Beach Day

My husband, bless his heart, thought it would be fun to take a spontaneous trip to the beach with the boys for a couple days and stay overnight. Note to self: the work that goes into a one-night stay is rarely worth it. So much stuff needs to be packed for the boys and Nathan just isn't at a very good age for traveling. For example, he didn't fall asleep in the pack'n'play until after 10 on Sunday evening, which means Tyler and I didn't fall asleep until after 10 either. Tim, on the other hand, can fall asleep anywhere at anytime (a talent I often envy), so he was the first to doze.

While it was an exhausting and at times stressful 24 hours, we did some fun things. When we got to the coast, we went straight to the acquarium where we saw an albino alligator, one of only about 50 in the world, and lots of sharks, stingrays, and fish. We ate on the waterfront for dinner and had a few minutes to swim in the hotel pool before bedtime. If we'd known bedtime would be so late, we could've swam for longer!

Luna the albino alligator

The next morning we spent about 2 hours at the beach, which was lots of fun. Neither of the boys were crazy about the ocean at first. The waves were fairly big, a lingering result of Hurricane Bill. I'm sure the ocean looked and sounded pretty scary from the perspective of our boys. Tyler had a blast playing in the sand. It wasn't until the last half hour that he would finally brave the incoming tide. Once he gave the water a chance, he thought it was great fun. After the trip he said his favorite part of the trip were the waves. This is quite an improvement over his last visit to the beach 2 years ago when he would cry if we just started walking toward the water.


Nathan proved to be a sand-lover as well, but he was also perfectly content to sit on my lap and let the tidewater wash around us. A couple times the tide came in when he was walking around and not paying attention, so he would run toward me so I could swoop him up.

Nathan managed to get sand on his hat all by himself.

I didn't get many pictures at the beach because Nathan wanted me to hold him most of the time. I'm not sure if he's teething, or if he's just getting more opinionated, but lately he is such a momma's boy. I couldn't even venture into the water by myself without him throwing a little fit in Tim's arms.

After getting all sandy at the beach, we cleaned up at the hotel and headed to dowtown Wilmington for lunch. We ate at a restaurant right on the river called Elijah's. It was a nice treat to have waterfront views everywhere this weekend.

Even though we were only away for a little over a day, Tim and I were so happy to get back home. While we made some fun memories in our short whirlwind of a trip, I think it will be at least a few more months before try to do anything like that again.