Topsail Island, NC

The Bartlett beach trip was wonderful as always this year. Aunt Leslie flew in from California for most of the week and Aunt Teresa came and stayed a couple of nights with us. Seth and Uncle Paul couldn't make it because they had to work and we missed them very much.

This year we stayed in a house on the beach that had a POOL, a hot tub and a foosball table. wow. What luxuries! We divided our time pretty evenly between the ocean and pool. It was so nice to have both.


Annabelle at the beach at the age of three is much different than the boys. I had to constantly be in the ocean with the boys lest they drown themselves as a result of their fearlessness and reckless abandon when they were two. At three, they could handle things on their own pretty well. Annabelle, in stark contrast, has to be persuaded down to the water's edge and timidly sticks a toe in a little at a time. The boys have always been completely content to swim and play in the sand for 8 hours a day and all I really had to do was watch and feed them when the time came. Annabelle was a little more "hands on" so to speak. I had to literally force her to put on swimmies and get int the pool everyday. About half the time she would finally get comfortable and swim around on her own. The other half she ended up just getting out and hanging around while everyone else swam. It is going to take some serious work this summer to get her swimming. Ugh.

Adam spends a lot of his time studying little creatures, but I think he is just looking at shells here. He had been saving his money to buy a hermit crab at the beach for a while and was delighted to finally get a couple.

Annabelle and Lucie running in the waves.

Caleb and Uncle Jonathan played some baseball on the beach. Aunt Lorie found this really awesome catchers mitt for him and he was excited to break it in.
Doesn't he look so grown up?

Uncle Chuck rented a kayak so we all took turns taking it out on the water. We had to learn how to paddle in quickly without turning sideways and flipping over in the waves. It was pretty funny.....especially when Amie and I came in.

That is our house right behind Jonathan's paddle.

We also went crabbing a few times down at the end of the island.
The boys loved that, especially Adam, who has the patience to be pretty good at catching them.
He even ate them with us each evening.

I think it is safe to say the older kids swam for at least 8 to 9 hours each day.
They were exhausted in the evenings.

We played Bocce Ball on the beach and had some fierce Foosball games in the house. Beth is the best foosball player and dominated the games.

Look at Caleb in this picture. He was so mad because we made him quit playing Bocce ball to pose with the kids in this picture.

This was the end of our dock. It was a great place to hang out.

On Sunday, Seth took the boys down to Atlanta for a week of Camp Cherokee with Aunt Angie. It is just me and Annabelle and I intend on getting about 100 things accomplished this week while I have spare time on my hands.
I had better get to it.
More pictures to follow.......