What’s the best cure for a paint-and-primer hangover? A long weekend at the beach. And what’s the perfect way to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary (yep, today’s the big day)? Sharing beach photos, of course. We’ve covered wedding anniversaries plenty over the years, so this one is all about sand, sun, and family.
To honor the holiday weekend we left our freshly grellow-ed kitchen behind and drove down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We usually head to the beach at my parents’ place in Delaware, but the family has grown — this trip included 21 relatives and five kids under two — so we all pooled in to rent a larger place in Duck, NC. With that many people (and babies), full rest was ambitious, but the fun more than made up for it.
Clara and the beach quickly became best friends. She loved both the sand and the surf, which delighted her water-loving parents. We found a calm sandbar that kept waves gentle and water shallow, perfect for long stretches of play — most of which involved “jumping” waves and nonstop giggling.
The house we rented had a private backyard pool — like others on the street — which gave us another safe, relaxing place to play away from the beach. Clara has recently learned the word “ball,” so she was ecstatic when my aunt pulled out a huge bag of them for pool time. Balls quickly became her favorite thing on the trip.
Aside from some stifling humidity, the weather cooperated for most of the visit. We used an overcast day to visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk. It’s surprisingly moving to walk the grounds where the first flights happened — even for people who aren’t aviation buffs. There’s Sherry sitting on a marker that shows where the first flight ended after just 12 seconds and 120 feet; other stones nearby mark subsequent flights that day, the farthest lasting 59 seconds and covering 852 feet.
And yes, I posed in front of part of the monument because it felt fitting. Classic tourist move.
If you look closely at one of the photos above, you’ll notice the ball Clara is holding. That became a recurring theme. She extended her new love of balls to balloons too. During a shared birthday celebration for my sister Emily and my cousin’s daughter Elsa, Clara donned her party dress and went wild watching balloons float while grandparents and cousins looked on. We ended up with a dozen similar, joyful photos.
If you want more beach images, we uploaded plenty to Flickr. As for the house itself, it was a practical, family-friendly rental — not exactly Instagram-worthy design, but perfectly suited to five babies and sixteen older relatives making themselves at home. One design detail did catch our eye: an interior stairwell lined with shaker-style shingles. It echoed the exterior siding and felt like a beachy take on wainscoting — a detail that worked beautifully in a coastal rental even if it wouldn’t fit our own home.
Since the rental didn’t fully satisfy our design cravings, we spent some time exploring local thrift stores and home-furnishing shops. There were lots of tempting finds — including a giant curly-haired bear nutcracker that made us laugh — and we’ll share more about those discoveries in a later post.
One small victory from the trip: we finally managed to get a photo of the four of us together — our first since Clara was born. It only took 13.5 months, but it was worth the wait.
Have you ever escaped town after a big, exhausting house project? Did you come back with new souvenirs or a sudden obsession from your kiddo — a newfound love of balls, perhaps? Or did you finally snap a family photo that had been overdue? We’d love to hear about your post-project getaways and small travel triumphs.