The week of October 3-10th we made our yearly trip to Emerald Isle for our family beach trip. We got to stay in a different house this year that was right on the beach. It is named Ever After and Jenna loved that it was bright green with purple shutters. What a difference it made being able to just walk out our back door and head down to the beach. It wasn't as big of a pain to only have Peyton on the beach for 25 minutes when you didn't have to lug all of your gear down to the public beach access.

Josh's dad came down from New Jersey to spend the week with us. Sadly Deb was unable to make the trip as Gram wasn't feeling up to making the long drive, and we sure did miss those ladies. Josh's friend Keith, his wife Crissy and their daughter Brooke came for one night and it was nice to get to see them too.

This year we got to go to the Morehead City Seafood festival. There was good food, fun rides, and time with friends. What could be better!

Jenna had a blast riding on all of the rides with her daddy and her friends.

Peyton was having fun with her Da-da at the Seafood festival! This kid is just ready to run and have fun with all of the other kids. Like we have said before Peyton is the one....

Josh, Pete, and Jenna were out in the rain fishing in the ocean with the gear they picked up that day. Thankfully it only rained on Monday and Tuesday morning and then we had great weather the rest of the week.









Peyton and I decided not to go out in the rain and down to the ocean to fish. Instead we stayed up on the covered porch, watched everyone else and enjoyed our view of the ocean.






G-Pa Pete and his girls having fun in the sun!

Here's a shot of the Cowley girls on the beach. We discovered that late afternoon was our favorite time on the beach. The sun wasn't as hot, the kids had napped, and the setting was perfect. Soooo much fun.

G-Pa Pete got to enjoy quite a bit of fun time fishing in the ocean. He said he didn't care if he caught anything, he was just having fun, but he ended up catching quite a few fish that he shared with the serious fishing couple on the beach down from him.

One nice addition to our beach stay this year was that our friends the Sanborns have moved to Morehead City, which is about 25 minutes from the beach house. So we were able to let Jenna play with her friend Bennett on 3 different days. It was fun for us to get to watch Jenna play with a friend while having fun in the sun!

All in all it was another great trip and we are already ready to go BACK TO THE BEACH!!!!