This blog is hard to write as I didn’t do it right away.  But we literally have at least 500 pictures and we had a good vacation (overall), so while it will be an abbreviated version of what I would have written a month ago, at least it is something.  On a related note, Justin got me a personal laptop for my birthday, which I still need to actually pick out.  My main purposes are using it for email and internet, which I can easily do from the couch at night and it will be easier to blog without feeling so cut off from Justin at night on the home computer.

We left Saturday August 22 for Nags Head to vacation with the Brophy’s for one week.  The girls had a blast and LOVE Erin, Brian, Hannah, and Quinn.  They feel just as comfortable around them as they do with family. It’s awesome.

The house we stayed particularly the room we stayed in smelled of mildew.  Justin and I are “see the flowers” type people so we tried not to focus on it.  Justin’s body though felt differently and by day two his asthma symptoms started to kick in.  He was a trooper and tried to keep up but by mid-week he was really feeling lousy and at 4:30 a.m. Thursday he drove himself to the ER, where he was diagnosed with pneumonia.  Again, he tried to still do some stuff but he really was sick.  We ended up leaving a day early when Justin developed a rash from the antibiotic he was prescribed, which landed us in the Reston ER the following morning, where again the diagnosis was pneumonia. 

While the vacation certainly was disappointing in that aspect, we still managed to have a good time. We spent several mornings at the beach.  Playing in the sand….

Taking a dip in the water….Harper that is…Avery and Emerson are scared of the water and don’t want anything to do with it.

Looking for shells….

We also spent one late afternoon at the beach going for a walk….

We went out to dinner twice…once the 10 of us and the second time the four grown-ups.  We cooked several yummy dinners at home.  We made cookies with the girls. 

The girls did a lot of playing and running around the house. We went to two Piers.  First Jeanette’s pier where we attempted all kinds of pictures…

Had some fun playing ring around the rosie with Erin…

We went to Hatteras Light House on a cooler windy day as evidenced by some of these lovely “do’s”…

We went to Nags Head Pier and took a day time stroll!

And before we knew it, our vacation had come to an end.  The girls were quite sad especially considering we abruptly left Friday instead of Saturday.  Fortunately, Ludmilla had a great idea to bring sand and shells home so that the girls could recreate the beach at home!