Bald Head Island!

The excitement levels were pretty high heading to BHI this summer. After all, Addie travels there by ferry at least once a week year-round at our house! She talks about Bald Head all the time so to be doing the actual real life thing was pretty darn cool.

Old tradition...dockside lunch at The Provision Company. New tradition...ice cream afterwards!

Then it was off to the ferry in the sweltering heat and humidity...we were glistening. :)

 Love this picture so much...

 It was smooth sailing, and thirty minutes later we were pulling into the marina...

As soon as we settled in to the house, a dramatic storm rolled through...

and soon there after, the skies cleared and this appeared! What a neat way to start the vacation.

We stayed in a new house this year, Ocean Beach (clever name), and loved it. It had a lot of neat features, and it fit our family so well. It had easy beach access (our house is on the left)...

a great view from the porch...

 

 

the most interesting stairwell I have ever seen...

an excellent set up for flying practice...

and a play area under the house for the kids!

Luke liked the view from the roof top deck...

and apparently the one in his bedroom as well because he never wanted to actually go to sleep in there. Sigh...

When we weren't hanging at the beach house, you could find us on the beach...

 or at the pool...

or most likely in a golf cart somewhere. This year, Collins named our golf carts Long Beauty and Red Rooster. We could all ride together in Long Beauty (the suburban of golf carts), and you couldn't be beat in Red Rooster. We passed many a carts in it...I'm looking at you, Al, you crazy driver.

We all agreed that the golf carts really are what make Bald Head so fun. Whenever you had any "down" time, you'd just hop in the cart and go!

However, as the main wrestler of Luke in the golf cart, I was not sad to strap him in his car seat once we hit the mainland! He was a wild man in that vehicle- throwing my sunglasses overboard and constantly scaling the seats. He even tried to drive. :)

The girls were pumped to climb Old Baldy this year...

  

and would you believe my 3-year-old Addie Bear made it to the top all by herself? Brian carried her the whole way last year, and this time, she did it by herself no big deal.

And the view from behind the Chapel next to Old Baldy (where my daughters will get married one day)... :)

 

Monday, Aug. 21 was a big deal...it was eclipse day! Just like the rest of the country, we were caught up in the eclipse obsession despite only being 97.3% in the path of totality. Important number people...97.3!

Heather was kind enough to buy us the special glasses, and we realized quickly that the best spot to take in this scientific marvel was the top deck of our beach house. The girls had little to no interest in the eclipse, but all the adults were riveted. It was so cool! I might have been the most amazed by the Nye's Chocolate Coconut ice cream sandwich that I devoured during the eclipse, but a close second was it getting dark DURING THE DAY!

Getting dark...

and then getting light again...so very fascinating! So glad we all got to see it together.

Every Wednesday during the summer, the BHI Conservancy puts on a 5K Turtle Trot. I was so glad Brian decided to run the race...

because he got to beat Jim Gaffigan, our favorite comedian. :)

Collins requested to go kayaking again this year, so Brian took both girls out. Lesson learned- do not take Addie kayaking. She had to sit in the middle seat, got really wet, and screamed her head off in the marshes. Thirty minutes later, they were already back...

but it actually worked out pretty well because that meant Al and I got to go later for free! We had a great time exploring the marshes, asking Jim Gaffigan for rowing advice (no joke he was out there too), and avoiding alligators at all costs.

We had our annual photography contest...

where Collins was the official winner...

but I'm pretty sure Nana was the unofficial winner!

I was surprised when Brian grabbed my camera to snap a few shots of his own...

and thought it was really cute when Addie tried to look for a good shot!

Alli claimed she didn't get any good shots during the contest, but I didn't believe her for a minute. Here she is doing her thing and the photos she captured on the trip...

 

 

There was lots of dessert eating on this trip...

lots of sacred music and art demos coming from Poppy's iPad...

and lots of time spent with a coffee mug/glass of wine and a puzzle. We nailed the North Carolina and the weird cat puzzle but were defeated by the impossible driftwood one. Next time!

The sunsets might be my favorite thing about Bald Head...and I think the picture below is my favorite from our vacation. I relished the time I had with Collins that week knowing she would be heading back to school when we got back.  

Somehow each night the sunset would sneak up on us, and we'd have to race outside to see it in time...Collins was not as focused on the sunset as we were, just happy to stay up a few minutes late.

One minute the sky is normal...

and the next it's not!

We discovered a new activity this year...night riding! Why had we never thought of this before? Inspired by our crazy emergency night ride last year with Brian's knee injury, Dad and Heather went out for a golf cart ride once it got completely dark. They even tried driving through the forest with the lights turned off just to see what we experienced last year (because we were not smart enough to realize that all golf carts came with head lights). They said how cool it was so of course the rest of us had to try it the next night. And the night after that! We saw Old Baldy and the marina all lit up...

and Brian and I saw a huge barge drive out of the black Cape Fear river the last night we were there. We also saw about a million stars. So cool.

But we couldn't stay out too late because Luke Fork was up at the crack of dawn. For some unfortunate reason, he kept waking up at 5 a.m. every day. I'd eventually give up on him going back to sleep and get him up. One morning, he and I went down to the Point to catch the sunrise...

I thought we were going to miss it completely because of the clouds and then all of a sudden those first rays of the morning shot up above the clouds. It was so neat to see...(normally not up for this part of the day).

Finally time to say goodbye so we snapped a few more group shots because clearly we didn't have enough pictures yet... :)

And despite my best efforts, we still did not get a decent family photo. Ugh!

And then a blast from the ferry horn told us it was time to go home. My baby fell asleep on me on the ride and didn't even wake up when a huge wave crashed up on the front of the boat. Did we get wet AGAIN? Of course we did. Maybe next time, we'll finally learn our lesson.

It was an awesome vacation, and we were so grateful for a week together at Bald Head. Thank you, Dad and Heather!! We'll have to go back to pretending with Addie that we are heading to Bald Head on a ferry, but now we'll have some new memories to go along with it.