The Biggest Wave Ever

So the story begins on Friday morning ... since it was our last full day on vacation, we decided to take the kiddos to the beach one more time even though it wasn't the perfect beach day. It was cool and windy and the waves were big and rough. But, days like that are perfect for sand castle making ... so off we went. Jared and Meg ended up leaving Lily (who is 10 months old) at the house to nap since not everyone was heading to the beach (which turned out to be a very good decision!) ... so it was Brian, me, Jared and Meg with the 5 oldest kiddos.
As you can see ... what started as a hole in the sand turned into a nice big sand castle ...


A few waves had come up to the castle, but nothing that overtook it ... just yet! We had at one point moved our chairs, beach bags, etc. back a bit as some of the waves were gettinga little close for comfort.
So ... there we were ... Brian, Meg and I sitting in our beach chairs (we were letting Jared do all the work of building with the kiddos!) and the kiddos were all nearby either playing in the sand or helping build the castle ... when all of the sudden the biggest wave ever (at least that we've ever seen while at the OBX!) overtook the entire beach where we were sitting. For anyone who has been to the Outer Banks, you know that the beach backs up to sandbanks and the steps to access the beach. We were probably about 15 ft. from the sandbank, but even if we had been all the way back, it wouldn't have mattered since the wave went up on the sandbank!
Here's where it gets pretty funny ...
As you can imagine, the wave knocked down most of the kiddos completely soaking all of them (which a few of them are particularly NOT very fond of) ... so within 5 seconds every single kiddo (except for Hailey) is crying/screaming. Meg and I were busy grabbing our beach bags, chairs, sand toys and whatever else was laying around. Jared was rescueing kiddos from the big hole (they weren't completely under water, but after getting soaked by the wave that came on top of them, they were not very happy) ... and then there's Brian ... he was running on the beach collecting flip-flops, sandals and crocs! As my brother Jared tells the story ... he didn't care that his son was being rolled around by the wave, he was too busy making sure our shoes didn't go out to sea (which we were all very thankful for!).
At this point, Sydney is on top of the sandbank (she ran for dry land as soon as possible!) crying and screaming "I don't like the wave" ... Ryle, Justin and Ben are completely soaked crying and Hailey was chatting about what a huge wave we just saw. Oh, and Brian was still collecting shoes while Jared, Meg and I are laughing hysterically at the sight anyone watching just witnessed.
Uncle Jared then began using his tactics to convince the kiddos how much fun it was to have that big wave come and take over the entire beach. For some reason, the kiddos didn't seem too convinced. So instead he convinced them to all stop crying so that we could go back to the house and get in the hot tub since they were all freezing cold.
So we gathered our things (amazingly enough, Brian rescued every single one of our shoes!) and Sydney (who kept climbing the sandbank every time we'd try and bring her down) and took our happy (ok, so they weren't quite happy yet!) kiddos back to the house to enjoy the hot tub where there are no big waves.
And that concludes the story of The Biggest Wave Ever.

... and in case you're wondering where all the pics are of everything that happened after the biggest wave ever took over the beach ... there are none. We were a bit too distracted to even think about taking pics after everything happened. We are kinda hoping that someone watching video taped the entire event though!