Beach Trip Highlights

We had a great week of relaxing, drinking, eating, beaching, pooling, cooking, reading...good times. Here are some pictures of the fun:

Here is our beach fort, it was pretty great, plenty of shade, which I took full advantage of. Also used my beach umbrella bag which worked great!

Me, under the umbrella, big floppy hat, sunglasses and SPF 50! I'm not getting burnt!

Best beach game ever, "Kubb". Google it. You set up wooden blocks and have to knock them down w/ wooden dowels. Everyone that walked by stopped to watch for a while, since most people have never seen this game before.
Pool pong. Harder than you would think. Andrew improvised a speed version which worked out pretty well. Having a pool was actually really cool. You would think it is superfluous, but we really enjoyed having another place to relax and cool off. The ocean was a little rough the first part of the week then filled w/ jellyfish the last few days.
Artsy photo!
Would love to be able to go back to the beach w/ friends and family asap, but will have to wait till next year :-(

beach trip #2

4:45 wakeup
5:30 depart
11:00 arrive in Duck
2:00 beach
4:00 check into house
5:00 poolside
10:00 bed

That was day 1. Down in the Outer Banks again, this time with friends. We rented one of those houses w/ 8 bed rooms. So far it's been pretty great. Haven't seen what the beach is like near our house yet, but the pool in the back yard is pretty awesome. This place has three refrigerators! Pictures and updates to come. Gonna test out that umbrella carrying thingy!

Ready for the beach!

I just finished my first independent sewing project, a beach umbrella bag! We are headed back down to the Outer Banks in a week with 4 other couples. When I was down a few weeks ago I had our only umbrella, which had no carrying case and was kind of a pain to carry. I also bought another umbrella knowing when we were both on the beach we would both want our own shade. To solve the problem of carrying two umbrellas I figured I could made some sort of bag. I looked up patterns for yoga mat bags and based my project after them. I wanted a draw string top and a round bottom and a strap. I sort of fudged the pattern and just did my best. The hardest part was sewing the round bottom into the tube, I didn't really know how to do this and it's got some kinks and wrinkles. So if I were to make something more refined I would have to learn how to do this correctly. But as a first project, I'm pretty proud of the result! It fits both umbrellas and looks cute :-) I'll be sure to take some pictures at the beach too!

I'm here

Left Elkridge yesterday at about 7:30. Stopped in LaPlata to help the parents finish packing and then we headed south. This is the first time I've driven any distance by myself. The trip was supposed to be about 8.5 hours and we got to Avon at about 4:30 I think. I followed my parents advice and steered clear of 95 and the usual beach routes. So even though it took a little longer it was a nice scenic route. Driving by myself was easier than I thought, though the familiar route helped.

I'm off to suntan lotion up and head to the beach. It's sunny and a little windy and though it's warm, it's much cooler than back home.

Big Week

So, tomorrow I have a presentation to give at a conference, I'm a little nervous but finally to the point where I almost don't care, and if I could just give my presentation right now at like 8:30 at night I would. Then Thursday and Friday I head to anther conference out in Easton, MD. I have a presentation that ends at 3:45 Friday afternoon. At 4 pm I hope to be in my car and headed to Ocean City with some friends. I'm not quite done preparing the second presentation and it will need some practice- but I can hardly wait till I'm done and can finally relax. The past month or so has been pretty busy w/ a big work meeting and then preparing for these two presentations. I can't wait till work is back to normal for me.

So, just four more days of work, two presentations, and some stressing out, and I'm at the beach for three days! Don't even care if it's not that warm, I just want to relax, read a book, and have some drinks with friends.