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.

Here is my fam, recovering from their trip to drop off Michelle.

The sun is about to set on another gorgeous day at the beach!

Koopsen Spring Break (Part 4)

Hello Koopsenites!  (people related to Koopsens or at least interested in following their spring break activities).  Here's another photo dump for you.  As I write this, I'm sitting in the living room watching the ocean through the window and listening to Rex's mom and Aunt Beth discuss the best ways to not get Alzheimer's (so far they've come up with "sudoku" and "doing puzzles").  The little girls are trying to lure a black cat onto the deck.  The black cat is resisting (probably a smart move, kitty).  These pictures are from last night when we went to walk the pier to crash the guys' fishing party and also a little bit from today.  Enjoy!

Uncle Rex let Dorothy reel in the fish.  Hooray for Dorothy!

Fun times fishing on the pier.

Cheesy touristy board on the pier, but we obviously took advantage of that.

 Beautiful sunset!  Can we stay here forever?!

After watching the fishermen, Uncle Ade bought everyone ice cream.  This made him my favorite uncle of the day.

The next morning (this morning), the Rexes and Uncle James went fishing super early (5:00 AM!).  Here's Uncle James catching one of his many fish.  (Okay, two fish total...but who's counting?)

 Clare and Carly are chilling in the motor home on our way to Riverview Cafe for lunch.  It was a seafood place, and it was delicious.

 Here's the cat that has decided to slink around our deck a lot.  Probably because we keep throwing it peanuts and ham.  I've named it Shadow.

I hope you're having a good week!  I know we are!  Gotta go...Aunt Carol is working on the puzzle again, and I don't want to get Alzheimer's disease.

STOP THE PRESSES! (Koopsen Spring Break Part 3)

Aunt Sarah just told me that she sent the link to this blog to all of the cousins who aren't currently with us at the beach house.  I had no idea that anyone was reading this besides my two usual followers (Hi Sarah!  Hi Elle!).  So I am SO SORRY that I have been talking mostly about myself and what I've been doing...I feel so narcissistic.  I figured since family members wouldn't be reading this, it would be kind of random to say, "Oh, and here is Uncle James doing Uncle James things..."  But now that I know other people are reading this who actually know everyone at this beach house (Hi Cousins!), I will be much more broadly informative.  MY BAD.

So - here are some pictures to update you on how this day is going.  Again, we wish you were all here.

Here is Michelle sunbathing with a platter of fresh strawberries that Aunt Sue brought out.  Life is rough at the beach.

 Here is Uncle Ade (he's been at this post a lot over the past two days).  Hannah and Clare are soaking up the sun too.

 Here's a quick (and crooked) shot I snapped of the beach.  The weather is PERFECT today.  Sunny and 70.

This is the most crowded the beach has been all week.  There have seriously been almost NO people here.  I don't think it's spring break in North Carolina, which is fine with me.  More beach for us!

 Here's the view of our house from the stairs going to the beach.

Here's the puzzle.  Rex and Michelle did some serious damage to this last night.

Carly and Dorothy just got back from shopping.  Here are the matching shirts they got.  Dorothy also got some gifts for Dani's kids, but I can't post them here in case Dani reads this blog (Hi Dani?).

Also, it's worth mentioning that we had a great time watching dolphins this morning.  Here's a picture I took of one of the dolphins: 

Haha!  Okay clearly I didn't actually take that picture...  but we did see dolphins!  Sometimes we just saw their fins, but we saw a few jump all the way out of the water!  It was like we had really far away seats at a Sea World show.  It was awesome.

Stay tuned for more Koopsen news. I'm sure there will be more adventures and shenanigans to report.

Koopsen Spring Break (Continued)

What have you been doing for the past few days?  I bet it's not as fun as this:

We've been having a great time on our spring break vacation in North Carolina.  I'm not sure what you're doing this week.  Maybe you're at work.  Maybe you're checking blogs because you're bored and don't have anything better to do.  Maybe you wish you were at the beach too.  No matter what your reason, I'm cordially inviting you to join our vacation.  Here are some pictures so you can feel like you're here too:

First of all, here's the website of where we're staying.  Now you can pretend that you're staying in our house!  The pictures absolutely do NOT do it justice: http://www.wardrealty.com/vacation/all/detailpage/133/oceanic

Now I'll introduce you to a few characters.  Meet Aunt Sarah: she's fun, she's zany, she's a little bit nuts (everything a good aunt should be).  She got a hair-dye-in-a-box on clearance for $3.00 and asked me to highlight her hair.  Eeeeek!  I was having flashbacks to the time I did this to my friend Julia in high school, and her hair turned out purple.  I didn't tell that story to Aunt Sarah.

Here is Aunt Sarah in her before picture.  I'm a little nervous about this:

She's checking out her glamorous self:

While Aunt Sarah and I were busy getting her beauty on, Aunt Carol, Michelle, Dorothy and Carly were busy cutting up old T-shirts to make some Pinterest creation.  I'm still not sure what it is... I will be sure to post a picture when they're finished.

Here we go, Aunt Sarah...

She has way too much faith in me.

See?  Look at that manic look on my face.  I am clearly up to no good.

Well, it didn't turn out purple...it actually turned out basically her same color.  She seemed happy with it, though, and I was just relieved that it didn't turn out crazy.

Here we are on Easter Sunday!  Meet Dorothy and Carly.  They're eleven (and twelve!  Dorothy wanted me to make sure to tell you she's actually twelve), and they're fabulous.  I told Rex that while on spring break I didn't want to see a single junior high kid (my ones at school can drive me a bit batty).  I forgot about how awesome these ones are.  I've known them since they were three.

Dorothy and I were beautifying together.

After church, we had a great day of playing on the beach, going for long walks to pick up shells, and doing general beach things.  I didn't get pictures of that because I was nervous of getting sand in my ipad.  Here we are after dinner, Snapchatting all of each other's friends.

Then we did facials, which you saw at the beginning of this post.

Rex brought his phone on a walk, and he got this awesome picture of a little pufferfish!  It was stuck on the sand after the tide went out, but Rex picked it up and put it back in the water.  What a hero.

Anyway, we are having a GREAT time.  I will take some more pictures today and upload them later so that you can continue to enjoy your vicarious beach vacation!  Wish you were here!

Koopsen Spring Break

Over the next few days, you are going to enjoy a BEHIND THE SCENES look at how the Koopsen family works.  I'm currently staying in a beach house with thirteen of the world's finest human beings - my family.  Okay, I admit, they're technically Rex's family, but I married him so therefore they're legally mine too.  Today is day two of our trip.  Yesterday we spent thirteen hours in the car getting to Aunt Carol's house in Cary, NC, and today we drove another three hours to Topsail Island and our wonderful beach house.  Here is our view from the back door:

Does life get any better than this!?  There are six bedrooms here too, so Rex and I get our own bedroom and bathroom.  WHOA!  What luxury!

So far, the trip has been very fun.

Well, mostly fun.  98% fun.  The other 2% is the FIFTEEN HOURS over the past two days that I have listened to Rex and his dad's crazy bluegrass and classic country music.  I call it caterwauling.  How many times can a guy lose his truck?  How many times can he sing praises of his dog?  How many times do I have to listen to the timeless truth that "you can't rollerskate in a buffalo herd"?  (Yes, that is an actual line from one of the songs).  It was driving me a bit insane by the end.

This morning I got to go for an awesome run in the park behind Aunt Carol's house.  It has beautiful scenery and a pristine lake.  Also, the weather was warm because we're in the South now.  That park is literally my favorite place in the country to run.  It was a great treat.

On the way to the beach house we stopped at an Orvis Outdoor Center for Rex and his dad.  I had a sneaking suspicion that the music playing in there might talk about more trucks and dogs and banjos, so I opted out and went to a Charming Charlies - my favorite accessories store (and we don't have it in Michigan!).  I tried on this crystal mask and wished I had a reason to buy it.  If you can think of a justification, please do leave it in the comments.  :-)

Once we got to the beach house, Aunt Sue and Uncle Ade started cooking dinner (it is their family's night - each family is taking a night to cook - can you believe how functional this family is?!).  They made the most amazing chicken tacos I've ever had.  While they were cooking, my cousin Clare did my hair.  With no bobby pins and no hair ties, THIS is what she came up with:

Isn't she talented?!  I can hardly believe she did that.  I told her she should charge people to do their hair for prom.

Now we're sitting in the living room watch MSU play for a spot in the NCAA championship game.  The score is 41-58 with Duke winning, so my hope in a championship is quickly fading.

I can't get too sad, though, because it's spring break and this trip is awesome!