We are in the midst of a crazy month in American history so I thought it was the perfect time to reflect back on our summer and all the fun we had! I’m so grateful for the safe, innocent, unplugged, fun childhood memories we’re able to give our kiddos and visitors. It’s such a gift to be closely connected to such beautiful creation and get so much time outside playing.

July was such a great (and hot and humid) month as we fully enjoyed a North Carolina summer again and had so much fun in the water and sand. Most of the official 4th of July festivities were cancelled but the un-official ones were better than ever! They still did fireworks off the pier the weekend before the 4th and we enjoyed seeing them with special friends:

4th of July night, we were all in our beds after a full day of sun and sand – when we heard fireworks going off super close to us! We rushed to the front porch and got to watch and listen to an amazing display of fireworks getting blasted over the waterway. A few days later, we met the neighbor that sets them off each year and he invited us to come watch from his yard on the water next time. Sounds great!

We love being Americans and are truly thankful for being born here. It’s such a wonderful country to live in! Imperfect – but such a blessing to so many.

So many special memories were made with friends and family this month. I thank the Lord every time I go to the beach even if it’s just for a 10 minute walk. I pray to never take it for granted.

I love that somebody captured me doing one of my fave things at my fave place:

Here’s the canal area I cross over on the footbridge to get to the beach:

We loved our visit with cousin S and seeing her smiles as we explored:

Our new (inflatable) paddle boards worked great! We got soo much use out of them. We loved the calm days on the ocean when we could use the boards like a diving board – Mommy even got in on the play time 🙂

Sunsets at the point like this one will always be some of my favorite summer memories:

AB and RR in particular enjoy fishing and crabbing:

But for the record…the one time I fished this summer – I caught one on my first cast. 😃 I’m good for a few years.

We’re thankful for all the friend time we had – especially our annual kickball party for RR!

B and I both got special 1 on 1 time with RR quite a bit and it was a great gift. I can’t believe he’s in high school. 😢😱

I enjoy embarrassing him. For example, when I see the military planes or helicopters fly over (like these 3 below) I try to wave as big and ridiculous as I can – sometimes even screaming and cheering.

He got a surfboard for his bday and did great! The waves here are small but still fun. I wouldn’t let him try to catch the hurricane waves when they started rolling in in August:

We loved having family come visit and were so thankful they got in and outta here before the hurricane hit! I was happy to see my aunt I hadn’t seen in a decade:

And the kiddos will always remember their annual special cousin time and all the happy memories!

We did lots of paddling:

Lots of ball games:

And lots of beach and pool! I love the creative games they come up with like this one where they played football vs. the waves and tried to stand against them haha

We were so thankful for all the fresh air and sunshine!

We just love these special people and our summer times together:

A Sea Turtle nest hatched while they were here!!! It got dark and stormy quick while we waited… but we were grateful we saw one little guy make it to the sea:

Sadly, hurricane Isaias would hit a few days after they all left and would do a lot of damage to our beautiful beach area but more on that in my next post….

We’re so thankful we had such a happy summer !!! And also thankful that we had planned on starting school the first week of August anyway. Here’s some drone footage from July that RR tried to capture: