haille: Story Time

For six years in a row my (blended) family and I all traveled down to North Carolina every summer. My blended family being, my mom, stepdad, 3 step siblings and 2 real brothers. at the end of July when my youngest brother had his birthday, this began the 2 month period when all of our ages lined up, my older step brother, Josh and I were the same age. My stepsister Megan and Brother mason were the same age, and the youngest two, cooper and my stepsister Emily would be the same age. we always thought that this was so neat and tried to pass it off as if we were 3 sets of twins. Now, back to vacation; we always stayed near Atlantic Beach, at the same hotel with my stepdads family, consisting of his parents, two sisters and their families. Traveling with such a large group can be very interesting, especially for my mom and stepdad trying to get 6 young kids through the airport, as we always traveled, on a tight schedule. My favorite part of going the North Carolina was the treasure hunt we would have. The first year was the best, my stepdad had spent a majority of the week picking up things when we went shopping (almost every night). So one day we were all by the pool and he told us to come down to the beach because some man had lost his wallet in the sand and there was a reward for whoever found it. My stepdad told us the general area, so we began digging and found a map buried in the sand, he had bought old looking paper and wrote clues on them that would lead us up to the dunes to find another clue to take us to the lobby, and the parking lot, and eventually back to the dunes where we dug for the treasure. He would get a medium sized treasure chest you could pick up at any of the surf shops, and fill it with all kinds of beaded necklaces and fun toy jewels, some candy and dollar coins, lots and lots of dollar coins. When we found it we would lay everything out on a towel and the two oldest cousins would divide it up evenly among everyone. We did this for 3 more years before we started getting older and the eldest 4 of us thought it was too childish to be running around the hotel and beach wearing bandanas on our heads holding maps and shovels. These are some of my greatest memories from our time there and will always stick with me.