Emerald Isle 2016, July 11

Day 3, Monday-

Monday morning, Jeff and I got up and had our coffee on the deck and then took a walk in search of seashells.  Once we really started looking through the piles of shells we found pieces of olives, whole ------ which we called spirals before we used our seashell identification book, and my favorite, scallops.  There were plenty of broken conch shells too.  We headed back up to the house and made a HUGE breakfast and then we all went in search of more shells.  This time we brought a couple of buckets with us to carry our treasures.

On our way out to search for shells we found two areas that were taped off because sea turtles laid their eggs there. The girls found lots of shells.  Their favorites were ones that had holes in them so they could put them on string to make a necklace.  We also found our first piece of seaweed to hold.

We all got wounds from the shells and sand like this one. 

Looked stormy, but didn't do anything

Spirals

Scallops

Pancakes and deer sausage

Sea turtle eggs

Doesn't look like much, but plenty of good ones in there if you search

Seaweed

During our afternoon trip to the beach, we tried out the Yeti that my parents got us as an early wedding present!  We used it everyday for the rest of the week and everything stayed very cold, so cold in fact that the ice packs were still frozen when we unpacked it.

The girls played on their boogie boards some more and we watched high tide come in, sometimes getting a little too close!

Make a spot for the water to fill during high tide

Someone dug a larger hole than I did

Girls playing in tide pool

Pretty sure he's happy as he can be

Whoops, the tide came in!  

We almost match :)

Action shot

This time we tried a new fish market for dinner, Phillips.  The fish at this market weren't filleted yet, but they did it for us.  However, since you pay for the entire fish, the prices weren't much better than at Willis's.  The girls were grossed out at the smell and the "whole" fish laying on ice, but they still did pretty well with it.  We decided on seabass which I baked at 425 for 15-20 minutes with butter and lemon pepper and topped with sliced lemons, and blues that Jeff fried.  We also made some coleslaw and hushpuppies.  Hailey's favorite fish of the week were the fried blues.

After dinner it was time for some ladderball, a game that we weren't familiar with, but soon became our favorite!  We found another set in the basement and had two games going at time.

While we were outside having a few drinks we witnessed our funny story for the day- an extremely drunk man had a really hard time making his way out of the sand and onto the walkway.  He would take a few steps and then stagger backwards, just like he had a "back magnet".  As he started up the stairs he ended up falling backwards into the sand.  His wife was not pleased at all and we had to keep looking away so we weren't staring at them.  The girls hadn't ever seen anything like it before and thought it was hysterical!  They now know what a back magnet is;)  And how else would they end their night, but playing "drunk people" in their room and falling down all over the place.  Hailey laughed so hard during their impressions that she peed her pants!

The selfie stick made it's way outside quite a bit today and provided plenty of entertainment.

Our night ended with some really good fireworks!  You can see one in the distance below.  Jeff told the girls that we paid someone to put them on for us and they were seriously impressed. ;)