nap while she took the kids to get pizza for dinner (I'm so tired I can't even remember what I've done certain days)). The kids had a fun time showing Grandma their favourite parts of the museum.