Cleverly Disguised as a Responsible Adult: Isle of Palms

Last week we took a much-needed vacation to Isle of Palms, South Carolina. It was wonderful to get away from our routine for a week and relax with our family. In addition to the Sharps, Oma, Nana, and Uncle Marc came along, so we had lots of people chasing after the boys (well, mostly Aaron--but it takes 5 adults to keep up with him!)

Aaron traveled with his loveys. And, if you are my pediatrician, no, that is not a bottle in my 16 month old's mouth. It's trick photography.

The big boys were amazingly good in the car. Our DVD player worked on the way down but not on the way back, so we had to rely on good old fashioned car fun on the way back (i.e. bribery and snacks).

Aaron crashed that night. He doesn't much like leaving home, and the whole thing was a bit stressful for him. Every time we go on a trip he develops an unexplained fever, which we can only attribute to stress. It went away the minute we got home.

We went into Charleston one day.

At the Children's Museum

This is how we kept up with all our children.

Aaron was mostly unimpressed.

After the museum we went on a horse-drawn carriage ride to see historic Charleston. Aaron loved the horses. He called them all Alley (our dog's name).

It's kind of hard to get a picture of the buggy while you're on it, so this is the buggy that returned just as we were leaving. We looked like that, but without the matching green shirts. My family just wouldn't cooperate with coordinating their outfits for the carriage rides. Party poopers, if you ask me.

We saw all the beautiful historic homes and churches. This house is my favorite. I could live here.

I think Aaron liked it too.

If you've never been to the Charleston area, you have to go just to see all the crazy bridges. We must have gone over a dozen cool ones. This one was especially cool. It was a little intimidating, actually, but the architecture was amazing.

This is what is looked like from under the arches.

These baby birds were on our back porch. We really enjoyed watching the mama sparrow feed her babies. It was really interesting because several different sparrows visited the babies and even fed them. It takes a village, even if you're a bird, I guess.

They were really hungry. This is also what my kids look like when dinner is late.

On the boat tour--one of the boys' favorite things

Showing off his dimple

Being silly

Aaron was mostly impressed with the captain's dog, who accompanied our trip. He called her, you guessed it, Alley. (Her name was really Bella, but she didn't seem to mind being called Alley.)

Oh, and he liked wearing Mama's big hat.

But mostly he was unimpressed with the boat tour too.

This is a dolphin. Just take my word for it. We saw tons of them on our little trip, but they weren't feeling very photogenic. I have a bunch of pictures of the still water where there was ONCE a dolphin though.

The boat took us to Barrier Island, which is completely undeveloped. It was REALLY beautiful.

The boys got nets and went crabbing...

successfully. One of my favorite memories was watching Jackson pounce on a crab. He got wet from head to toe, but he came up with the crab all tangled in his net.

Showing off their catch--Ei wasn't so sure he liked holding it

The boys and Oma were constantly on watch for wildlife in our backyard. We had a really cool view of a "lagoon" (well, that's what the website called it, but we all agreed it was more of a swamp), and we saw all kinds of animals hanging out back there.

TONS of birds--various herons and cranes and pelicans

We saw lots of white-tailed deer. We even saw a baby hanging out in another condo's front yard with his mama. Of course, I didn't have my camera with me though. They are not afraid of people at all, and they came right up to the front porches of people's houses in our little subdivision.

We saw racoon fishing. There were 4, but we only caught 3 in this picture.

And this guy. Yup, that's an alligator. When we arrived we saw a sign next to the pool that said, "Do not feed or approach the alligators." We thought it was funny...until we saw one. He hung out all week. Aaron called him Alley.

This is where we spent quite a bit of our time. The boys got really comfortable putting their faces in the water and swimming with their legs behind them. It was fun to watch.

Watching Animal Planet is much cooler inside a fort.

The view from inside

Poor Aaron. We bought this swimsuit with a built-in float for Jackson, but it was too small. So, we tried it on Aaron. He floated, all right, but he looked ridiculous. We didn't make him wear it again.

In the evenings we put puzzles together. We got through 3 and a half puzzles.

And, of course, we played on the beach.

Aaron was unimpressed. He fell asleep in his beach chair. It was too hot to cover him up with a towel, but I didn't want him to burn. So, I strategically covered him in hats. You can't tell from this picture, but the hats (and one bucket, which covered his foot)are completely blocking all of the sun's rays.