We had a couple of really nice days.

Yesterday, we woke up and went for a long walk. It was a little chilly – remnants of the storm the day before. It’s amazing how the beach changes drastically from day to day – it’s like we have a different beach outside our door every day!

After our walk, we sat on the swing overlooking the ocean and just chatted and chatted, while we watched the dolphins swim by. We then hung around the house: reading, snoozing and painting. I even did a few little “paintings” too:). I’m not the most creative (hence some repetition) but they are all little sayings that are meaningful to our family.

We had a yummy lunch of clam chowder and crab dip (from Dockside N Duck) and then headed out to Hatteras Beach – the same one that we went to with the kids last summer. It looked so different when it was deserted!



Rob playing with some crabs!



After walking and watching the ocean, we headed into Hatteras Village for dinner. We ate at a little place on the water in the Marina called “Dinky’s”.

We had amazing tuna tartare, roasted scallops, tuna steak and fish of the day (which was just ok). We took our dessert to go (chocolate pecan pie and peanut butter cheesecake). Can we say DIET???

We headed back towards Hatteras beach and watched the amazing sunset (and took some great snaps of the beach):

We headed home in the dusk – and swerved around a deer that jumped right in front of us! Pretty scary. We saw a few more as we continued home. We finished off the day with watching the stars and relaxing in the hot tub.

Today was a gorgeous, sunny, warm day. We went for a beach walk, and then were relaxed on the beach blanket by 9am! I started collecting some purple shells to take home – figured I would try to find 40 great ones to take home with me! 40 shells, representing my 40 years….

We went into Nag’s Head for lunch, checked out the beach there, ate at a place called Tortuga’s Lie (conch fritters, fish sandwich, cocoloco chicken) – it was ok – not our favorite meal. We headed back and stopped at a very quiet beach off of the Pea Island Reserve. We slept and read on the beach blanket -and then went to another beach close by which was totally deserted. There I found many more purple shells!

 (I know I’ve put a lot of beach pictures that look the same, but to ME they are different and help me remember the moment!!)

We headed home, picked up some shrimp and lobster for dinner and came home and packed up, since we are leaving very early tomorrow morning. Of course, we went for another beach walk too (squeeze it in!) – so I could complete my 40 shell goal (I well exceeded it – but figured the kids would want some too!). We made dinner and enjoyed it on the balcony – overlooking the ocean, and looking at the orange lightning in the distance! It was awesome! Hot tub to round off the perfect day – again.

Tomorrow we head home. One of the best parts about being away without the kids is that as sad as we are that vacation is ending – it is pretty exciting to come home and see the kids! Definitely something to look forward to!