thanksgiving in the outer banks

this thanksgiving, we were thankful for:

a beach to visit and relax on. i'm not as much of a beach person as many people assume, being a native southern californian, but these beaches were EXACTLY what i needed.

amazing weather, for the most part (see the second picture below--the oncoming rainstorm on wednesday night!).

this guy:

a few other sightseeing things to visit, like the famous OBX lighthouses and the place of the wright brothers' first flight.

and last and certainly not least, great friends (and strangers) who took us in and fed us a fantastic thanksgiving feast. brad was the bomb and invited us to eat with his friends who were ALSO staying in the outer banks--it was perfect. and amazing. and so much fun.

i don't want to be too effusive in case it hurts our families' feelings, because we weren't there spending time with them, but this was an absolutely PERFECT thanksgiving. it would have been just even MORE perfect if they had been here with us, of course--but these three days in the outer banks gave me the last push i need to finish off this semester.

the outer banks have once again been placed in my mind as one of the most perfect places in the world. (we're now scheming to see if there's a way we can get the leiningers to do a family reunion out here in a few summers when the sevys come back from denmark. we can dream!)