Family Vacation in the Outer Banks

The last full week of August brought our little family to Outer Banks, North Carolina, along with almost all of my married and unmarried siblings. After a L-O-N-G ride in the van (which included an almost 2 hr stop to put in a new alternator) we finally arrived in Avon, North Carolina, where we planned on spending the next 6 days enjoying each other's company.

We had gorgeous weather, sunny and upper 80's to low 90's every day, and spent almost every day at the ocean jumping into the huge waves, looking for shells along the beach, digging for sand fleas, basking in the warm sunshine and searching for ghost crabs on the beach at dusk.

Our vacation was providentially (sp?) cut short by the threat of Hurricane Irene and we were issued mandatory evacuation orders on Wednesday evening. We had to be all packed up and out of our rental house by noon on Thursday. Though we were disappointed to have to leave 2 days early, we were (and are) so thankful that we had such a wonderful time during the days that we WERE able to be there.

We drove to Greensboro, North Carolina on Thursday and stayed in a hotel. We were able to visit a natural science center on Friday before heading further north towards home. We stayed one more night in a hotel in southern Ohio, and arrived back home on Saturday afternoon.

Following are some pictures I took of all the fun we had. We made some wonderful memories, and will always look back fondly on the time we spent together in the Outer Banks!!


Gorgeous view of the mountains in West Virginia, early Saturday morning on the way there.



Sunset over the sound on our way in.



Our first look at the ocean!



Calvin enjoying himself on the beach.



The entire family enjoying dinner together.



One of the many ghost crabs we caught.



The entire group after crabbing one night.



We were able to use the huge community pool in our neighborhood for a day. It was a bit of a relief to the younger kids, who were not fond of the salt water of the ocean.



A baby shark my uncle caught while fishing one evening.



Some of the clan enjoying the beach on our last day there.



The house we stayed in.



A family picture by the ocean on our way out.

Our baby is WALKING!!

Calvin has really taken off in the walking department in the last week. It makes me sad that he is so grown up, but I guess he is 1 after all so walking is a good thing right!?!?!

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Calvin is ONE!!

We were blessed to celebrate Calvin's one year birthday on Tuesday. We are so very thankful to God for His blessing of this precious little boy in our lives. We are humbled that He chose us to be his parents. He is such a joy to us!

We celebrated with just our family and had birthday cupcakes after supper. We figured out he is not fond of cupcakes as he took one bite out of his and then proceeded to smash it to bits and throw it on the floor!! He is going to be one who has the blessing of NOT having a sweet tooth. He would much rather have green beans than cake any day. Here are a few pictures of his special day.

Here's a quick peek at what Calvin has been up to lately!

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Swimming Lessons

Way back in February, Katie, Holly, Rachel Feenstra and I decided we would like to have our litte ones take swimming lessons.
We decided to go with our cousin Gayle Lotterman and to have them at Keith and Holly's pool. Gayle did a wonderful job being patient with our sometimes-not-so-willing little ones in the cool pool water. She was a champ!!
The kids had fun for the most part,at least mine did, I guess I shouldn't speak for everyone else, huh? Austin was able to complete all but one lesson, whereas Bradyn only completed 3 out of the eight. He came down with pneumonia after 2 days, and was finally better to complete the last lesson. Bummer!
I was amazed at how far Austin had come after only eight lessons!! By the end of the two weeks he was jumping into the deep end of the pool and swimming to the edge with no floating device whatsoever!! Pretty cool!!


Bradyn's lesson


Getting ready to swim with a noodle.



Austin and Dylan's lesson


Listening intently.....


Austin getting ready to jump in.


Swimming to the edge!!


Bradyn and Austin with Gayle.

Tree Cutting

On Saturday, June 18, we had a bunch of people over to help us cut down a bunch of trees. We also had a HUGE pile of junk at the back of our yard that needed to be burned, so Russ started that fire, and that is where all the branches from the cut trees went.
A huge thanks to all who showed up to help. Dad and Mom Lotterman, Keith, Ryan, Phil and Emily, Cornelis and Jared, Ethan, Kylar, Kyndra, Ashlinn and Ethan and Katrina. We really appreciate all you did to help, whether it was watching the kids, folding my laundry, or driving the tractor, we couldn't have gotten finished with all that we got finished with, without all of you!! The biggest accomplishment of the day was cutting down the row of HUGE pine trees on the west side of our property. It's so much brighter in the house now, without the trees blocking the sun! I'll post a few pictures of the fun we had. Enjoy!


Raking up the branches and leaves from the cut trees.



If you look closely you will see Ryan in the tree! He had the job of tying the rope
to the tree to help with pulling it down. Thanks Ryan!!



The boys had a lot of fun pulling on the rope to topple each tree.



Keith manning a chain saw. Thanks Keith!!

Catch Up

I guess I've fallen a bit behind in my posting. I'm going to do a few posts that are from a few weeks back to serve as a catch up on what has been going on in our lives.