Barnes Beach Vacation

The Barnes crew headed to Topsail Island last week for our first beach vacation together since the girls have been around. We had a wonderful time and I miss it already! It was so great to spend an entire week with everyone - but especially Katie! The girls were really cute together (at least when they weren't fighting over toys!) Katie got one good whack over the head on Claire and then later Claire pushed Katie over - but other than that, they were little angels! ;-)

We had an oceanfront Duplex in North Topsail. The weather was good, but the huge forest fire in North Carolina caused a few days of smoke, brown clouds, and ash on the beach. The girls played on the beach every single day and both loved the water. Claire was in the water within 10 minutes which was a HUGE difference from last year!! (No bribes to put her feet in the water this time around.) Of course that also meant not much sitting down and relaxing for the parents! Another favorite thing to do on the beach was hunt for sand crabs. They let Alison do the hunting and then they watched the little crabs and set them free back in the water!

In between beach time and hanging out in the house, the girls loved playing in the little pool on the deck (sometimes with bathing suits, sometimes without). Here's just a few of my favorite photos. I'm working on a slide show with more.

Rob, Claire, and I say a HUGE thank you to Bob and Coral for taking us this year. We had a blast!