Coastal Living Archives - Life in the DayngrZone

Morehead City Christmas Flotilla

{ December 2, 2012 } - Trish

Yesterday, I shared that we decorated gingerbread houses and had a wonderful time. It was a great way to start the month of December and a great way to get into the holiday spirit. Shortly after our gingerbread decorating adventure, we strolled over to the waterfront to watch the Morehead City Christmas Flotilla. It was the perfect weather, chilly but not too cold – just cool enough to make you feel like the holidays are coming! We all had a great time and look forward to adding this to our annual holiday traditions.

Here are a few photos from our evening at the Morehead City Christmas Flotilla –

Life along North Carolina’s Crystal Coast is already proving to be magnificent.

There were so many great boats decorated in such festive ways. I wish I could have captured them all. Maybe next year. Hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as we did.

Be sure to check out our cute gingerbread houses and if you’d like to follow along with all our adventures in our new home town, you can follow along by checking out my blog posts on the Crystal Coast.

Decorating Gingerbread Houses for the Holidays

{ December 1, 2012 } - Trish

Today was another day for the books! The kids have been saying that they miss Florida but when I ask them what they miss, they always share memories – not places.

I explained that the memories you make travel with you wherever you go. Then I reminded them that we’re making plenty of new memories here in North Carolina, too. But, that they will still have all of their old memories of Florida.

Decorating Gingerbread Houses for the Holidays

We certainly haven’t been bored! Since moving to the Crystal Coast, I’ve made sure to look for fun events we can do together as a family to really get the kids engaged and help them fall in love with their new hometown while making new memories. Our latest adventure, decorating gingerbread houses.

Gingerbread House, make a Gingerbread house, morehead city event making gingerbread houses

We drove over to Alex and Brett’s Bakery, in downtown Morehead City, to decorate Gingerbread houses.

Decorating Gingerbread Houses, Gingerbread House, Gingerbread House decorating in Morehead City

My sweet friend, Daisy, came along for the fun, too. I’m happy to say that she made some great memories right along with us since it was her very first time decorating a gingerbread house.

The staff at Alex and Brett’s were so sweet. They made sure the kids had a wide variety of candy available to them and kept replenishing it whenever they ran low. Most of the candy made it on to the houses but some made it directly into their mouths. Kids will be kids.

We all had a great time and made some precious memories together. I think we did a pretty good job on those gingerbread houses, don’t you?

On To The Next Adventure

After we decorated to our heart’s desire, we walked over to the waterfront and Sanitary Fish Market and Restaurant to watch the Christmas flotilla! Here are the flotilla photos.

If you’d like to follow along with all our adventures in our new home town, you can follow along by checking out my blog posts on the Crystal Coast.

My Memorial Weekend Crystal Coast Trip

{ July 29, 2012 } - Trish

I had this crazy idea in my head to just pick up and move. That’s right, to quit complaining about the sucky school system, the snotty school administrators, the teachers who thought they could bully, the crappy traffic, the lack of parking everywhere, the crime, the litter and the overall attitude you get from the majority of people in Miami and actually DO something about it.

Yup, I was sick and tired and I’d had enough. So, Memorial weekend I packed up the kids and took a spontaneous trip to the lovely east coast of North Carolina to check it out. I’d been thinking about getting away from what Miami had become for a while and knew I wanted to move somewhere that had four moderate seasons, plenty of green spaces, a more wholesome environment and was family-friendly. I’d been looking at real estate in a few states and figured the long holiday weekend was as good a time as any to check out some of the homes I’d liked, along the Crystal Coast.

North Carolina Coastal Living

Once we arrived, the kids got a taste of coastal living. My cousins live right on the beach in Emerald Isle. What a treat!

The kids loved waking up in the morning and having the beach right in their backyard. In fact, they loved it so much that they went to the beach more times in that one weekend than they had ever been, in the entire time we’d lived in South Florida. (You know what I mean if you’ve ever tried to find parking in South Beach close to the actual beach – or in Ft. Lauderdale) Plus, they loved getting to see their aunts and cousins. It was looking like moving to North Carolina wasn’t going to be a hard sell.

Doing it Dayngr Style

In true Dayngr-style, that weekend I found a house we all loved, made an offer and planned the big move as soon as the kids got out of school on June 7th. Miraculously, we closed on our house June 26th (less a month after seeing it) and packed up our sweet, small, South Florida bungalow and it the road. We had one goal. Make sure we were in our new house in time to celebrate Bella’s birthday, before the 4th of July.

Making Our Deadline

The good news was, we made our deadline and we did it just in time to celebrate Lola’s birthday and have an Independence Day celebration. The big party was a great way to kick-off our new life in our new home and it was a great excuse to spend some quality time with my family. The only bad news was that not everything went as planned with the big move and my orchid died on the way. Other than that, everything went smoothly.

A little crazy, but life is short, right? Go for what you want!