Sand and Sun

 Lots of beach photos, but I love it.

OBX or Bust

 Everyone in Virginia goes to the Outer Banks in North Carolina at some point for summer vacation.  We had always talked about going, and this year we finally did it. We were so excited to go with our good friends the Murrays and Sorensens and stay in a beach house together.  We left on Saturday, August 8th.  Everyone who has done this told us to leave by 5:00 am.  Well, we are not morning people, and we were pretty proud that we left around 6:15 am.  We should have left at 5:00am!

 When we finally made it to North Carolina we ran into Clarence the Crawling King Snake of Congestion.  Every Saturday beach goers are trying to get to their beach house on one road with two lanes.  We sat on this road for five hours and only went 20 miles.  James and I left the car to try to find a bathroom and walked back to the same place we had left the car.  This traffic is no joke!  Despite the horrible traffic, we finally made it twelve hours later.  

 We went to church today and let the kids go down and look at the beach.  They weren't supposed to get wet being Sunday and all, but as you can see that didn't really work :).

 Annalyse, Faith, Hope and Ella.  BFFs.

 The big kids:  Lily, Jack, Brad, Curtis, Eva, Matthew and James.  We really missed Spencer, but he was loving his vacation in Utah.

 So much for not getting wet.

Piano Guys

 My friend Bryn and I got to spend the night at Wolf Trap with the Piano Guys.  I had never seen them perform before, and it was so great!  We had such a great time.

Visit from Cortney

 We were sad to leave Utah, but we were so excited that Cortney, Jeff and Grey were on our same flight, and they got to come to our house for a few days.  I'm sorry to say this is the only picture we took together :(  Sunday night I took Cortney, Jeff and Grey on the Monuments tour.  Doug and the kids stayed home because it involved too much walking ;).

 This was the first time I had seen the Martin Luther King, Jr. Monument.

 Hope lookin' good.

 Cortney did her research and the reviews came in that Baked and Wired was better than DC Cupcakes so we had to go check it out. 

 Yes, we agree with the reviews.  Baked and Wired is now our favorite cupcake place.  They had a wall full of notes on dinner napkins.

 I found the perfect place to take pictures along the canal in Georgetown.

 Iwo Jima Memorial.

 We also took Jeff, Courtney and Grey to Arlington Cemetery.  The girls loved pushing Grey in the stroller.  We were so sad when they left us.

Spencer got a special treat this summer and got to stay in Utah alone for an extra two weeks.  This is the only photo I have of his time there.  He got to use some power tool at Tyler's Young Men activity :).