4th of July

I'm going to keep this chronologic and back up to the 4th...then I'll do Paul's family reunion :)

Normally for the fourth we end up sitting at home watching the fireworks on TV. This year, we decided, sort of last minute, to go to the beach. We booked a hotel room, and away we went! We were facing the sound, to which Camden replied-"That's awesome! We get to see all the boats and stuff, the other people just have to look at the beach all day." We really did have a beautiful view-here are some pics from our window:


We got there on Friday, hung out on the beach, and then went and got some seafood for dinner. On Saturday, we hung out at the beach all morning in phenomenal weather, ate some lunch, hung out at the pool for a bit and then had pizza for dinner. Since we had time to kill before the fireworks, we went and hung out on the pier and watched the crazy drunk people speed by in their boats. Camden liked to go down to the floating dock and "ride" it as the wake came by. We watched fireworks on the lawn-which was great because we got to see the hotel's fireworks, we could see the fireworks from Topsail and Wilmington, and from everyone else shooting them off on the beach! They were everywhere! Everyone enjoyed them except Parker-he was NOT a happy camper. I ended up having him lay in my lap covering his ears, which he likewise didn't enjoy :( But we had a great time, met up with some friends, and discovered that we can, in fact, share a hotel room again (our last time, 3 years prior, was disastrous and we had not attempted it again) Here are some pictures from our fun weekend:
Parker had a fun time in the waves-we put his life jacket on the 2nd day so he could float over the waves as they came.
The water was so clear! Camden had a great time playing and boogie boarding.
The cool floating dock-I made sure to get the flag for a nice 4th of July pic :)
On the lawn
Getting ready to watch fireworks