This year we headed down to Topsail Island for a week-long vacation with Joe's side of the family. When we told Lillian we were going on vacation and showed her the pictures of the house online, she was ready to leave right then. She would wake up from her naps and tell us she needed her shoes and swim vest on because she was going to the beach house. When we told her that we weren't going right then, she would cry so we had to stop talking about it in front of her.
It was also Father's Day weekend. This was Joe's gift:
The great thing about this house was that it had TWO private pools and you only had to walk down some steps to get to the beach.
Lillian actually enjoyed the beach this year. Last year, she would not even let her toes touch the sand. We made sure we read plenty of stories about the beach and listened to beach songs before we left. Her limit seemed to be about 30 minutes and she had fun when the waves splashed her feet. She had a good time finding shells and rocks with her cousins and putting shells and sand down crab holes. She did help daddy with a sand castle one morning. We did see dolphins swim by on two mornings.
We spent every morning but one in the pool. Lillian was swimming (dog paddling) all by herself and became an expert at getting in and out of the pool all by herself. She got so good that she would actually get in the water before Joe or I had gotten in with her. She LOVED the pools and a few days we found ourselves in the pool two times in one day.
When she would take in a mouthful of water (by the third day, that pretty much was gone), we would tell her to cough it up and she would. One day Joe got a little bit extra sun on his shoulders and chest so he sat out of our pool play for that day. Lillian wanted to know why daddy was not getting in the water and we told her he had a little sunburn, she said, "Just cough it up daddy."
The weather was perfect for us, not too hot and a slight breeze almost every day. We had rain the two days in the afternoon during nap time so that worked out well. Thankfully it rained the morning we left so we did not have to deal with the crying and begging to go to the pool!
We spent one morning at the animal park in Wilmington. We felt sorry for some of the animals; this was not like a new zoo where there are enclosures faking their natural habitat. The majority of these animals were in cages. Lillian had a good time throwing food at the animals and she really fell for the King Tut, a fennec fox. We had to bring him home with us. King Tut was actually sleeping when we got to his cage but when he heard Lillian, he got out of his bed and came running up to his cage bars and just sat there looking at us.
We ate dinner one night at a restaurant called The Blue Gecko. We found out about the restaurant from one of those visitor brochures and it sounded great; a very eclectic menu with a little gift and art gallery. We tried to go there for lunch with the grandparents but the brochure we had was old and the restaurant only opens for dinner. So we headed back there at night and found it was quite different than we expected. Gone was the gift shop and casual menu; more of a grown-up place but we sat down anyway. The food was great - Lillian even ate some edemame we order for an appetizer and ate the edible flowers that decorated our plates. We got their dessert, fruit flambe, that was entered into a food competition with Paula Deen. It was so yummy that Lillian had to eat it with TWO SPOONS. The best part of the dinner was that the waitress actually said that Lillian was well-behaved to be in a grown-up restaurant. If you have ever eaten out with Lillian, you know what challenge she can be. To bad that did not carry over to the next night at dinner!
On our day of check-out, we decided to hit up the aquarium at Ft. Fisher to kill some time in the morning and start driving home during Lillian's nap. It was a very stormy morning and rained the whole way there. Of all the animals in the aquarium, Lillian seemed most fascinated with the scuba divers cleaning the coral in one of the tanks.
Here she is on the way home, clutching her two gifts from the vacations, King Tut and a sea turtle.
We all had a great time and Lillian LOVED playing with her cousins. She stuck to her schedule fairly well and stayed dry during the car trips! We even think she missed home and her toys. She immediately went to some of her toys that she had not been playing with in awhile and started playing. THANK YOU GRANDMA & GRANDPA!
Still working on the vacation post but here are a few quick bits:
