Isle of Palms, SC

Greetings from the Isle of Palms, South Carolina!

Currently, Steve and I are sitting in a beautiful ocean front beach home (hoping for DJ to go back to sleep!). We're looking out at the ocean on a 65 degree sunny day. After the 18 degree day we left in Maryland, this is a very welcome change of pace!!

We're here with Damian and his family, Andy and Mike. This house is Andy's cousins', and they have been gracious enough to let us borrow it for a few days this weekend. We couldn't be more spoiled by this place. The 10 ft ceilings make the rooms feel beyond enormous, and the house is truly luxury. It feels like the house my family stays in when we go to Wrightsville Beach. It's just wonderful.

The drive down was LONG. We left the house just after 8 on Thursday morning, picked up Mike at 9:15 or so, had lunch around 12:30, stopped for dinner at 6:30, and got to the house around 7:15. We let the kids play as much as we could during the stops and once we got here, but naturally they were so done with being in the car seat by dinner time. The 40 minutes from dinner to the house was one big fuss, but the kids truly did awesome for that long a trip. At one point during the trip, we swapped bachelors, and we got Andy and Damian and Jenn got Mike. It was good bonding time for sure!

We let the kids play in the house once we got here and while we unpacked the stuff for them. DJ went to bed around 8, and then we unpacked the rest of our stuff, created a grocery list, and then I effectively went to bed. I was wiped out.

Despite it being a new place, DJ slept great. He woke up at 5am on Friday morning (rough...), and eventually he fell back to sleep in our bed with us for about another hour (as we hoped that by doing that, we wouldn't wake the entire house). He took two 2 hour naps on Friday and ate like a horse all day. I think he was making up for the fast food we had on the way down of which he didn't eat much (good boy!). We spent most of the day doing nothing but trying to catch up on sleep and letting the kids adjust to the new digs. DJ spent a lot of time walking (with and without fingers!!), and he tired himself out big time!! But he did great progress walking as he'd take 4-5 steps at a time without any assistance. As he'd get overexcited, though, he'd fall over trying to "run" because he seems to forget to remain balanced. We also think that he's watching 2 year old Leo run around and is finding confidence that way, too. DJ went to bed at 7 with nary a complaint and slept through until 6:30 Saturday (today) morning.

Today, the group of us went to see the USS Yorktown (aircraft carrier) and the Coast Guard ship, the Ingham. Both were WWII era ships, but the cool thing was that Mike's dad did his CG service on the Ingham! Although Steve and I didn't do too much exploring (it's tough walking up and down ship stairs with a stroller, even folded!), we talked a lot about what we were seeing across the Cooper River, which was Charleston itself. We also watched a sailboating class of 13 boats practice maneuvers from the deck of the Ingham.The Ingham

We then went to see the Yorktown and you know what, it's big. And what's scarier is that today's aircraft carriers are a football field bigger. To someone like me who's not really familiar with military procedure, learning about how planes land on a carrier, both WWII era and today was neat. DJ was kicking his legs the whole time, people watching and watching the movement of everything around him.

We snagged lunch at Firehouse Subs. DJ had an *entire* grilled cheese sandwich. The subs were yummy, though it certainly helps when you're starving! :-) After lunch, Steve, DJ, and I took a drive down Memory Lane to see some of Steve's old haunts, including driving over the "new" Cooper River Bridge. It was nice to put some images to all the stories I'd heard. DJ and I fell asleep on the way home.The Cooper River Bridge

This afternoon was spent mostly enjoying the downtime. Steve took a long nap in the sun room, Mike took a nap outside on the deck, Damian and Jenn took Leo to the beach, and Andy and I watched DJ together. It was a nice quiet afternoon. The guys are currently making dinner, Steve is watching DJ, Jenn is watching Leo and I'm here blogging.

We wish we could stay another few days. This has been great! I'm hoping this becomes an annual tradition with us because this has been good bonding time and really fun for the kids.