NC Trip Day 4: NC Aquarium and Bodie Island

 On day 4 (Tuesday) of the trip, we drove to Roanoke Island to go to the NC Aquarium. Here's a map of the Outer Banks to help visualize:

 Mark was born in Elizabeth City and lived in or around that area until he finished high school. Then he moved to Nags Head with his surf buddy George Starboard (who is still there). We stayed in Avon on this trip. The Outer Banks are barrier islands and are just long, skinny strips of land with the ocean on one side and freshwater sounds on the other. The land inward is the Great Dismal Swamp. And THAT is why it is so humid there.

 Since North Carolina is one of the 13 original colonies, there's all sorts of US History everywhere. We didn't really see any of it (my parents would be scandalized) because this was primarily a beach trip. But it is there! Maybe some other time we'll go see the site of the lost colony and Jamestown and all that.

We saw a dredge ship on the way over. Mark says it's the first time he's seen one. It makes the inlet deeper for boats. This is the skeleton coast--hundreds of ship wrecks and it's because of all the shifting sand. That's also why there are so many lighthouses.

The aquarium was lovely.

Thank you, Rose (my Taiwanese sister-in-law) for this. LOL.

They had animatronic dinosaurs, also.

It was boiling hot that day, though....it was miserable to be outside. (That's Mark's mom in the front. Mark's dad unfortunately caught bronchitis at the beginning of the trip and was sick all week.)

 I caught Luke punching the T-Rex in the mouth. I wasn't too surprised.

 

 When we lived in Albuquerque for PA school, we had a season pass to the aquarium. We miss it!!

 

 Look at her on her tiptoes :)

 There were turtles, alligators, otters, sea turtles and tons of fish and sharks, etc.

 

 On the way back, we stopped at Shipwreck, which is a souvenir shop Mark used to visit as a kid. Madelyn was beside herself because it had all of her favorite things.

She bought a scoopful of shells from the tub and some really fancy ones that we couldn't find on the beaches here.

Then, we stopped by the Bodie Island Lighthouse. We pulled off the side of the road and got swarmed by bugs to get pictures through the trees, but it was worth it.

The kids were tired and it was SO HOT and SO HUMID that they just went back in the car while I looked around. Luke was telling me, "I hate pictures!!" in this, haha.

Madelyn was a little more game. For some reason she kept putting her new octopus on her head.

 

 Mark took me to this lighthouse when I was pregnant with Madelyn. It is still my favorite and I have several pictures of it hung in my house.

 Back at the house, Ben let Luke play his Nintendo Wii-U and Luke decided that Ben was his new best friend and wouldn't leave him alone after that.

 Isabelle had this obsession with putting her mouth on the chair bottoms. WHY?!??!! So gross.

 Mark's sister Kathryn gave everyone welcome gift bags with her homemade sugar cookies. Aren't they amazing?! She has a little baking business--check out her site at Decadence by Kathryn.

 Then there was a marathon of Godzilla movies over at the folk's beach house. Just your typical night for the Yoder clan!

NC Trip Day 3: Hello, beach!

 View from the back balcony of our beach house

 Misty sunrise pic Mark took--he got up for "dawn patrol" with his brothers and brother-in-law Emil, who brought a bunch of surfboards, and they went surfing every morning around 5:30.

Here is Avon Pier, a short walk away. 

 This was a Yoder reunion, and here are some Yoders! Mark with his parents, Frank and Kathy, his brothers Mike and David and sister Kathryn.

 Kathy with Sky and Koda, who stayed with us. Koda is only a week older than Isabelle and they live in Florida, a few miles from the ocean. You know what she said? The Florida coast is LESS HUMID than where we were in NC.

It was super fun having two 13 month olds in a non-babyproofed house with a giant staircase!!!

Uncle James and Uncle Mike (who were housemates with us)

 

So, basically what happened on this day was that Mark and the kids went to the beach, and stayed out alllll day, and Mark and Madelyn got massive sunburns, and Luke and Madelyn got tossed around in the surf so much that they were all banged up and scraped and bedraggled. (They had various uncles out taking them out there with surf boards, boogie boards and kayaks.) This was rather unfortunate because Madelyn is a hyper-sensitive person anyway and the sunburn made her sort of grouchy the rest of the week.

By the time Luke came back and got cleaned up, he fell asleep around 6:30 pm and wouldn't wake up for 3-4 hours.

I spent the day in the house getting organized and helping Isabelle to sleep off her jet lag. I kept thinking that Mark would come back with the kids and then we'd all do something together, but that never happened. 

But finally that evening, when the heat died down a little (I had no desire to sit outside in the heat all day anyway) me and my niece Sky decided to take the babies out to the beach.

 

Madelyn was ready for round two so she could collect more shells.

  Koda, despite living right by the ocean himself, hates sand!

 Isabelle, on the other hand, was like, "WHERE HAS THIS BEEN ALL MY LIFE??!" and tried to become one with the dunes.

In her defense, it was really powdery soft sand that was fun to squish around in. Nothing like California shores.

 Here's her amused cousin Ben and uncles Mike and John.

She made sure to put handfuls of it on her head and down her back and everywhere in-between.

Madelyn was really in her element at the beach. She loves marine biology and shells and she was just in heaven all week. 

 Mark took the kids out looking for little ghost crabs that night by flashlight, they thought it was so cool.

(yes, I know my hair, lol)

Isabelle had the biggest meltdown of her life when it was time to go. Full body flails and screams! She must have really had a good time.

 Sky and Koda :)

 Isabelle was eventually able to be lured back into the house by seeing that daddy was there. He gave her a good hose down outside before she got plopped into the bath and left about a pound of sand behind.