Thanksgiving at the Beach

This year for Thanksgiving Nate and I met up with my family at a beach house in Topsail, North Carolina. Growing up we used to go to a beach house in North Carolina every summer for a week with my cousins. My Dad thought it would be fun to have a change of pace for the holidays this year, and have everyone meet at the beach for Thanksgiving instead of in August. I know I currently reside 10 minutes away from the beach on the other side of the country, but we've recently turned into those lame people who live next to something awesome and never go. So we were excited about a week at the beach, and even more so a week with family!

Being OCD, I always book flights months in advance for the holidays to make sure we get a good price. It is not cheap having to make a transcontinental trek at the peak of the travel season every year. We booked a red-eye flight for the Saturday before Thanksgiving back in May (before we were aware of the fact I would be 7 months pregnant for the trip). I had visions of having to go to the bathroom or needing to get up and stretch out my puffy feet while being trapped in the window seat by a sleeping fellow passenger. Luckily it turned out ok and I passed out the whole flight out of exhaustion from packing up our apartment that day.

We arrived in Raleigh the next day, rented a car, and drove 2 hours to the beach!

The first part of the trip was great because just my Mom, Dad, and brother Wade were there with us, and we all got to hang out and catch up before the crowd arrived on Wednesday. The beach house was amazing! Nate and I got one of the first picks of 10 bedrooms and it even had an elevator. My favorite part was the kitchen.

Wouldn't you just love to stare at the ocean while doing the dishes everyday?

Hello Ocean

Topsail island is usually pretty remote, but there was hardly a soul at the beach the first part of the week.

Sometimes I think I look obese... Then I remember I'm pregnant.

The weather was awesome the whole week. We had a great time flying kites, playing
Frisbee, going to Wilmington, going to the movies, playing games, and walking on the beach.

My Dad insisted that he take his "California Son-Law" to experience some real Carolina BBQ. We usually stop at this hole-in-the-wall called Wilbur's BBQ on the drive down from Virginia. But since we were already at the beach we looked up some places on yelp and found one with a bunch of good reviews. After driving to the middle of nowhere near Jacksonville, NC we pulled into what literally was somone's house.

They turned the side of their house into a BBQ restaurant? My Dad fairly anti-chain restaurant and always says there's no way to eat but local on trips. This was a new extreme.

I'm sure it would have been awesome according the yelp reviews, but unfortunately they are only open Thursday-Sunday... So with a change of plans we decided to go to "Thigs" down the road.

How could we go wrong with a restaurant with dancing pigs on the sign?

Sadly, Thigs wasn't that good. The hush puppies and fried okra were great, but the usual tangy shredded Carolina barbecue was more like a pile of mush.

Note the slightly pained expressions on everyone's faces.

On Wednesday everyone else arrived! It was fun to have a full house and visit with everyone...

Crazy boys swimming in the cold ocean.

My new best friend Hallee! Cutest little girl ever...

My husband rolls with the 16 year-olds...

Thanksgiving dinner was delicious granted my family is full of awesome chefs like my Dad and Aunt Tracy! Everyone was jealous of my stretchy pants after dinner...

Assembling the pies...

Overall it was a great trip! We loved the big group games of Catch Phrase and Balderdash, delicious food, gorgeous beach, and time with family. That was the last time I'll see everyone before our little mister arrives.

But only 2 more months till that happens!

Goodbye Ocean! See you on the other side...