It's been 3 years since our last Barnes family vacation and we were so lucky this summer for Bob and Coral to invite us to Nagshead. I can't believe it worked out for everyone to be there - between Jake living so far away, new jobs, another move for Matt and Alison - I really can't believe it worked out! Since I didn't have much leave time, we had to cut the week short, but we had a great time and the cousins had a blast being together.
Rob and I had not been to Nagshead since the summer I was pregnant with Claire. We were excited to go back. Here are the kids on the beach! (Claire had a weird skin reaction the first 2 times she went in the water, but luckily it never happened again so she was able to enjoy herself!) Fielder, in his usual way, decided when and if he was going to have fun on the beach. Mostly he decided to have fun.
 |
| catching sand crabs! |
 |
| We lucked out with weather for the most part - one day this weird haze rolled in. One minute I was looking down at the sand crabs and the next minute I looked up and couldn't see hardly at all. It was crazy! |
One evening after dinner we took the kids over to the beach for pictures. Alison's mom had these beautiful dresses made for the girls and they were perfect! Claire loves her dress so much, I think she would have worn it everyday if she could. I just love these pictures - it's hard to choose favorites so I'm just posting a bunch! Thank you so much Alison for taking them.
You might wonder how we got such sweet smiles out of the kids. Well, Uncle Jake had a little something to do with that....skittles!! Of course, we had plenty of goofy faces too like this one, especially from Fielder...
After pictures, Alison had sparklers for the kids. We kept reminding the kids over and over not to touch them or touch anyone else with them. And after his burned out, guess who touched it?! He burned 2 fingers pretty good so that put an end to the sparklers. Even with that drama, I would say that was my favorite night - the kids were so cute having their pictures taken and we all were having fun. And hopefully Fielder learned an important lesson??
The kids were super excited that the house had a pool in the backyard. They loved that and we probably spent more time at the pool than the beach! They played mermaids and especially liked taking turns jumping in the pool and doing cannonballs.
Just a couple other random pictures. Rob and I couldn't get enough of sweet Jenna - she is just so cute you want to just eat her up! Claire loved "taking care of" Jenna and she always has such fun with Katie. Those 2 cracked me up - on the first night with a mischievous look, they came up and asked me "Can we stay up late.....to read?" They shared a room and Claire thought it was awesome to sleep in the top bunk. Fielder also got the top bunk - in our bedroom. It was just easier to sleep with him than to try and make it work to be in the girls room. He thought it was cool and we actually did pretty good - early wake-ups, but I'm used to it! The first night was pretty rough getting everyone down. I played a serious game of whack-a-mole with the kids while Matt did his best to put Jenna down. At one point, Fielder was screaming for me, Claire was crying, and Katie just wanted to talk: "My mom is at the store and I have no one to talk to except my
father!" Once we got past that night, it went much smoother (at least with my kids, not sure what Matt and Alison had to deal with.)
The cousins just love each other so much!! Jenna is adorable and would call Fielder "my Fielder." Of course he also tried his best to annoy the girls as much as possible. Once he realizes he has an audience, he really puts on a show and says everything he can think of for attention - this week it happened to be "booty-butt" and "I'm telling on you." And of course his normal come-backs of "you're mean" and "I don't like you." Speaking of telling on someone, the girls had plenty of opportunities to tell on Fielder. I love that Jenna (2) knows better than Fielder about good and bad behavior!! My favorite "tattle" was Katie saying "Auntie Katherine, Fielder just said that I am 4-4-3 and Jenna is 3-5 and Jenna said "No, I"m 2" and Fielder said "No you're not!"
There was lots of TV watching this week, but hey it's vacation so I had no problem with that! I loved this when they all got under the blanket to watch a Curious George Halloween movie?! Actually this is seriously the only picture I took the whole time. I was lazy, but also saw that Alison was getting awesome pictures and I could just steal hers :-)
Jake came through with a great idea for the men in the family. He organized a chartered fishing trip and they all pitched in and gave it to Bob for his birthday/Father's day gift. It was a half day trip and luckily they had perfect weather and caught tons of Spanish mackerel. Matt had thrown his back out the day before, but we were all relieved he was able to make it onto the boat and hopefully it took his mind off his back for a while! Coral cooked the fish for dinner and we brought more home for our freezer.
All in all it was a great trip. Thank you so much Bob and Coral for your generosity! I am already missing my sweet nieces so much....but GOOD NEWS! I don't have to miss them much, because they are moving back!!! I am beyond excited about this. They also had to cut their week short to close on their new house and unpack. Just one more Barnes boy that we still need back on the east coast... :-)
Well, a month has gone by, but I suddenly realized today that we never did Claire's end of year interview! Oops! School ended 4 weeks ago...I think she's well into "summer mode" so her answers are brief, but here is a very belated Interview with Claire Barnes, age 8 as a rising 3rd grader:
