The Outer Banks

We returned from Steamboat Friday evening, and left for North Carolina's Outer Banks Saturday evening. Charles' parents, his brother and sister in law and their boys invited us to join them for a week at the beach. Andy and Sammy are 7 and 4, and all boy. When we arrived they ran around the house, almost too excited to give us the tour they were trying to take us on. They ran, they swam, they jumped, they wrestled, and in between, they were bored.





The week was beautiful, and for me, pretty relaxing. I could go to the beach if I felt up to it, or I could stay back at the house and read. I often climbed up to the widow's walk and laid in the sun and breeze reading. Charles and Jon got up every morning and surfed together. Charles and I agreed that I wouldn't surf (although I might have if the waves had been really small) because I almost always end up with a concussion or a black eye, and we decided to keep me safe this summer since my body's already busy with the baby. The waves were "epic" nearly every morning, and so intense that Charles actually injured himself twice, but of course kept surfing. Sorry no surfing pictures. Pregnant photographers just don't work at 6 am.

We celebrated Sammy's 4th birthday while we were there, and Susan had the idea to eat his birthday cake on the beach. So while she prepared it, we all went for a walk down the beach. Sammy ran ahead and in the distance he cried out "look a hole". In an instant he had jumped and disappeared. We all expected him to climb out at any moment, but he didn't. When we finally reached him, he was beaming up at us from the bottom of a narrow 10 foot hole. Jon climbed down a little and dragged him out warning Andy (who listened) not to jump down into it. Sammy of course, elated from the whole event, turns right around and jumps back in. Poor Andy was so upset that he listened and therefore missed out on the fun, Jon let him jump in once before he and Charles filled the hole up, until it was about a 4 foot hole and let the boys jump in over and over and over and over.





Ocracoke Lighthouse, the oldest active lighthouse in North Carolina.

Summer in Steamboat

Well, I guess this was the summer of traveling for us. First California, and then Steamboat, Colorado. Charles' parents have a timeshare there and invited us to join them for a week. Charles immediately began training to climb Steamboat Mountain on his mountain bike- climbing Kennesaw 4 times each visit, riding more and more each week.

On the other hand, I was climbing my own baby mountain. In my last post, I optimistically wrote that the nausea had gone away early. Well, that's the funny thing about being pregnant, you never know when you're going to feel what. The week before Steamboat (week 9 of my pregnancy) the worst wave of nausea hit. Charles said it was nerves about the upcoming trip. My friends who had been pregnant before informed me that this sort of heavy nausea was normal and was a sign that the baby was doing really well. Hmm. Good for the baby.

So, while I would say Steamboat was very beautiful in the summer time, and Charles would say it was everything he had dreamed it could be, I really was just trying to make it day to day. I wished it was a few weeks later, when I knew my symptoms would start to pass, but it wasn't. Everyone was great and mostly adapted to my schedule. We'd go out for lunches and mostly ate dinners in the condo, because the evening was the hardest time of day for me.

I actually got to mountain bike three days, all very easy abbreviated rides compared to what I was doing in Georgia, but nevertheless very enjoyable. Between the pregnancy exhaustion and the altitude, I wasn't up for much. Charles on the other hand, mountain biked every day, sometimes early in the morning and then again in the afternoon with his dad and me. He climbed to the top of the chairlift the first day (2180 ft.) and then to the top of Mt. Werner twice (3472 ft). In 5 days, he climbed 11, 614 ft, over 60 miles of riding. He took most of the mountain pictures of the aspens and mountain flowers.

My favorite day in Steamboat was our last. We went out for a delicious lunch next to Steamboat river, and watched people tubing down. So, Charles, his dad and I decided to rent tubes and go for a ride. It's my new favorite pregnancy sport. You lay there and get cooled by the river and warmed by the sun. It was an hour from the drop point to the pick up point and there were little rapids and slow sections- just so much fun. I enjoyed laying on my stomach watching the fish swim away from my shadow. If only the Chattahoochee wasn't so nasty, I'd want to go tubing all of the time.