Our great friends, the Swett's -- Chris, Aspen, and their little guy, Cypress -- have been stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina for three years. Chris was set to deploy mid October for his second tour of duty in the Middle East and as soon as he left, Aspen and Cypress planned to head back to Missouri to live with her mom while Chris is gone. I knew that the next opportunity we would have to see the three of them together would be at least a year down the road, probably longer. So I started coordinating with Aspen to see if we could meet somewhere in the "middle" for a night. It turns out that another one of Aspen's friends, Meredith, lives in Virginia Beach, VA with her husband...about a 4 hour drive for us and a 4 hour drive for them. Sounded great to us!
We headed down on Saturday, October 10th and arrived in Virginia Beach just in time to meet our group for lunch. To say it was wonderful to see them and to catch up would probably be the under-statement of the century. They are such amazing friends. After lunch, we headed over to Meredith and Jay's apartment so that Cypress could take a nap. It didn't take long for the 6 "adults" to break out the board games. A couple of games of Apples to Apples led us into a few very heated rounds of Cranium...a game that neither Andrew nor I had ever played but quickly decided we HAD to buy. It was a blast.
We ordered carry out for dinner, stayed at Meredith and Jay's until about 10:00 and we all decided to call it a night. It was a great day. We drove to our hotel about 10 miles from their place and we all crashed. We woke up the next morning to sounds of kids playing and splashing in the pool.
Our hotel was located across the street from the ocean...so no straight on oceanview...but all we had to do was lean a bit off our balcony and look to the left and there it was. We were very anxious to get down and walk on the beach and take some pictures but first we were booked to have breakfast with the Swett's. All of us had planned on walking on the beach and on the pretty boardwalk that lined the water...we were supposed to spend most of that Sunday together with them as well. Unfortunately, the ARMY had other plans for the Chris and they ended up having to take off right after breakfast to head back to Fort Bragg. We were so sad they have to rush off like that but so thankful that we had gone down on Saturday as early as we had.
Seeing as this was our first East coast ocean trip, Andrew and I decided it was absolutely still necessary that we go down into the sand. Hooded sweatshirts and jackets in hand, we crossed the street and there it was. The Atlantic Ocean. Amazing. The beach wasn't crowded as "beach season" was definitely already over....but we both maintained that we would have donned parkas if we had to...we were going to THE BEACH! We also decided that this was a place we will definitely re-visit during the summer months. It is a very cute little beach town. Lots of surf shops, restaurants, the aforementioned boardwalk that appears to go on for miles and miles, a couple of long piers to fish off of, plenty of sand, ocean breeze...the works. Pretty much everything a couple of kids from Kansas City need.
At that point we decided we better hit the road to head back into "our neck of the woods". So we got in the car and we were back to our place by 3:00 that afternoon. It was a great weekend. A great adventure. And one that we were so thrilled to be able to spend with such great friends.
YAY! We're at the ocean!!
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