First Day of School!

It may have been POURING rain but that didn't stop me from taking the yearly picture! Will is off to 2nd grade and Elana off to 1st! (For the record, Elana was at school for about 3 hours before she was sent home sick and missed the ENTIRE first week due to strep throat).

Impromptu Lemonade Stand

The kids bugged me ALL SUMMER about doing a lemonade stand. And then finally, on August 31, I said yes. So we made a small pitcher of lemonade, grabbed some paper cups, a table and the kids went out to sell lemonade. It was free of course (although they did receive a few donations). They are already excited to do apple cider when it's cold (oh gosh).

Summer Beach Trip

This year our big vacation was Wyoming, but I was not ready to fully give up a summer beach trip so we went for 2 nights. The hotel booked out from under me literally as I was getting my credit card so we ended up at Atlantic Beach instead of Carolina. The weather was mostly cloudy which was disappointing for a time but in the end I feel we enjoyed ourselves more because we weren't melting! This was Lucy's first beach trip and she loved it! Also noteworthy--it was our first time swimming with a shark (ACK!). Before the trip I had a haunting feeling that we would get bit... there have just been so many shark attacks on NC beaches! I was running along the surf with Will on the boogie board when a wave pushed him over. We were laughing when I heard Colin shout "Holly get out of the water!" And then I responded "Why?" "Shark!" he said. I don't know what I was thinking. So I got Will (and Elana) out asap. Apparently the shark was in the surf and swimming towards us--fast--about 20' away when Colin spotted it. From that point he ran up and down the beach alerting people. I called the non-emergency number to let them know there was a shark in the surf (like where a toddler can stand by themselves) and they were like, "o....k...." Apparently there are no authorities tracking these shark sitings (really?!). Come on NC, we can do better. That was on the second day of our trip and Colin did not feel comfortable with any of us being in the ocean so we went to the pool instead. We did end up at the beach the next morning, but not any deeper than our ankles (which was not safe from where the shark had been). In the end, no one got hurt!