The Webb Site: Koopsen Spring Break (Part 5)

Hello again from Topsail Island. It's been a busy day, so I'm just now sitting down to write. Our group that totaled sixteen people at its peak is now down to twelve - Uncle Bill, Aunt Beth, and Dorothy left last night, and Michelle flew out today. Our beach mansion feels a little empty without them, but we're still having fun!

Today the family all went on excursions. Unfortunately for you, I wasn't on all of them so you're only going to get pictures of the one I did attend. The Webb family (minus me) was in the car all day taking Michelle back to Raleigh, so you're probably not missing any cool pictures there. Aunt Sarah and Aunt Carol went thrift store shopping, so you might be missing out on some pictures of their finds. I heard it was mostly shoes, though. Just text them if you want pictures of their new shoes. Aunt Sue, Uncle Ade, the girl cousins and I all went to the aquarium, so I'm betting those are the best pictures of the day.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure what Uncle James did while we were all gone. Probably just surfed a lot. That's what he's been doing every day. He said that today he saw some fins swimming close to his board, and he was 90% sure that they were dolphin fins, but they could have been shark fins too so he hustled back inside. Eeeeek!

Wait, can we back up? Let's actually start with yesterday for a second. I forgot to post the picture of the stingray that Rex caught while fishing. Cool! He threw it back because no one here knows how to cook stingrays. Also - quick question - isn't that how the Crocodile Hunter DIED?!?! Rex is lucky to be alive.

Also, here is a random guy proposing on the beach last night. See how romantic and awesome it is here? People get ENGAGED! I wasn't actually there because I was on a fabulous vacation detour to South Carolina with Rex and his family, but I'm borrowing Aunt Sarah's picture to post here because I think it's way cool that these people got engaged right near our house.

Here's our last morning with Michelle here...we were all sad to see her go.

We went on an excursion to find doughnuts this morning, and we found an awesome coffee shop that makes doughnuts right in the store! Here they are cooking them. Aunt Sarah said it was the best doughnut she ever had in her life. Good thing we bought two dozen!

This morning on our morning walk (82 degrees and sunny today!), Aunt Carol spotted this little crab. Isn't it cute? The footprint he's camping out in is Aunt Carol's size 6 foot. He was a teeny little dude.

A little further into our walk, Rex found this seahorse. Cool! It was very dead, but still pretty awesome.

After a morning of playing on the beach, we all set out to our respective excursions. I was off to the aquarium with Team Koopsen/Dirksen! This is a picture of the three girls trying to get their hands bitten off by an angry alligator.

Okay fine, it wasn't real. It made a good picture, though.

These are newts. They floated along doing newt things.

This is a baby loggerhead sea turtle. I know you're saying "Awwwww!" in your head if you're not saying it out loud. We all said it out loud.

This is the aquarium lady at the touch pool, teaching us about horseshoe crabs. Fun fact: they are actually part of the arachnid family and are more closely related to spiders than crabs. We got to touch them, along with stingrays and sharks and sea anemones.

Here's a lionfish. They always look pretty fabulous.

Outside of the aquarium was a wilderness trail where we could hike and see wildlife. It was a lot of fun. Here are a bunch of turtles on a log. The medium sized black turtle five from the left jumped on while we were watching, and he almost turned over the whole log (which would have dumped off all of the turtles). They scurried around and rebalanced, but it was really funny.

Here are more turtles. A baby was on her mom's back, which I thought was pretty cute.

The cousins looking FINE on this giant frog.

This was A&G Barbeque, a roadside joint that we stopped at on our way back to the beach house. The food was absolutely DELICIOUS and homemade right there in the building.

Here we are at our picnic table, waiting for our food to be delivered.

On our way back, there was a flash thunderstorm that was pretty intense. The picture of us at the picnic table was taken about 10-15 minutes before this next one. The storm rolled in really fast and down poured. I took this picture while we were driving by a park. I think the eerie too-straight and veritably branchless trees would make a good setting for a scary story.