VACATION!!!

My sister Julene and her husband Gabe came out to North Carolina to visit this last week. I got to meet her adorable baby Jordan for the first time since he was born last September. My boys could not get enough of thier new cousin! It took a few day's for Nicholas to figure out that Julene wasn't aunt michelle, and he called Gabe "Gave" the whole time. My favorite was when he called him "Uncle Gavid" (he also has an uncle David, so he was confused). It was so nice to have them come, not only because it's fun to be with family, but also because it gave us a good excuse to finally go out and do a few things that we have been wanting to do since we moved here. We did a ton of things, and we took a ton of pictures, so I am going to do my best to recap!

Strawberry Picking
Of course we had to take them to our favorite activity. We got more strawberries than we could ever eat, and ended up freezing and making 3 batches of jam, and still had left overs!


After strawberry picking we went to Sam's club to pick up some munchies for our trips, and would you belive the former president Jimmy Carter was there?!!! Of all the random people to be at Sam's club. It certainly explained the full parking lot on a Thursday afternoon. I tried to take a picture to prove it since I know no one would belive me, but my darn camera has a delayed flash and this is what I got...

Mount Vernon
Friday we were off on our first adventure. Packed in the mini van like sardines we drove the 4 hours to Mount Vernon, Virginia to see George Washington's house. We told Nicholas that we were going to George's house. He told us he wanted to play with George's cars when he got there. He was really excited when he found them, you'll see them in the slide show.....

Washington DC
Our hotel was just 10 minutes outside of DC. A note for everyone... Saturday is actually a GREAT day to go to DC. There isn't really any traffic because the business people aren't there on Saturday, and all the parking meters are FREE on Saturday. I liked it becuase there was a lot to see, and you could see a good portion of it in one day, but you could also spend several days there if you wanted to, and still not see everything! It was A LOT of walking but we had a great time!

Emerald Isle
A bunch of families in my ward got together and rented a big beach house. We only got to stay for 2 days since Julene and Gabe had to fly home, but I have to say this was probably my favorite part of the vacation since it was so relaxing! We played on the beach for hours. At the end of the first day Nicholas looked up at me and said "Mom! Maybe we could sleep at the Beach!" It was awesome to make his day by telling him that he actually got to! Nicholas loved to jump and run with the tide, and run around with his friends playing "stop the train". Christian loved looking for seashells. By the end of day 2 he had both pockets of his shorts filled with seashells and as he ran the shells jingled in his pockets, which he loved! The house had an "alligator" (elevator) since it had 4 floors, and that was also a favorite, a long with rolling the pool table balls into the holes and making a triangle with them. Even Sam, who always says he is "not a beach kind of person" was talking about wanting to come back soon. I loved it!