Beach Trip!

So this trip was so much fun that if we didn't miss Devin, we probably would have permanently relocated to South Carolina :)

We are SO grateful to the Moss/Nichols clan for inviting us to come!! 

We headed out thursday night and drove all night. That is a hard drive (if you were asking yourself) but definitely worth it to have the kids sleep the whole way. We played friday at Patrick and Whitney's house, then packed up and headed to Charleston Saturday. The Nicols family had a  reception to attend so we headed over there for the evening. It was BEAUTIFUL! 

We stayed at a beautiful beach house that was seriously only 5 minutes from the beach. It was so nice to not have to worry about getting sand all over cars, and such. 

                                   

Our first trip to the beach was Sunday night, we said we weren't going to actually play in the water until Monday, buuuut, seriously. Who can resist??

These kiddos definitely couldn't! 

They were really excited :)

 The beach was cool and beautiful! We didn't get any overly hot days which was surprisingly refreshing. Some of the days seemed too cool to get in the water, but once we did it wasn't so bad. 

The boys went golfing Monday morning while the kids and moms partied it up at the beach :) 

Our daily routine while there:

~Wake up & watch a couple of shows while breakfast was prepared

~Eat breakfast get ready for the beach

~Play at the beach until lunchtime

~Come back and swim in the pool while lunch was prepared

~Eat lunch

~Crash for nap time

~wake up and eat snacks 

~head back to the beach until dinner time

~shower and eat

~play

~sleep

~Once kids were asleep adults played games until untimely hours and then went to bed :)

Funny faces

 Chasing birds at the beach. This was a LOT of fun! Feeding them was pretty amazing too, they would fly over our heads and snatch the bread mid-air!

 Digging holes. Sadie's favorite part was playing in the water-filled holes we made. When the tide pools had water that was EVERYONES favorite place to be. The kids would crawl/swim through them. They would run to the edge and yell 'cannon ball!' while they jumped in! Cole loved to lye down on his back in the shallow water and just rest there...for minutes on end.

 Running in and out of the waves. 

Discovering Sand. 

We built several sand castles.

 Dug countless holes-many deep enough to stand in

Found crabs, clams, fish, jellyfish, caught some of the little fish

We got to see dolphins, pelicans, a shark.

And last but not least the kids LOVED on Tolson and Lisa. There must be something about uncles and aunts who don't have kids yet. The kids just can't get enough of them! Maybe because they don't feel like they are parents, but more like friends? I don't know, but Cole came home hoping to someday marry Lisa and Lucy is still talking about Tolson and Lisa :) So I hope you feel loved and I am SO thankful that you played with our kids so much!

Wednesday morning we headed to the pier to take some family photos. I don't know what it is about the 'picture setting' that makes my kids grumpy but HOLY-MOLY...they just don't like it and are SO much better in candid shots...With that said I have to say Lisa did an AMAZING job :) I loved the pictures even the ones where everyone wasn't smiling.

Cole is such a stud :)

The crew! Everyone but Patrick I guess

My FAVORITE of our family. 

Cousins!

Beautiful Lucy

Handsome bud!

And because Leigh smile was TOO cute to skip! Here are the little models :) 

There was some slight variations in the days:

Monday daddy's golfed in the morning/until late afternoon! I guess it was a REALLY nice course and a 'once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" so they took it and had a blast!

Tuesday night the "grown-up children" got to go out to dinner! We had some good southern food and enjoyed our dinner sans kiddos. I was AMAZED that Sadie didn't shed a tear or make a sad peep while we were gone. And the smiles we got when we came home were pretty good too :)

Wednesday night Devin had to leave us to head back to work. It was a bummer but we are grateful for the time we did get to have him there!

We left bright and early Saturday morning. The only reason the kids were okay with leaving the beach was because we were headed back to Patrick and Whitney's house to hang out with them for a few more days! 

Thanks again to all who made this possible for us! It was a blast!!!