1 post tagged “obx”
We just returned from a week at the Outer Banks with Casey's family. I'm always so tired after a vacation, that's why I rarely blog about my trips, but I thought I should at least share some pictures and stories of theme dinners. We had a great week and the weather was perfect! Not hot, not cold, nice and sunny for beachy days and only one rainy day.
We have a lot of fun with theme dinners. Each family is in charge of one night for dinner, and lately (this was the 3rd annual Family OBX trip) we've gotten into theme dinners, often with special attire required and activities included. Casey's brother and sister-in-law started the week with a French dinner. We were told to wear black or white shirts, and they provided black berets, red scarves, and eyeliner for some fancy moustaches. After a delicious French dinner, our beach house hosted our own "French Open" tennis tournament, courtesy of Nintendo Wii Sports (more on that in another post!) Casey won and a got a great plastic trophy!
Casey's parents hosted a "Mystery Dinner" where we ordered our meal in 5 courses, but didn't really know what we ordered until our course was served, including utensils. So I got to eat chocolate cake with jello and a napkin for my first course, had to eat jello and spaghetti with my fingers, but I could chose between a knife and a spoon to eat my meatballs. (If you've never been to a mystery dinner before, this might be a bit confusing.) Afterwards we watched some Agatha Christie mystery movie, apparently a torture that Casey and his siblings were subjected to when they were younger, and thus it held sentimental value to them.
For our night, we requested that everyone come barefoot. Then we provided bandanas, hoop earings, eye patches and tattoos to turn our guests into pirates! We had grilled shrimp, scallops and vegetables on skewers, because pirates don't use utensils. We also ate on paper plates because pirates don't do dishes either. Coulson was very excited to eat with no manners - he even left the table to go to the bathroom without asking to be excused! (The next day he realized that pirates probably don't wash their hands afterwards either, but sadly he was too late to take advanatge of this epiphany because it was no longer pirate night).
Our after dinner activity was a lot of fun to plan and to do. I made a scavenger hunt for them to work on in teams. Casey hid 2 little treasure chests on the beach and marked them with our GPS. While one team used the GPS to find a treasure chest, the other team was looking for a key, then they switched. Unfortunately, another pirate must have found one of the treasure boxes (filled with plastic coins, spiderman stickers and coupons for Nestle products - they hit the jackpot there!) and absconded with it, so that dampened the spirits of one team. But when they were waiting for dessert (ice cream sandwiches - no utensils, no dishes!) Coulson and Casey and I donned our best pirate gear and ambushed them with water balloons and squirt guns and tried to plunder the one treasure chest left. We were unsuccessful, but Coulson had a great time trying.
We also had our annual Bingo Night. Prizes were a mix of white elephant gifts and gift cards. Casey and I pretty much cleaned up with 3 gift cards and no white elephant gifts! Although Aunt Mary forgot to take home her foam windchime set that Coulson made at Vacation Bible School last year...
An Outer Banks vacation is always a lot of fun. Coulson is getting better about playing in the water, but he prefered the hot tub because the pool was too cold. He also enjoyed chasing sand crabs. Charlie liked the sand and water. "G' to Ossin!" he would say (translation: Go to ocean!) He was battling a slight cold, so he didn't enjoy it to the fullest, but he still had a great time.
