Carolina Beach Vacation

We just returned from a great week at the beach. I started the vacation with low expectations...I mean how relaxing can a vacation be with a 2 year old, right?!? But much to my surprise, we had a wonderful week. Laura loved the sand and the pool...the ocean not so much. Our condo was great since Laura had her own room and we couldn't believe how fast the week went. I'll tell more about what we did in the captions below.

Laura experiencing the ocean for the first time...she wasn't a fan! About the only time she liked the water was when we went for a walk after dinner each night and she was fully clothed. That was when she decided it was fun to run into the tide!

Shawn and Laura at an outdoor movie that we went to. We saw The Princess and the Frog and during the (somewhat) scary parts, Laura covered her ears and looked at me and said "What's happening, momma?" It was really cute!Laura has finally learned how to say "cheese!" and smile for pictures...but she will still only do it when she is good and ready. Whatever you do, don't try to force her or you won't see her smile for hours:)As mentioned above, swimming was Laura's favorite thing to do. Every morning after we had been at the beach for a while, she would say, "Wawa go to pa-ul?: (Laura go to the pool?) She would have stayed in all day if we didn't make her get out for lunch and naptime! And the life jacket she is wearing was great -- it gave her lots of freedom of movement with the security to know she wasn't going to sink.I'm not entirely sure what she is doing...but she sure is cute!

A family picture at the Kure Beach fishing pier. There were huge pelicans just hanging out on this pier and you could get close enough to almost touch them (though I'm not sure why anyone would!) Laura talked about the "pawlcins" she saw all week.

We went down to the boardwalk one night to enjoy some of the rides. Laura loved the carousel and every time we were anywhere near the boardwalk she told us, "My wanna wide da howses!"

Shawn took 2 private surf lessons while we were there. He had a great time and was able to catch a ton of waves. Laura didn't really watch him surf, but when asked what her daddy was doing, she would reply, "My dada wen ski!" (my daddy went skiing!...I could never get her to say surfing.) Photo taken by Julian Kehaya

We had a great time at the Fort Fisher Aquarium. Laura was really impressed by this large alligator. She also liked the jelly fish and the albino alligator. She talked about what she saw the rest of the week.Much to our surprise, Laura loved playing mini-golf. She got her own little plastic club and a ball and just hit it around the green while Shawn and I played each hole for real. When she got close to the cup, she would sit down and try to roll the ball in...too cute! And just for the record -- I won by 1 point!

This was about our 45th attempt at a family picture. It still isn't perfect, but it will do! We had a wonderful time and can't wait to go back to the beach next year!!