OBX Days 1-2: June 22-23, 2013

I'm just getting around to blogging our summer vacation.  It happened 3 months ago! Randy and Jerry Behrmann graciously rented a beautiful beach house in the Outer Banks (Corolla, NC) and invited the entire Behrmann family to spend an entire week. Our family had been looking forward to it for months.  It gave us a chance to celebrate completing residency and a moment to relax before the rigors of fellowship began.  The day finally arrived.  David and I woke up at 4 AM, determined to get an early start and beat all that horrible traffic we had been warned about.  We hit pockets of traffic throughout Northern Virginia, but thought we were doing pretty well.  We were proud of ourselves for beating the rush.  But, as we got closer to our destination we came to a standstill near the Wright Memorial Bridge.  It continued across the bridge and the entire way up Highway 12.  I honestly think I could have run the last 20 miles faster than we drove it.  Seriously.  In the end, it took us 10+ hours to drive map quests predicted 5.5 hour drive.  Once we finally arrived I was determined to never leave that beach house.  I did not want to sit in that traffic ever again.  Miraculously, the kids were so good during it all.  No one even had to use the bathroom.  We were on that bridge for hours...I'm not sure what we would have done if they had needed to.  I've never been so grateful for our DVD player.

We were the first to arrive to the beach house.  David took the oldest three kids for a walk down to the beach, while I fed Emily in the van.  Jerry and Randy arrived just as I was finishing.  We got into the house and explored.  Jerry told me to take first pick of the rooms.  I felt guilty taking the nicest room (for a few minutes), but Jerry insisted and reminded me that I had the most and youngest kids.  If I've learned one thing being a Behrmann, it's that you don't argue with Jerry.  I wasn't going to start now.  This is a picture of the outside of the house and one of our room.

We unpacked our bags and greeted everyone as they arrived.  Jae and Lillian (Taylor, Carly and Luke) and Crissy and Justin (Elijah, Tuli and Satchel) were the next to arrive.  We ordered pizza for dinner and got settled in. I was very sad and disappointed that Rob and Di and the girls (Natalee and Katherine) would not be able to join us.  Sam had an unexpected admission to the hospital, so understandably they were not able to leave Texas.  For me, things just didn't seem complete without them. We have a strong bond forged back during our Edmond days.  Stephanie and Ralph (Christian, Coby, Chloe and Chase) arrived very late that night after we had already gone to bed.

I was torn over Sunday.  I knew I should make the effort to get the little kids up early and drive to church Sunday morning (fragments of a conference talk about a family who always went to church on their annual beach vacation even entered my mind), but I was exhausted and the thought of sitting in that horrific traffic with Emily again horrified me so I told David I just didn't have the energy.  Instead, I read my Ensign and a few stories from the Friend to the kids.  I felt guilty the entire time, until the others who had tried to make the trek to church returned and announced that it was Stake Conference and no one was at the ward building.  The Stake center was 2-3 hours away.  In a warped sense of reality (that I freely admit) I felt like Heavenly Father was telling me that is was okay I had skipped church...just this once.  My guilt was gone.  We spent the rest of the day relaxing at the beach house.  Our family took a nice walk along the beach.  The sun was bright and in the end Ben and Kate confiscated our sunglasses.  We saw our first crabs of the week and collected our first shells.    

Mike and Christina (Ava and Colt) arrived later that night.  If I remember correctly, we enjoyed hamburgers, hot dogs and homemade french fries from the grill for dinner and played our first round of Settlers that night.  I lost, but I'm pretty sure I blamed it on the pure boredom created by Jae's incredibly slow turns.