Before we moved to Sneads Ferry (a quaint shrimping town right on the coast of North Carolina), I never considered myself a beach person. I didn’t mind going the one week a year with my family growing up, but I always just felt more at home in the mountains, away from the sand. But now that we have to put in effort to go to the beach and it’s not just five minutes away, I find that I miss it so much more than I thought I ever would. 

So when Caleb’s mom, Rosie (or Izzy…which is what she has decided her “grandma name” will be…does anyone else have a crazy grandma name? My mom chose Lolly, so I feel like we live in the land of lovingly looney grandmas!), asked us to go to OBX for a week, I was totally on board.

The way Caleb’s family vacations is so much different than how I grew up vacationing. We always had a plan—knew what/where we would be eating, which activities we would be doing, and which days would be adventure days versus which days would be beach days. His mom plans nothing. It was a little hard for me at first, not going to lie!

We visited the grocery store every day and only got ingredients for what we were in the mood to eat for our meals that day. I was like, “Whaaattt?!? Where is THE LIST? How do we go to the grocery store without a LIST?! This is madness!” But it ended up being quite nice, and I realized that I am always in the mood for guacamole, so we bought avocadoes pretty much every day.

Our only scheduled adventure was Tuesday night. We were told we HAD to take Grandma Rita (Caleb’s grandmother, so Huxley’s great grandmother) to mini golf Tuesday night. Let me set the scene for you—Grandma Rita is 92 years old. She putted a 24 on 9-hole course. Like, seriously?!?! She took no prisoners when it came to mini golf.

 …or Rummikub! I learned how to play and you would think she would take it easy on me, let the newbies learn the game before she slayed us…but NO! She is so competitive…do not mess with Grandma Rita!

All in all, this vacation was absolutely the escape we needed after a month and a half of back to back travel for Caleb and a busy wedding season for me. We are thankful for time with family and friends, old and new!

Just for the record, I won my team’s first round of mini golf. I was very proud I hit two holes in one!

I’m guessing this game is how Grandma Rita stays so sharp! She was outsmarting us all.

These Huxley cuddles are my favorite, but I also love documenting
how much of a love she is with everyone else too!