More vacation memories....

Woo who! Andrea just walked me through how to download a "Blogger" app onto my Ipad so I can blog using that method. Hooray! So, to continue with another snippet of our vacation:............

When we got up our first morning in Greensboro, I got such a kick out of reading this message on the whiteboard in the kitchen, written by Brandon:

We spent part of the day visiting some of the sights unique to North Carolina. It is so interesting to go back to NC and Minnesota where they are the thick of businesses with campuses and major headquarters of "stuff" that we don't have here in Utah, and they didn't have in La Grande or Rexburg either, so it's all heady stuff to me! North Caroline is one of the centers of furniture manufacturing and we went to this AWESOME store:

We probably spent two hours there looking at the uber-expensive "real" furniture. I've always wanted a fainting couch:

At one point in our travels through the thousands of square feet along came two young professional women pushing a cart full of home decorating pots and flowers. Turned out they were setting up the space to shoot an episode of DTV Design T.V. They said this is where the magic happens. It was really fun. Andrea and I sat in massage chairs and my legs still remember being sqoze and how goooood it felt! I think it's therapeutic and gets the blood flowing?

Andrea also drove us to an old neighborhood and we took in the flavor of the older home (which she knew I loved) and got to see some magnolia trees in blossom.

We also got to see Brandon graduate from 7th grade. To quote Angie's Jr. High Principal when she addressed all of the crying 9th-grade girls at their graduation, "Believe me, there is nothing sad about leaving Junior High!" Brandon received an award for his grades and also for achievement in science. It was so interesting to see the melting pot of kids that attend his Middle School! And how the girls are full grown WOMEN and the boys are rockets on a launching pad but nobody has lit the fuse yet. Oh that they could stay just like that!

Whitney is making a quilt! It was so fun to see it and sew a little with her. She has even made friends with the seam rrrrrrrrrrrripper which is an integral part of sewing!! A friend in their ward,a sister probably my age I think, thought Whitney would like quilting and brought over the fabric and got her started and everything. How sweet is that?

And then, we set off for the Outer Banks. The OBX!!! So fun! 

Brandon and I shared the middle and talked about all of the many things grandmothers and grandsons have in common, like playing 2048 and piano tiles on our phones - yeah baby! We also played speed scrabble with Andrea and Whitney and Caroline and Andrew. One of the things about having our family grow older is we don't have as much crying as we used to when there were lots of babies and 1-year-olds and 2-year-olds. As a matter of fact, there was NO crying on this trip. The only time there was a hint of it was during a game of speed scrabble and I could hear a little muffled whimper from the back seat and heard Andrea ask Caroline what was the matter. Care Bear's little sad voice said "I can't make a word!!" Yes, Caroline had been playing Scrabble with us and she was rocking it, 6 years old, and I guess she only had vowels and couldn't figure out any words to play. She was all choked up, bless her heart.

 Dennis and Andrew sat in the front and talked about manly things;

And Andrea, and her young bendable torso, folded herself into the third seat between Whitney and Caroline. We played trivia games, listened to road trip CD's, talked, snacked and enjoyed the journey.

It's unforgettable to arrive at the Outer Banks and have the sound side on one side of the bridges and roads and the ocean on the other. Sure glad we were there two weeks before the hurricane hit!

One of my favorite things in life is when I do have the opportunity to stay in a rental place somewhere, and that moment when we see it for the first time. Especially beach houses because they're all so unique and beachy! This one didn't disappoint - it was "just right!"

It's so fun to listen to the kids tear through every square inch of the place! Up the stairs, down the stairs, everywhere. I loved our cozy little breakfast nook:

One of my other favorite things in life is the first sighting of the ocean. Really, is there anything more thrilling? And it was a blast watching Brandon and Whitney and Caroline frolic along the shoreline (it was dusk by then and getting dark quickly) and then just like always, pretty soon a wave caught them a little high on their ankles, and then, boom, before we knew it Brandon was diving into the breakers fully clothed. Loved it. Sometimes that's my favorite part of all, that fully clothed drenching!

Our little breakfast nook was another one of my favorite things:

I loved watching the USA soccer game while we were there and listening to Andrew and Brandon bellow "GOOOOOOOOOAAAAL" at the top of their lungs and then hear Dennis mutter "Sheesh, it's only SOCCER!" (this is the man who just got home from going down to Energy Solutions Arena and watching the Jazz's first open practice of the year. He said there were 10,000 of him there.)

And more later, and faster now that I know how to use the ipad and can rest my tingly wrists!
XO Mom