We rented a house on the beach in Nags Head with the Raleigh crew for the New Years Week. We stayed the full week along with John/JoAnna, Phil/Joyce and Kim/Jonathan. Will/Cindy and Johnny Mac joined us one day later and the Artins joined us for two nights with the girls at the end of the week.
Accommodation:
John rented a seven bedroom house right on the beach in Nags Head. We had nice views from the top floor with a large kitchen/dining/living room area. The middle floor had a game room with pool table, shuffle board and poker table. The bottom floor had a movie room but not enough chairs for us to use.
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| House we rented |
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| View from our house |
Activities:
Our days consisted of morning walks, playing games, watching movies and relaxing. Shawna had recommended that each person put in a hat two movies that they want everyone else to watch and each day we picked one or two to watch. We ended up watching the following movies: Love Actually, Princess Bride, Hoosiers, Green Mile, Grease, Barnyard, American President, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Bridgette Jones, Sixteen Candles, Jungle Cruise and Harold and Maude.
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| Watching movies |
We ended up staying in for New Year's Eve and had fun playing games, making it to midnight. Johnny Mac and Will decided to also do the polar plunge in the ocean after midnight. They had no other takers to join them but we did all watch as did the people in the house next to us!
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| New Year's Eve |
One day, the group participated in a game called Task Master where teams were given tasks to perform and were scored by the Task Master which was Jonathan. Keith/Kate and the girls had arrived already at this point so they also participated. Unfortunately, JoAnna and Shawna were both sick that day so they opted to sleep. Phoebe's team won.
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| Example of a task where you had to recreate a famous photo |
Upon returning to Raleigh, we spent one more night at John and JoAnna's before flying out. That evening, we went to see Anaconda, a reboot film with Jack Black and Paul Rudd - pretty funny!
Restaurants / Food:
Cooking:
We took turns cooking each day which for the most part created leftovers for lunch the following day. We had the following yummy food:
Joyce/Phil - They made Mediterranean - we started with a Mezzo platter of hummus, baba ganoush, pita and veggies. They then served roasted lamb and chicken and rice for dinner with honey cake for dessert.
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| Dinner |
Shawna/Keith - We went the cajun route - starting with cheese and crackers and then served jambalaya for dinner with bread pudding for dessert.
Kim/Jonathan - They went the Swiss route, making cheese fondue with bread, veggies and apples for dinner and chocolate fondue with strawberries, marshmallows, pound cake and rice crispy treats for dessert. This was our New Year's Eve dinner.
John/JoAnna - They went the Mexican route, making tortilla soup for lunch on New Year's Day.
Will/Cindy - They went the Italian route where we each made individual homemade pizzas. They got a variety of toppings so we could customize.
Keith/Kate - They also went Mexican and made shrimp tacos.
John/Jonny Mac - On our last night, they chose Asian and made egg roll in a bowl (which is essentially the stuffing of an egg roll without the roll itself) and dumplings.
Restaurants:
Mulligan's - On our drive in, we (Phil/Joyce, John/JoAnna) stopped here for a late lunch as we could not yet check-in to our house. We sat upstairs and shared a salad and chowder.
Slice - Our first night there, we ordered pizza to be delivered sharing four large pizzas. They were pretty good but crust was a bit too doughy.
Tortuga's Lie - We had lunch here on our second day, sitting outside since it was to be the warmest day. We shared a salad and fish tacos.
Bad Daddy's Burger Bar - Our last day in Raleigh, we had lunch here with John and JoAnna. We each got our own burger with fries and had a few starters. We were so full that we did not eat dinner that evening.
