Enter Sandman

We were treated to pretty wonderful weather while we were in the Outer Banks.
But, on the top of "hot sand mountain" as Michael described it, the smiles were tough to find.

In the beginning, everything was fine. The summer heat was on, though the humidity wasn't too bad. We posed for pictures on top of one of the big dunes. We were paying a visit to Jockey's Ridge, the largest natural sand dune on the East Coast.

You might wonder why you would head to such a spot in the scorching summer heat, but, it certainly has made a name for itself. And we weren't alone.



Lots of people joined us as we made our way up what felt like miles and miles of sand.



Thank goodness I brought the Babyhawk. The stroller wouldn't have worked well in these conditions. I got a workout that day, with a wiggly Joshua on my back!



Of course, what goes up, must come down. While I took the baby back down the way I came, slowly making my way down the piles of sand, the boys decided to take another route.

Doug, Ezekiel, Elijah, and Jason ran down what looked like a wall of sand to get to the bottom, the place that would eventually get us back to our car and much-needed air conditioning.

As boys will do, they had to make a race of it. I watched nervously as Jason ran down the extremely steep hill to catch up with his older cousins. He made it to the bottom, no problem.

So I walked back the long way.

During our walk, Jason and the boys decided to try the race again. They climbed back up the steep mountain and ran back down, but this time, Jason just bit it.

He was trying to move too fast, to catch up with his cousins, and his little legs couldn't keep up. As he was hurtling down the mountain, the sand won. He toppled, got a face full of sand, and Doug said, once he stood up (thankfully he was fine physically), his entire face was covered. Only his eyes could be seen. And he was angry.



Look at him. This was a picture I snapped right after he and Doug caught up with us. Still so much sand coated his little face. We couldn't help but smile when we saw his emotions right there for all to see. He was angry until well after we left the park. Some chewing gum and a Tropical Smoothie made it better, though.