10 adults, 2 babies, 2 dogs, 1 house - 7 days

So, I haven't written a post in a while, but all for good reasons. The main being we took a vacation a few weeks ago. My aunts rented a house in the Outer Banks, North Carolina for the week before Easter. I brought the computer thinking I could blog, work on wedding stuff, and a few other things. However, I only managed to download a few pictures and create a spreadsheet to track wedding venues (no entries, but did create the website).

This was the first "family" vacation for Nick and my third since reaching adulthood (we did this sporadically throughout my childhood). My mother is the oldest of three sisters who are only five years apart in age. One of my aunts has a daughter a year younger and a step-daughter a few years younger...So, we all took off - destination Outer Banks.

Nick, the dog, my mother and I left on Friday evening, travelling to Lexington. Nick nor I was sure how the dog (and my mother) would do that long in the car, so we decided to break the trip up. In the end, that was probably good, since we got stuck in traffic for about two hours and through an underground tunnel.

We arrived third..my aunt, other aunt, aunt's husband and Alex the Westie arrived prior to us. The group containing my cousins, their husbands, a 20month old and a 9 month old from Texas was about 30 minutes behind us. The house was magnificent....most of the houses there are rentals and during the summer are not affordable (or at least my kind of affordable). So, we pull up to a huge house, with 8 bedrooms, ocean views, pool, hot tub, and an elevator. although, we all decided that the fact we all had our own bathrooms was by far the best feature.

as I said, we have done this several times...but this was a first for Nick. Nick is what I call an "active" vacationer. Me, give me a book, a beach chair, a drink, a view and I am good to go for several days. He likes to be doing something, seeing something, etc. One day, I will tell you about our New England vacation last summer.

all along, I was hoping that the weather would hold so that he could play golf (not to mention that we hauled his golf clubs and shoes all the way to NC). No golf, makes Nick a very sad boy. Luckily, he was able to play twice...and I relented one day (that the weather was crappy) and we went sightseeing (the Wright Brothers memorial - awesome place) and did a little shopping.

He had his concerns bout spending that much time round that many people (women..especially)...but, in the end, asked me when we would be doing this again. a good sign, I think.

Every other time we have done this vacation, there are times when we all go back to being kids. aunt Chrys making dinner, Monty making breakfast, someone organizing activities. But, this time, it was different. Firstly, the kids are all very much adults these days (Nick and I being the only ones without kids..well, besides my brother) and everyone knew that Chrys shouldn't do dinner every night and we all needed to figure out what we wanted to do (another reason, I knew we had to have access to our own vehicle).

Everyone got dinner duty. Turns out the kids all made dinner one night the first part of the week. I managed to make homemade pizza without my kitchen aide (have I mentioned the fantastic kitchen, yet?) for everyone with like 10 toppings to choose from. Nick wanted me to grill it, but the grill was out of gas (something we discovered to late).

So, basically, at least one person went to the grocery store every day (at least one someone)...and that didn't count the beer, wine, and margaritas consumed.

I could probably write an entire post about the dog and the beach, but the picture says it all. She turned into a beach bum and has been pouting ever since. I think it has something to do with running on the beach everyday for an hour...apparently she likes that much activity.

In the end, I realized that even at 33, I am an adult, but can still feel like some one's child and niece every once in a while.

the next post...the wedding location hunt....