Fort Fisher and the beach

Today, we headed out to the mall to find the girls some pj's for Christmas Eve.  We went to several stores where the prices for pj's on sale went from $40 to $25.  I couldn't spend that much so we kept looking and finally found the store, Belk.  Found some super cute pj's that both girls liked for $12.  Pj's - check.

We went out to lunch at Flaming Amy's Bowl.  It was fun.  The kids got to fill a bowl of the veggies they wanted stir fried.  They picked lots of veggies with no help from me, added some tofu and had it stir fried with rice for Cairn and noodles for Andrew and Skylar.  They ate it up quickly and with no prodding from me.  They were hungry and they liked it.

Next we headed down the road to Kure Beach to get to Fort Fisher Historical Site.  We were the only ones there.  

We learned all about the battle.

The first battle for the fort was December 25th, 1864.  The Confederates were able to keep their control of the fort.

Then a second battle was waged on January 26th, 1865.  

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 Col. Lamb was the second colonel in charge of the fort.  He brought his wife and 2 of his 3 children from Maine.  His fourth child died here when she was about a year old.

 His wife was Daisy Lamb.  She wrote a lot of letters back home telling her family about her daily life, and where they lived.  She had a lot of detail which has helped tell the history of the fort.

 These were the uniforms from the Civil War.

 After the Civil War ended, the fort was abandoned until World War II when it was used for training.

 After we saw the history of the fort we went outside to see what was left.   We were able to climb to the top of Shepard's Battery.  The view from up there were a bunch of trees, so when we went back inside I asked if the trees had always been there.

 They had not.  There was a clear view of the ocean.

At the bottom of the battery was this cannon.

 After we finished up at the fort, we drove to the end of the island.  There wasn't any sand so we drove back to find a good beach spot to hang out.

 

 

 We played at the beach for about 90 minutes before the sun started going down and they started getting cold.  They weren't too wet, just sandy.

We headed back to pick up Uncle Mait who was finishing up a tennis lesson.  Andrew fell asleep in the car on the ride back.  I was surprised that Skylar didn't because she woke up at 6 AM and didn't fall asleep until after 11 PM the night before.  My 12 hour sleeper had only about 7 hours.

Uncle Mait and Jenny took the kids out for yogurt while I stayed home.  Ginger rolled over onto her back and I was able to get a picture of her wound.  Her leg is still swollen but the antibiotics appear to be working.  It is a large hole though.

Tomorrow will be in the 70's so we are heading out to the Arboretum and the beach again.  We only have 5 more days so the kids want to spend a lot of time at the beach.