Vacation in Hatteras

I started this post on November 13th....six weeks ago! Wow how time flies!! Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc., etc. got the best of me and I haven't been on the blog roll I was on. Oh well, here's to resolutions to stay consistent with blogging!!

In July we had the opportunity to go on vacation to the beach! We hadn't been in five years so we were all VERY excited. Joel and Abby had never seen the beach and Gabe was a baby the last time we were at the shore. Did y'all know my family carries the distinction of being some of the first settlers on Hatteras Island?! Crazy, huh?! My great grandfather, Dan Oden owned the general store "Oden's General Store", now called "Nedo's" (Oden spelled backward) and members of my family still own Oden's Dock, the Breakwater Motel, The Seagull Motel, as well as several other establishments and houses on the island. My mother spent months of every summer chilling on the outer banks and we made our fair share of trips there growing up as well. My middle name, before I changed it with marriage, was Oden so I always felt a special bond to my Outer Banks roots! Nowadays most of my great aunts and uncles have passed and few cousins have any idea who I am and vice-versa. One of my Great Aunts and her husband still have a house on the island. Every year my Mom's brother and his family spend a week there and this week we got to join them in a house owned by another cousin. It was such a blessing to have an almost free house to stay in and we had a great time!

The table in the kitchen had four chairs so Abby had a cozy seat on the floor!

The boys enjoying our first breakfast meal at the beach!! We never have pop tarts so they were SUPER excited. Check out that bank of windows!! They look right onto the "slash". AMAZING!!

A trip to Hatteras would not be complete without a ferry trip to Ocracoke Island. Here we are waiting for all the cars to load so that we can go feed the sea gulls! Does Ocracoke sound familiar??? The day we were there a little girl was bitten by a shark and it made national news. CRAZY!

This is me saying MO-SKEEEE-TOES!! The mosquitoes were INSANE this year. You couldn't walk outside without 50 or more landing all over you. That was my least favorite part of our trip!

Greg! So handsome!

Checking out the water and ALL the jelly fish. We lost count! Do you see our new Suburban there on the right? We found out in June that we were having another baby so when our 6.5 year old van needed over $2k in repairs we decided to take the plunge on a new ride. I love, love, love my new car. I know it's silly, but I really do!

Sweet baby girl and my 11 week belly!

I kind of prefer having the kids up at the top of the ship, enclosed. When we were down on deck I had visions of someone going overboard. My children get it honest. When we docked on the island Gabe said "shooowee, now I know for sure we aren't going to sink". We all knew exactly where the life jackets were on that thing! It also didn't hurt that the upper deck is air conditioned!

The beach!

Abby loved the beach. She wasn't a huge fan of the water but she played for HOURS in the sand!!

The rip tides in Hatteras are BRUTAL, hence the life jackets. The boys couldn't get enough of the water!

The boys had never seen the little arm covers older upholstered furniture has. Gabe thought they made great hats and of course Joel had to get in on the action!

Listening to the rangers give safety guidelines for going up in the lighthouse.

The Hatteras Lighthouse Isn't she a beaut!! One year when I was in high school we went to the lighthouse and my Mom struck up a conversation with an older park ranger. Turned out he had dated my grandmother when they were in high school, crazy huh!!

The handsome boys who were tall enough to climb the lighthouse.

The handsome (sad) boy who wasn't.

I was kind of relieved to have to stay with the younger two. Check out those steps, yikes!

The rangers were gracious enough to let us go inside and take a quick look.

This is what one looks like after sightseeing and beach combing all day. Even Dora is worn out!

Joel was exhausted too!

SEA LICE!! At least that's what my grandmother told me they were called. The rangers at the lighthouse disagreed with us but regardless we had a nice time digging for and playing with the little critters!

I'm not a fan of touching them. My boys are very brave!

Joel ~ one tough cookie....look at that face!

We caught hundreds of them!

Gabe, playing with his catch!

This kept them entertained for over an hour. Should have showed them how to dig for them the first day!

On our last day the boys completed their Junior Ranger badge. Here they are making an oath to keep the beach clean, or something like that! Great program! You should check it out at any National Park you might go to!

Sadly I didn't get any pictures of my uncle and cousins. We had a great time hanging out with them as well. My cousin Tracy is by far one of the funniest people I know! There is a really good chance we are moving this summer so I don't know that we will ever go back to Hatteras. It was a bittersweet trip knowing it could be my last time!

Sam turns 10!

On June 2, 2011, Sam turned ten! I can remember holding Sam as a newborn and saying, "When you are 10, I'll be 32, but don't worry that is a very, very long time from now". It seems like I was just saying that to him! I also remember as an infant lamenting to my Mom that I felt as though I was wishing his infancy away. Infants are so boring, and I couldn't wait for him to "do something". I thought he would never grow up, that he would never get bigger. It seemed to take forever for him to go to Kindergarten and now he is a fifth grader and next year my FOURTH baby will be a Kindergartner. How does time to do that?? I'm so glad I'm blogging again so that I can remember all of the precious time I have had with them!

For Sam's entry into double digits, we had his best buddy Sanjiv over and headed to the pool for pizza and playing! After a couple of hours we returned home for ice cream cake, a Spencer/Leppert tradition!! I've had this cake every year for my birthday for as long as I can remember. This year my sweet friend Connie even made this cake for me as a surprise! YUM! Sam's cake had strawberry ice cream. My absolute favorite! A child after my own heart.

The large sprinkles make this cake!

I got the "Mom of the Year" award when I forgot candles and had to use the 3 and the 2 from my party two weeks before. "I'd like to thank the committee....."

Blowing out candles and opening gifts! I just noticed the half naked boys in the background! HA!!

Now for ten things I love about my ten year old:

1. Sam is the most studious child I have ever seen. We started homeschooling this past year and I rarely have to remind him to get his school work done. When we started homeschooling I had to take him back a year in our math curriculum. This year we are trying to catch up, so he does math 7 days a week! He is learning a ton and only complains occasionally :)

2. Sam is such a helper, I don't know what I would do without him. He is always watching out for the other kids and almost never gets fussy when I ask him to vacuum our first floor or take out the garbage.

3. Sam loves his siblings. I asked him to take Joel to the bathroom at Wal-Mart this afternoon and he joyfully got up, put his arm around his little brother and escorted him exactly where he needed to be.

4. Sam is obsessively clean! While this quirk sometimes gets on my nerves and earned him the moniker of Mr. Clean at church, I also really appreciate this about him as I know he will never come to the table with dirty hands or try to pass germy hands off as clean ones!

5. Sam is very talented in so many ways. Specifically, recently Sam was casted in our church's Christmas musical. That kid learned his lines (a lot by the way) in no time flat and I NEVER had to ask him to work on them. He also has a singing part and my heart swelled with pride tonight at practice as he sang about God using "an ordinary Joe".

6. Sam is an excellent swimmer. You should see this kid do the butterfly. All I have to say is watch out Michael Phelps!!

7. Sam is very responsible with his money. He can save with the best of them. The boys get a weekly allowance, we make them save 40% for a car. I love hearing about his dreams of buying a Corvette when he is 16. He is totally not an impulse buyer. He saves the 50% of his allowance that he is allowed to spend for fabulous, well thought out things.

8. Sam is very handsome. I was just telling him yesterday that we are going to have to beat the ladies off with a stick! You should see his abs, swimming is good for abs!! Sam also has a great sense of humor. Handsome + Humor = watch out girls!

9. Sam loves to talk to me and I love to talk to him! He loves to come home from the Wednesday night youth program and tell me all about his night. He gets pretty upset if the other kids aren't in bed and he doesn't have his special time. I like that. I hope he always wants to talk to me!

AND FINALLY

10. Sam has a real heart for the Lord. He loves to work on his Community Bible Study Curriculum and can't get enough of church. I pray this part of his heart never changes.

We love you Sam! You make us unbelievably proud everyday and we are blessed to be your parents!!

Happy very belated birthday!!

BUSCH GARDENS!!

The Busch family of parks does an amazing thing. Once a year military families can play at one of their parks for free! Each year we get four free tickets to any of their parks. I cannot say how much we appreciate this!! On June 1st we decided to surprise the kids. We hit the road and didn't even tell them where we were going. Boy were they thrilled when we pulled into the parking lot!! In the fall of 2010 we decided to pull the kids out of school and homeschool them (that's a discussion for a different post). This means we have some freedom, which meant we could go to the park when the rest of Virginia was still in school! It was a fantastic day and we can't wait to go again next year!!

When we arrived each of the boys were measured and given a wrist band so that we could easily identify the rides that were height appropriate for them. Sam and Ethan were thrilled to find out that they were tall enough to ride a few roller coasters!

Ethan

Sam ~ Almost tall enough to not need to be measured. I bet next year he will be able to ride everything.

Gabe

Joel

I was determined to ride every ride in the park. Why not?! There were no lines!!

The train.

Greg doesn't do rides that spin, guess who got pretty dizzy that day!

Abby, patiently waiting for her brothers to finish riding rides.

I bought Joel a cooling fan to play with, he had to do a lot of waiting around too.

We finally found a ride that was just his size!

New to us this year, was the Sesame Street area for the little kids. Abby and Joel loved the water park!

Abby also loved the Sesame Street show!

Too much excitement!

Sam's favorite roller coaster, Apollo's Chariot!

As you can see from the picture above we totally shut down the park! The parking lot was basically empty by the time we rolled out. One of the best things we did was to purchase "meal plans" on the Busch Garden website the night before. The whole day ended up costing us a little over $200 (for food, drinks, two souvenir photos and for one ticket, Abby and Joel were free, we had four free tickets but did have to pay for one child), but I'd say we got a bargain. I can't wait until next Spring!! Stay tuned for the two souvenir photos we had done HIL-AR-IOUS!!

Farm Fun

I mentioned here that we joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) this past spring. It was a real treat for us (all though turned out to not be worth the money). Greg had a Graduate Assistant job last year which meant we had some extra cash flow! One of the benefits of our CSA was a "you pick option". Basically, every week you could go to the farm and pick a designated fruit/vegetable for free. I love doing "pick things" with the kids, unfortunately the farm was a little to far away to make this worth our time and our gas money!! In mid May we did make it out the farm to pick strawberries. Look at the background in the picture below! It was a beautiful place.

The boys on the tractor ready to go out to the field to start picking!

Greg ~ not too many pictures of him these days....must take more!

Joel with one of our first berries!

We got ourselves a ton of strawberries! I'm pretty sure this cost us upwards of $40!!

Abby wouldn't turn around for the picture because she was too busy doing this:

But who could blame her! They were delicious!

Look at that chubby little finger in that fat strawberry, *love*!

The boys especially loved this puddle as we waited for the tractor to come back and get us. What you can't see is that there were a ton of other prissy Moms there who wouldn't let their children toss pebbles into the water. You can see one little boy in the top left who was DYING to play. I'm sure they are the same Mom's who don't allow guns in their house, PUH-LEASE, let boys be boys. They weren't hurting anything!

Crazy story....when we got back on the tractor one of the other ladies noticed Greg's Western Kentucky University T-shirt and we struck up a conversation about our alma mater. Turns out she and I both went to the same high school in Louisville (all though about six years apart). What a crazy small world!!

After picking our berries, we explored the rest of the farm. The kids had a great time playing in this huge bin of corn. Abby especially loved having corn dumped on her head.

In November, the army will be sending us a list of our possible assignments. I am anxious about what the next step will be in our army career. On one hand it might be nice to stay here. We have an awesome church and great friends, plus it wouldn't hurt us to pay off our home loan a little more! On the other hand, I would sure love to be closer to the "country". I'm dying for my kids to have more land to run, play, skip and ride bikes on. Ahhhh.....that sounds perfect!!

OOOOH and in case your wondering. We had a strawberry feast with all those berries. We ate them fresh but I used most of them to make freezer jam using this recipe. I ended up with about five quarts of jam which we shared with neighbors and friends who said it was AMAZING!! We still have two quarts in the freezer that I can't wait to get out when family comes at Christmas!!! YUM!!!