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!

Our Home Sweet North Carolina Home

{ July 23, 2012 } - Trish

The boxes have arrived and the house is a great big mess but I thought I’d take a moment to share some of the beauty we have going on outside our home. I’ll work on sharing some of the inside photos in an upcoming post if I can get things together enough to make that happen. I can’t make any promises on when that might be though. Stay tuned for how we change things up and make it our own!

Our Home Sweet North Carolina Home

[Show as slideshow]

You can click on the photos to see them full size and click-through the gallery. The kids and I are loving that we’re surrounded by nature (except for the occasional bug that finds its way into our home) and that we get to hear owls, toads, and crickets pretty regularly. I’m looking forward to sharing some photos of our little gardens at a later date. I hope you’ll swing by and peek in.

Big thanks to realtors:
Gail & Kenn Knapp

Knapp Properties

I can’t wait to hear what you think! Drop a comment below with your thoughts.

Outdoor Living in Coastal North Carolina

{ July 20, 2012 } - Trish

Hello, North Carolina! It’s been a whirlwind since arriving, but we are loving the weather here on the east coast of North Carolina, better known as the Crystal Coast. It’s somewhat similar to where we were in Florida, especially in the Summer with all the heat and humidity. The difference is, we’ll get four wonderful moderate seasons, and (fingers crossed) maybe even a little snow. We’re hopeful!

The beach is a quick five minutes away from us and so is the national forest. The best of both worlds. Does it get any better than that? I don’t think so. This is exactly the change I wanted for the kids. Though I loved growing up in Florida, the area we were in became incredibly urban and not the best environment for raising a family. This is a welcome change!

Embracing Outdoor Living in Coastal North Carolina

We’re ready to embrace outdoor living in coastal North Carolina. Shortly after we moved here, we celebrated Bella’s 7th birthday and Independence Day. I thought it would be a great time to treat them to new bicycles so we could take in our new surroundings and being to enjoy our new home state and neighborhood.

Here’s what the kids selected. Red for Rex and Pink and White for Bella. I think they’ll enjoy them for years to come. They’ve already had fun outfitting them with some extras like bells and safety lights.

Local Bike Shop

If you’re looking for a reputable local bike shop, I highly recommend Hwy 58 Bikes, in Emerald Isle, which is where we purchased ours. They’ve been in business for over 17 years and the owner is one of the nicest and most helpful folks around. He even followed me home in his truck to help deliver our bikes to us.

Do you go biking with your family? Let me know some of your favorite outdoor activities.

Hello North Carolina! Farewell Twitter

{ July 18, 2012 } - Trish

Hello North Carolina! It’s taken me a little longer than expected to post an update but we made it safe and sound to North Carolina and we’re settling in. The trip was interesting, to say the least (with two dogs, two rabbits, two kids, and a small parrot) and seemed to take forever with all the potty breaks. The next time we make a long road trip I swear I’m putting everyone in diapers.

Our Traveling Zoo

We traveled with our own zoo. Twitter, our sweet Crimson-Bellied Conure, rode shotgun with me the whole trip. She was a trooper. The kids sat in the back (I have a Lincoln MKX) and the bunnies (Bella and Beau) were in the cargo area so everyone could have enough room. The dogs (Sammy and Sebastian) rode with Mr. Right. It really feel like a traveling zoo when it came time to unload and bring everyone into the hotel room, but we did it! Our trip was successful.

Twitter in her travel cage

Sammy and Sebastian share a crate in the hotel room for the night

and Bella and Beau share a crate as well

Hello North Carolina!

We had one goal – besides making it to NC. The goal was to get to NC and get in the house before Bella’s birthday and the 4th of July weekend. That’s all she wanted. – to be able to celebrate her birthday in her new house, and come hell or high water I was going to make it happen.

We left late Saturday (that’s a whole other blog post) and made is just in the nick of time – arriving Monday night/Tuesday morning at 2 AM. Mission accomplished! The kids were tuckered out but we made it.

Big Birthday Surprises

We lucked out and realized we had a game room type place locally called MacDaddy’s so we surprised Bella and took her there for a great big birthday celebration. The kids had a ball playing games in the arcade and riding the go-karts. It was a nice way to ease them into life in North Carolina. After that, there was no way they were thinking about moving back to Florida.

Making our House Feel like a Home

We wasted no time breaking in the kitchen either. We had a big 4th of July celebration and birthday party with my cousins, who live on the beach, and my three aunts, who also live in the area. After our big Independence Day cookout, the kids were introduced to a homemade slip-n-slide. We took a tarp, laid it out on the group, squirted dish soap on it, and turned on the hose. At first, the kids had no idea what to fo but they got the hang of it. I think they enjoyed playing in the hose and just sitting on the tarp more, though.

Meal Prep begins!

Can you tell we were having a cookout?

It’s a humble little table but we had a great time

Homemade slip-n-slide

Settling into NC

The whole experience here has been great. I haven’t had much of a chance to get out and meet the neighbors just yet, but all in good time. I’m still exploring the city and learning where everything is located. We’re in a great location, close to the grocery store, and a drug store, the hospital, and a few restaurants. In fact, we had breakfast this past weekend at Yana Mama’s located in beautiful, historic Swansboro. It’s so lovely!

Farewell, Twitter

Sadly, we lost our beautiful baby, Twitter. We’re not sure what happened. She was thriving here in NC and loving the new views she had out to the glorious green trees. She was also enjoying all of the extra love and attention she was getting from my cousins. It came as such a surprise last Friday when her right eye swelled up late in the afternoon. I thought she may have scratched her eye since she was scratching her head quite a bit and figured I would take her to the vet first thing Saturday morning – but she didn’t make it through the night. It was such a shock. We were very attached to her and Rex was devastated. Honestly, it was a first for all of us, having never lost a pet so unexpectedly. We’ve purchased a little shovel and I suspect there will be a little funeral in the very near future.

So, that’s life in North Carolina so far. Hope you’ll stay tuned for whatever comes next!