I’m back! And I’m exhausted. I need a staycation to recover from my vacation. Matt and I had such a good time with our family in the Outer Banks, but there’s nothing like sleeping in your own bed again. It’s amazing how much relaxing can wear you out!But we’re back home now, me with a sweet tan and Matt with some more freckles :).

As always, lessons learned/things that happened over the past week:

• Shucking crabs is dangerous. I have three battle wounds from an evening of cracking open claws, and then the scarred memories of painful lacerations full of Old Bay seasoning.
• Never underestimate an excitable puppy’s ability to inflict unintentional wounds with their newly-cut nails. We picked up Lily from the outdoor kennel she’d been staying at for the week and she went NUTS when she saw us. The ensuing scratches were totally worth it, though- we were just stoked to have her back!
• On another note, if you ever want to tire your dog out, take her to an outdoor kennel where they let the dogs run around on a farm all day. Lily’s barely moved from the couch since we brought her home.
• That whole sentiment about cloudy days can be more dangerous than sunny days? Totally true. Because the one day I was sunburned? It was overcast.
• We found a hornet’s nest being built on the under side of one of the deck chairs at the beach house, so Matt went to war with a can of wasp killer. I did the damsel-in-distress thing REALLY well.
• Photographing children is hard (for me)- I’m used to shooting adults with longer attention spans. Photographing children who are under the age of three and have a fever? Yeah, forget about it. UNLESS, I discovered, you have a little secret weapon I call CANDY! Our two-year-old niece Evelyn was feeling yucky on our last day of vacation and whenever I asked her to smile for me, she started to cry. But then I broke out a piece of bright red taffy and the sobs immediately turned to smiles. WIN!
• In poking around a Christmas store, we found tree ornaments of the cast of Jersey Shore. I wept for the future of America’s youth.

A few snapshots from our beach vacation!

Matt loves mini golf. I do not, because I’m terrible at it. However, by some stroke of luck, I managed to beat him on Saturday! I think he was just having an off-day, but I’ll take it.

Before an offer of taffy… AFTER!

Happy Monday!