Vacation

We returned on Sunday from our annual, week-long trek to the beach, this year, as we did last year, going to Edisto Beach here in SC. We loved Edisto last year - it's a quiet, almost wild beach, with very little commercialization around the island. That could, I suppose, translate into "nothing to do," but that's the way we like things. The island is pretty and full of character, dotted with centuries-old churches - and their slightly spooky cemetaries that tell so many sad tales, honor noble lives, and hint at intriguing mysteries - and covered with big, gnarled trees adorned with Spanish moss. There are a couple of restaraunts, a few gift shops, a Piggly Wiggly, and, a few miles back from the beach, the Serpentarium, which the kids love, and that's about it! When we've gone, the beach has always been sparsely populated, and the ocean is usually fairly calm, which is good for little ones. Last year we also saw dolpins leaping just off the shore almost at least once a day; this year, because it rained half the week and there some pretty wild storms (i.e. the fingertips of Tropical Storm Fay!), we only saw the dolphins a couple times, and the ocean was sometimes rather rough, but we still came away regarding Edisto as one of our favorite places.

We've been planning this trip for months, which gave me plenty of occassions to announce that we had to cancel it, for one reason or another. :-) But we made it to the scheduled departure day, the Sunday before last, and I had bought a ton of food and had packed our things, so off we went! It's only about a 2 1/2 hour drive, but it took us about like 3 hours - still, not too bad, and the last half hour or so is a scenic winding across the island. Last year we stayed at a small and rather run-down house a couple rows back from the beach (not complaining, though, because it was a fun week!), but this year, we chose a larger (and nicer!) house on the marsh, a few more rows away from the beach. The pictures showed a spacious and beautifully decorated house, and of course the reality was not quite so pristine, but it was still lovely, and everyone had a good time looking over the house and claiming beds as soon as we arrived. A neat feature of the house were what was advertised as "sleeping alcoves," small nooks on attached to both upstairs bedrooms that contained a bed or two and a dresser, so that the upstairs worked wonderfully for our family. Dave and I had a room with a queen-sized bed, and our alcove contained two twin beds that we pushed together to make a great space for the little boys. The other room had two bunk beds, a spacious place to play, dresser drawers full of games, and a nook that Aimee immediately claimed as her own, setting up all her things as fast as she could get them upstairs. It reminded me of the nursery in Peter Pan, and when I mentioned that to the kids, Aimee said, "Drew, you could go out on the roof and be Peter Pan!" I expressed my opinion that I didn't think that Drew could do that, and he replied, eyeing the window critically, that he was pretty sure he could get out there. I strongly advised them just to pretend! Anyway, Erica and my mom took the gorgeous, quiet room downstairs, with a king-sized bed and large garden tub. All the rooms had a beautiful view of the marsh, which, by the way, was far less "buggy" than we thought it would be. Here's the house from the front and the road it was on, as well as one view of the marsh:

Almost as soon as we got there, Dave went out to explore the dock, and he caught a trout on his first try, so he went out often during the week. He and the older kids also went crabbing a couple of times, which they absolutely loved. Yes, they probably should have been wearing life jackets, but Dave only took them out when the water wasn't very deep at all and there was little or no current (as far as I know!):

We did go the beach, of course, and the first day the water was so calm we could actually swim in it. Chase didn't want to go anywhere near it - I imagine to a toddler, the ocean doesn't look anything like water (or "wa-wer", Chase's favorite word), but rather like something strangely alive. So I didn't push him, and he was content most of the week, or as much of it as we could spend down at the beach, to play in the sand. The other three had a blast both in the water and out of it, and Aimee in particular was incredibly fearless in the waves. My Mom bought boogie boards for Aimee and Drew, and Aimee almost drove us crazy with her persistence with hers, but she figured out how to ride the smaller waves on her own, and I was duly impressed.

It rained a few days, and there were some crazy moments when we thought it might be better to just be home, but we stuck it out, and I think week was refreshing overall. We loved seeing my sister Erica, down from New York, and it was hysterical to watch the Olympics with her and my Mom in the evenings. Quick sidebar: as we were watching one night, there was a Korean athlete - I can't even remember what his sport was - and Drew casually asked if he was from South Korea or North Korea. We answered his question, and, impressed, I asked how he knew there was a North and a South,because we haven't studied that area. Casually, he replied, "'Cause there were two flags at the opening cermemony." Laughing, my mom said to me, "You have to write that down somewhere - he gets distracted going from one side of the room to the other, but he remembered North and South Korea!" And that is something, indeed, beacuse it was a four-hour program - how in the world did he capture and file away something that subtle?

Anyway, I am beginning to ramble, and I would have loved to have chronicled our trip on a day-by-day basis, but it's now the middle of the next week, and if I don't post this now, I'll never get it out. I'm going to try to put the rest of our pictures in a web album and post them later, but here are a couple of parting shots: