Lift......

Father Abraham, oh my goodness, there's so much sand on the beaches and at the sand dunes. Man oh man we had fun at the sand dunes. It helps that we had lots of young dudes and dudettes with us! Dad and I would have just strolled the dunes. But there was running and jumping and galloping galore. My gosh the jumping photos were awesome! And I learned something for future jumping photos:

LIFT........UP........YOUR............ FEET WHEN YOU JUMP AND IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE GETTING MORE AIR!
(this photo was stolen from Angie's blog and I can't scale it down. Angie's photos are, like Andrea's and Amy's and Cindy's, loaded with pictures that are worth 500 words. I'm a terrible photographer. It didn't stop me from taking 500 photos and enjoying every click though!).
 


I'm not even off terra firma in this photo and now that I look more closely, dad is actually getting air. EVEN SO,NEXT TIME I GO TO THE OUTER BANKS, I'm gonna rock the sand dune photos. I loved the whole time on the dunes.We were all together with the Wilkey clan too. It's so fun to see them. I smile my face off when I look at these photos.

The Hallstroms and Wilkeys were staying right ON the beach in a four-story deluxe beach house Oooooo lala, what a beautiful house! And it was so much fun seeing taller Elise and and taller taller Ethan, but it was WYATT DEAN who took me off guard. He is still just an adorabe sweetheart of a little kid, but he's gotten so tall and he's so grown up and he's a bubba! I predict he'll be six foot six. Or he'll be R.D. Bishop and be five foot seven and reach that height in 7th grade. Naaaaah, six foot six Wyatt Dean you blue-eyed charmer!

Even Jonas looks like he's on the verge of exploding with tallness!

I love this photo of Angie and Andrea out in the surf. They were probably saying, "I'm never paddling back to shore!

Oh, and we drove 45 minutes in our Sunday best to meet the Hallstrom clan at church.............only to be greeted by a locked church. Say what? It must have been Stake Conference or something. You'd think they would have at least put a note on the door since it's such a touristcentric area. There were 50 or more of us out-of-towners all milling around. The older couple behind Andrew were there when we arrived, and they were still there when we left. I don't think they were going to leave until at least a second counselor showed up to tell them that church had been officially cancelled. Dad said "Best church day ever!" 

We were supposed to leave on Friday morning by 10 am. Thursday afternoon Andrew's tooth that had been bothering him off and on all week really started causing him grief: (look at this photo below where he's holding his jaw, oh I hate tooth pain!) If I could have an altriustic wish for an alternate life, I would become a dentist and spend a month every year in a third world country doing dental work for free. I guess it's never too late, I think my great-grandfather Russell got his law degree when he was 60 years old!!

Final installment forthcoming!