Dolphins!

Hi everyone,
We are still at the beach and we are having a wonderful time. Our house is right on the beach - well, behind the dunes - and we have about a 100 yard walk to the beach. The boys are loving boogie boarding. We have also driven go-carts, played putt-putt golf, rented a sea kayak for the week, gone on a four wheeler trip to see the wild horses of Corolla, and just relaxed. Jeff and I even caught a movie (Pineapple Express - very funny, but could be offensive to some). Overall, its been a great vacation. Lily is a little unsure of the beach - she will play in the sand a little bit and will get a little wet while being held. She will not, however, put her feet down in the water. The only sand she'll really explore is totally dry sand so she mostly plays in it when we go down to the beach in the evening. Our favorite times at the beach are early morning and evening. So far, I have taken almost 500 pictures. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the cord to connect my camera to the computer, so they will all have to wait until I get home. Tonight I even attempted a family photo shoot - some of the pictures look good on the camera, so hopefully they will also look good when I see them bigger.

You're probably wondering about the title of this post. Well, this morning Jeff, Lily, and I had an amazing experience. Around 9:30, we went out in the kayak. We were a little ways out when Jeff saw some dolphins in the distance. We paddled closer (or Jeff paddled - I was holding Lily so I couldn't paddle) and ended up about 1/4 mile away from the shore. As we approached the dolphins, we realized there were about one hundred dolphins spread out over a not so large area. At one point, we were within 25 yards of about 12 dolphins and one even swam towards us and was only about 15 feet away! They were jumping out of the water, flapping their tails, and doing Sea World worthy tricks! We just sat there and watched them in awe - dolphins are such beautiful, graceful animals and it was so peaceful at sea. It was so quiet that we could hear them "breathing out" as they came up for breaths. I've never seen anything like this before and can't even tell you what an amazing sight it was. Of course, we were in a kayak so I don't have any pictures except the ones that will always be in my mind.