At the beginning of June, we took a last-minute, “mini vacation” down to Swansboro, North Carolina to visit our sister Kelsey. This was Max’s first trip to the ocean so we were all excited to see his reaction on the beach. We drove in two separate cars because our Uncle Tom also was going down to N.C. for a vacation. Grace and I were not with Max when he first walked along the ocean, he walked along the beach with our mom and Therese. Therese told us later that Max slowly inched his way into the water when the waves were fairly mild, but then a stronger wave came along and wiped Max out. When he got up, he said to Therese “Oh my goodness, this tastes bad!” Just imagining his face when this happened makes me laugh!
One day we went to the Aquarium on Emerald Isle; we got there just in time to watch the end of a “Live Dive” where three scuba divers were in one of the tanks talking to the guests of the aquarium. Max was so fascinated—especially with the sharks that would swim by! At the end of the show, the divers came up the glass to give “glass high-fives” to all the kids.
After I snapped the picture the diver looked at me, pointed at Max’s Ohio State Buckeyes shirt and gave Max thumbs up. When I told Max that the diver likes The Ohio State Buckeyes, Max was thrilled and shouted “Cool Dude!”
Max also had the opportunity to pet stingrays at the aquarium…but had to get his whole arm into the water in order to reach them. Afterwards, he visited the alligator exhibits and he had fun posing with a stuffed alligator.
Max also got to see penguins and we took another cute photo of him outside the exhibit… I give you… Maximus the boy penguin!
The next day, we laid out and swam in the ocean and at the pool adjoining our hotel. Max went into the ocean with us, but started to get scared of the waves as we walked in a little deeper. Grace was trying to teach him to jump with the waves so they wouldn’t knock him over. Instead of jumping up, he jumped onto Grace! Which worked too, because then Grace and I switched back and forth with holding Max and jumping with the waves. He soon got bored with that and then wanted us to bury him in the sand… so we made him a mermaid. Not the best sand mermaid ever made, but it was quite difficult because Max was constantly laughing and trying to see what he looked like buried. Every time he laughed, the whole torso of the mermaid shook!
There are two funny stories I would like to share with you that happened as we were packing up and on our drive home from North Carolina. The first one involves my razor. As I was packing up my suitcase I noticed that someone had been using my razor when I left it out in the shower the previous night, immediately I accused Therese (it’s usually the little sister right?) and she denied it. Nothing more was said until we started driving home and Max was being goofy and put his leg up on my lap. I noticed that he had a few hairs on some parts of his legs…but that most of his legs were silky smooth… and hairless…
Mary: “Max, did you use my razor to shave your legs?”
Max: (giggling with guilt) “What? No…”
Mary: “Max… why are your legs smooth then? What happened to your leg hair?”
Max: (between laughs) “I don’t know!!”
Mary: “Max! You definitely used my razor to shave your legs!”
Max: “Oh come on, I was joking!”
Needless to say, Max shaved his legs, surprisingly fairly well since there were no nicks from slicing up his legs. We then continued to tease him about shaving his legs by calling him our little sister and referring to him as “Maxine.”
The last story involves a toll booth in West Virginia, Uncle Tom, Therese and Max. During this leg of our journey home, Therese, Max and I were in Uncle Tom’s car. Our uncles have always enjoyed tormenting their nieces and nephews by teasing them… it doesn’t happen as much with the older kids now, because we know how to tease back. But Therese and Max are still picked on at family functions. As we were driving through a toll booth, Uncle Tom paid the toll to the booth worker. As we drove away, Uncle Tom asked Therese if she got a good look at the woman working the toll booth, because that would be her future one day. Therese immediately began defending herself as Max butted into the conversation saying “Hey! Uncle Tom! See that girl back there? That was your girlfriend!” I died laughing and even Uncle Tom admitted that Max made a good joke!
Overall, I think Max enjoyed his mini vacation to North Carolina!
~ Mary
Loving Max 