Halbrooks Online

Today was another beautiful sunny morning!   Todd, Ralph, and Mike took all the kids to the local aquarium before lunch (we are blessed with some amazing men as husbands!).   Mom and Dad went out shopping for t-shirts for the family picture on Friday.  Anna, Deb, and I enjoyed a QUIET house for a couple of hours!  After lunch, we did some more of the same…..hanging out on the beach and by the pool!  What a life!  🙂  The kids buried each other in the sand and built sand castles.  Todd caught a lizard and Andrew named it Speedy since he was a quick little sucker to catch!  Todd was the hero of the day!

I made chicken salad for dinner with hot dogs for the kids…another yummy meal!   Todd & Deb had their date night tonight at the Lazy Pirate…an all-inclusive resort!  LOL!

We were expecting to wake up to rain all day, but to our surprise the sun was shining bright and continued to do so until late afternoon.  Woohoo!!  We stayed out all morning until after 1pm.  Today was our first day to cook so I stayed in after lunch and started prepping for dinner.  Hannah and Natalie flew a kite for a short while on the beach.  Ralph went out for a couple of hours to buy some fresh fish for the fish tacos.  Dinner was served around 7pm.  Menu was beef tacos, fish tacos, rice and beans with Coconut cream pie for dessert (with a little leftover apple pie as well! J).  No pictures of our meal were taken on this night….boo!  Mike and Anna had their date night this evening.

After dinner, kids got pjs on and then watched a movie before lights out (the typical nightly routine once dinner was cleaned up).

Woke up to sunshine for the first time this week!  We were out in the sun right after breakfast and stayed out ALL DAY.  Loved watching the kids playing on the beach and in the waves.   Ralph went out in the kayak he rented for a while and had a great time.  Kids rode some waves with the boogie boards and had a BLAST!  We took all the kids for a walk down the beach.  Each of the couples got a date night and tonight was ours.  Ralph and I decided to do dinner and a movie in Wilmington, NC which was about 30 minutes away.  On the way out, I found that a security tag was left on my skirt so we made a pit stop at Old Navy in Wilmington to get the tag removed.  We found a restaurant located in Wrightsville Beach a few miles east on the coast so we decided to check it out.  The Oceanic Restaurant ended up to be a really quaint place with lots of people walking around riding bikes, running, and LOTS of boats.  We ate out on a pier with about a hundred surfers surfing the waves.  Ralph, of course, loved this!  Food was good and atmosphere was awesome!  It was a little chilly, but we endured and got our key lime pie to go!  After dinner, we returned to Wilmington to go to a movie.  We saw The Lucky One which ended up being pretty good.  Before heading home, we stopped at Wal-Mart on the way home to get some groceries for the house and got home around 1am.  It was a nice night!

Happy Birthday to Todd!

We woke up to cloudy skies and the day ended up being too chilly to be outside.  Some of the kids did venture out to the beach and played for a short time but not long.  I worked on organizing pictures and posted some pictures on our website.  Ralph went “out” for a while and came back with a kayak.  🙂  While he was away, Todd and I played a game of Yahtzee with the kids.  For dinner, Hannah and Patrick made Italian Turkey Bake for Todd’s birthday and Deb made THREE amazing apple pies with ice cream for dessert.  It was all very yummy!   Before everyone headed to their rooms to watch a movie before bed, Todd played a round of bingo with all the kids.  Each year, Todd brings a box full of prizes and the kids get to pick something out of the basket as each one gets BINGO!  It is a favorite time of the day for the kids.  Thankfully, Deb brought their megaphone because it really came in handy when calling out the numbers!