We took a family vacation: Days 6 and 7

 Happy Saturday everyone! Let's finish up my family vacation recap today so that I can move on to other things to talk about, like my health stuff and back to school. 

So, Friday, July 1, was our last full day in Emerald Isle. We spent the morning at the beach. Soaking up a last visit to the beach and playing in the sand, reading, jumping in waves, etc.

 

When we came up for lunch, Bill and I decided to take the kids to Highway 55, which was one of the requests of the kids to eat at. They have super yummy burgers and also a yummy orangeade. It was a great meal. After we ate, we walked over to feed the turtles again and take some bird pictures. 

Our afternoon was spent relaxing and packing up to head home for the next day. 

That evening, my parents were in charge of dinner and my mom decided to go buy some fresh, local fish from a local fish market and my dad and brother grilled out mahi-mahi and flounder. It was a super yummy dinner to end our time in North Carolina.

After dinner, Bill and I took Rebecca, Jacob, Ben and Lacie and Ethan to the pier as that was the only activity that we hadn't done during the week that Rebecca really wanted to do. We saw another awesome sunset and the kids got to see a couple fishermen catch baby sharks. We also saw a huge shark swimming in the water near the pier. I am still in awe every time I see a shark in the wild. 

Then it was back home to start packing up the van with stuff and saying goodbyes to each other. My parents, brother, niece and nephew were planning on leaving Saturday morning at like 5:30/6. My sister and Cecilia and Mango were planning on leaving around 7 and we were planning on leaving around 9ish. 

Saturday morning, we headed down to the beach once we had closed up the house and everything was in the van to head home. We were all sad to leave but also kind of happy to get out dodge before a tropical storm hit. Apparently, very early Saturday morning a tropical storm formed just on the coast of North and South Carolina and it was moving toward straight toward Emerald Isle. So, we left town during a Tropical Storm Warning. Thankfully, we were out of dodge before it hit.  

The drive home was LONG. We got caught in a traffic jam for about 2 hours, we hit torrential rain for a couple hours where we couldn't see very far in front of us at all and then our GPS took us a completely different way home when we were reentering Ohio. However, after about 13 hours we finally were home to greet the cats. 

Overall, it was a great week. Any week with extended family can have its ups and downs. We had those, but we also made many memories and enjoyed our time together. It was a wonderful summer vacation!