Leslie Blogs

March! What with moving twice in the first two months of the year, March came pretty quickly! According to my photos from March, a few too many trips to Burney’s Bakery for their incredible croissants were made this month!

Echo became the guardian of the stairs for a while….until he fell down them, then he was too afraid to lay that close!

Of course, he still got plenty of beach time! Off-leash season only lasts through mid-March, so we took advantage of every day that we could!  One of the most exciting things to happen in March was that my grandparents came to visit! Echo was pretty happy to see Papaw!

And so was Marley!

Also in March, we started one of my favorite island traditions. Turtle Island, one of the local restaurants, does a Steam Night every Wednesday. They have great prices on oysters, clams, crab legs, and wings! We’ve started going every week…and of course, doing during oyster season is my favorite!

Of course….we still made it to Kai-Joe’s at least once a week. You just can’t beat their shrimp tacos with pineapple salsa.

My dad and I decided to take a Boating Skills and Seamanship course offered by the USCG Auxillary. We started in March and finished with our certificates in April!

Of course, just because off leash season was over after the first couple of weeks didn’t mean that the dogs didn’t get beach trips anymore.

Right before oyster season ended, we decided to try our hand at steaming and roasting oysters at home. They were so good and so easy!

The end of March brought my Mom’s birthday. We celebrated at Joseph’s Bistro and it was delicious!

January flew by, and before we knew it, February was here! Knowing that getting to the beach wouldn’t be quite as simple as walking across the beach, we made sure to take advantage of the easy access to give the dogs a chance play.

By the second week in February, it was time to load up our cars and say goodbye to the rental house.

On a rainy, stormy (no joke….there were tornado warnings!) Valentine’s day, the movers showed up and we got to officially move into the new house!

By the time the movers left, this is what my bedroom looked like. Not too bad for a few hours of work!

Echo got a new bed to go in the new house, and it didn’t take long at all for him to feel right at home!

The weekend after move-in day, I ran the Oak Island 5k. The best part about this race? I could WALK to the start and home from the finish!

The second best part of the race? I walked right past Kai-Joe’s, the best taco stand ever, on my way home…so it only made sense to stop and get a breakfast burrito!

Speaking of tacos, Kai-Joe’s being in walking distance from the house means that we are frequent customers. Seriously…if you ever visit Oak Island, you HAVE to visit them! One weekend in February was even warm enough that my mom and I grabbed tacos on the way to the beach. Sitting outside and eating tacos on the beach in February? No complaints!

And of course….no matter the month, the sunsets never disappoint!

 

January was a pretty exciting month. It was the month that my parents and I moved to the beach! Notice I didn’t say that we moved into our new house…because it wasn’t quite finished. But thanks to the very quick sale of both of our houses, we had to move before the new house was finished. So, in January we moved into a rental in Caswell Beach. It was right on the Intracoastal, across from the beach, and beside the Oak Island Lighthouse and Coast Guard Station. Thanks to the perfect location, the dogs got to start every single morning with a long walk on the beach….and ended a lot of afternoons the same way.

Lucky for the dogs, they could be off leash in the offseason, so even though our rental didn’t have a fenced in yard, between walks and running on the beach they got plenty of exercise. 

During the month we lived on Caswell Beach, we were able to check in on our house pretty much every day. It was so hard to know everything was almost finished and not be able to move in!

 

 

 

I’ve always loved the beach, but during January I fell even more in love with solitary, chilly walks on our deserted beach. Knowing that the spring and summer would bring lots of people made me appreciate the quiet even more.

I’ll end with some of my favorite photos from January.