For my birthday, we went to dinner at the Mexican restaurant with some friends. It was a pretty low key birthday. When I got to work in the morning I was quite surprised to find my “parking spot” was decorated for me. My sweet friend Chelsea decorated it the night before.

Thursday Scott and I took a stroll around town. We went to the Haven for some gelato and a beer tasting. They have a cute little sitting area out front where we enjoyed our gelato and beer. Afterwards, we rode to the marsh walk to enjoy the sunset.

On Saturday we enjoyed our first beach day of the year. We finally had a sunny weekend. Lately they have all been rainy. We went out on Caswell Beach. It was nice and uncrowded.

On Sunday, I went Kayaking with my friend Liz and her family. We loaded up the kayaks and hopped on the ferry so that we could kayak out of Carolina Beach. We got to see a pod of dolphins playing while on the ride over. We kayaked on the Cape Fear over to Shark Tooth Island and a couple of other islands. I did find quite a few sharks teeth on our explorations of the islands. It was a very enjoyable paddling trip until the very end. On the way back, we were fighting the incoming tide and the wind which picked up quite a bit causing the river to become very choppy. If we stopped paddling, our kayaks would go backwards. The kids were over it pretty quickly. Kris said she thought she was going to die in the river and Bryson said it was the hardest thing he has ever done in his life. Alas, we made it back. We loaded the kayaks back in the truck, got back on the ferry, and made our way back home. I doubt I will be able to get them to go kayaking with me again.

While waiting for the ferry back home, I asked everyone to let me take a picture of them making a face of how they felt about the trip.