Pipen'It: The Ocean Breaths Salty

Who doesn't love the ocean? I certainly can't understand anyone who doesn't. Maybe its the scent of a sea breeze blowing through the air that gets me, maybe its the distinct noise of the shush-booms crashing on the beach, maybe its the feel of warm sand squeezed between your toes as you walk up and down the coast line, or maybe its the simple fact that the ocean reminds me of home. Whatever it is, the beach has something special about it and I absolutely love it. So I of course was super excited when my family planned our first "family" vacation in over 10 years at the beach :)

An explanation for the 10 year hiatus:
As a child my family vacationed on a pretty "normal basis." Not like a crazy amount of time but usually at least once a year (and when I say vacation I don't mean going to Utah to visit family, I mean like a real vacation, a get-a-way, to somewhere you've never been before, that's a real vacation in my opinion.) It didn't have to be anywhere fancy. I remember many "roughing-it" camping trips as a kid, like seriously a lot of them, but whatever it was we always made it important to spend time somewhere new as a family. As years went by and each of us kids spread our wings out we ended up all over the country and vacationing was out of the question. So now that we finally have some siblings settled down and procreating we decided it was a good time to go on a real vacation and there wasn't anywhere else we'd rather go than to the beach. That sounded like a perfect combination to me, and not to mention a week away from insurance claims, count me in!

So the trip was off on a Saturday and each of us made our way to North Carolina. I willingly choose to ride with my sister, brother in law and their 3 kids on a 4 hour flight to N.C. Some may say I'm crazy, but how could I pass up those little kiddos first big airplane flight? Oliver was so excited for the plane ride especially, and being the good aunt that I am I was able to document the take off of the flight. He is so freaking cute!

The kids were troopers on the flight over and we landed late at night with another 2 hour drive to the beach house still ahead of us. Thankfully the boys crashed out in the car and gave us adults some much needed peace and quite. We finally arrived at our destination at 4 o'clock in the morning. It had been a very loong day of traveling and I had been up since 9 AM and now had only one thing left on my mind. I wanna see the ocean, duh! So we quietly unpacked the car, put the boys in bed and I cunningly convinced my sister to walk down to the beach with me. How many times do you get to see the ocean at that time of night...like never, right? The beach was completely empty and the tide was out leaving what seemed like miles of sand to walk on under the starry skies, it was awesome! On our way back to the beach house we noticed the sky getting lighter and lighter, and at that point I finally decided to give in to my sleeping head. Once we got to the beach house, I completely crashed out as soon as my head hit the pillow and had an amazing slumber followed by a nice chunk of sleeping in the next day. Ha! This vacation was off to a great start!

Here are a few more pictures of our airplane ride.