Historic Villiage & Dolphins - 157/365

Today, I got up and photographed my first sunrise of the trip. 

I had been meaning to all week, but just hadn't done it. With Tropical Storm Andrea supposed to roll in tomorrow, I figured I better do it. I'm glad I did! It was GORGEOUS! After everyone else was up and about, we attempted to take some nice pictures of the three kids on the beach. It was hilarious! One would go one way, and another would go a different way. We tried everything from singing to games. It will be interesting to see what shots I actually got...LOL! 

Everyone got dressed for the day and then, Adrienne, Jillian, Nikki, Jim, Reagan and I went over to explore Corolla Historical Village. Greg and Jake had gone crabbing. When they got back, they hung out with Evan and cooked up their crabs.

 The village was really cute, but REALLY small. That had a small store and museum about the wild horses. There was also a little school house that was next door, so we walked over there. Turns out, we couldn't go in, because the kids of Corolla actually attend school there. It's a one room school house that teaches kindergarten through 6th grade. It was fascinating. 

After that, we walked over to the Currituck Lighthouse. It's a beautiful brown brick lighthouse built in 1875. Jim and I decided to try to climb to the top to check out the view. There are 214 steps and we felt every single one of them. It really wasn't as bad as we thought, but our legs were on FIRE! Once we got to the top, the view was absolutely STUNNING! You really get a sense of how THIN the Outer Banks really are. It's truly a fascinating piece of land. 

The lighthouse was the last one built on the Outer Banks and still helps ships today. The light comes on for three seconds and stays off for 17 seconds. We can see the light from our house at night and watch it come off and on. It's pretty cool. The light can be seen for 18 nautical miles. 

After we made our decent, we headed over to the wildlife education center. It's pretty new and had some really nice exhibits inside. The girls really enjoyed it. 

We then, spent a little more time walking around on the boardwalks then headed home. 

This whole trip, none of us had visited the pool. We've been spending all our time on the beach, so Jim, Reagan and I decided to take a walk over. Jim was the first to put his feet in. It was really cold! He finally braved it, then it was Reagan's turn. She was a little apprehensive at first, but warmed up to it OK. They spent about 10 minutes splashing when Greg showed up. He was the next one to brave the waters. We finally decided we had, had enough pool and hit the beach. I have a gigantic beach ball so I blew that up and the kids just had a blast pushing and chasing it around. It was bigger than them! 

 Finally, everyone headed in to take naps and get cleaned up for dinner. Greg and Jake wanted to cook dinner for everyone and made a fantastic feast! They cooked up steak and chicken fajitas with all the accompaniments you could imagine! They were excellent! We were all STUFFED! 

An added bonus, while they were cooking was, we got to watch a HUGE pod of dolphins swimming right in front of the house! There had to be 30 of them, it was amazing!
We all had a great time sitting around talking. Jillian all of a sudden blurted out, "What do you call a pasta that moves?" We all laughed and said, "What?" She, as sure as sure could be, said, "Reagansauce!" We all got a huge laugh about that one! It was so darn cute! 

After we finished cleaning up and putting the kids to bed, we sat and watched some more of the Italy video. It was a great day!

There are three photos today. The first is Jim and I at the top of the lighthouse.

 The next is Jake and Greg cooking dinner...

And finally, one of the dolphins...