Vacation Part 2

On our first full day in South Carolina, we spent the morning at the beach. Lily again enjoyed splashing and playing in the waves. This day the sand was too soft for her to stand up on though, so she got pretty frustrated. The sand was also to soft for Sean to make a sand castle with, much to his chagrin. He tried and tried over and over again to get the mound to come out of the bucket smoothly, but every time it would just fall apart! I guess we'll teach Lily how to make sand castles on our next vacation!

Lily in the early morning sun. I think we were down on the beach by 6:30 or 7 this morning. I wanted an early start to the day. Trust me...this was the only day we woke up and were on the beach this early:

Giving me her pouty face. I don't remember what made her give me this face, but it makes for a cute picture:
After breakfast we went back down to the beach. Lily was obviously having a good time!

After getting tired of the beach, and a long afternoon nap, we all went down to the pool. True to form, Lily loved playing in the water again. This baby is a fish! At the pool, Lily learned how to dunk her head in the water for the first time! It didn't scare her at all to have her face go under water a bit. In fact, she continued to dunk her face the rest of the week...whether it be in the pool or the bath tub!


Playing in the water with Granny:After the pool, we took Lily to the little playground. She wasn't to thrilled playing in the sand there...she must love to have the firmer sand by the waters edge. But she did have fun on the swings again!


The next morning , June 1st (My Brother Andrew's Birthday. Happy Belated Birthday Andrew!), we went to the beach again. While sitting in the water, playing with Lily, we saw a couple dolphins swimming our way. We watched them swim near us for a long time: they were so close, it was amazing! I'd say they were about 10-15 feet away from us! It's not unusual to see dolphins where we were staying at Bay Point. The bay provides a great source of food for them throughout the day. What was amazing about this was how close they were to the shore.

Normally you see the dolphins swimming really far out, and you can only see their dorsal fin as the come up to breathe. This time though, we were able to see them very cleanly. It was just so wonderful to be so close to such wonderful animals, in their natural habitat.

Here's one of the best photo's I got of one of the dolphins. You can see the back and the fin middle left of the picture. (opening it up bigger might help):

Here are a few pictures of us playing on the beach on the 1st:
Mommy and Lily:

Daddy and Lily:


Lily's funny happy face:
So proud of herself for standing:

Unfortunately Lily had too much sun this morning and was really fussy for the rest of the day. We took it easy and let her just hang out in the unit out of the sun. We discovered some things about her sun screen and her need for a good morning nap this day. The rest of the trip she was a lot happier after we made these discoveries! We went back to the beach at sun set, when she was a much happier baby. She had a blast playing in the tide pools, and with large shells. She was picking up shells to chew on and bang together.

Here's some video of Lily clapping and laughing in the water:

Taking a shell from Daddy:
Happy Baby:
Munching on her shell (don't worry, I made sure it was too big for her to get fully in her mouth, and that no little pieces could be chipped off):

The sunset from that night:
That night there was a huge thunder storm with a lot of wind....which apparently washed a lot of jellyfish up on the shore, as we would soon find out the next day. Armed with our discovery that Lily needed her morning nap earlier than we had been laying her down for it, we set out for a long morning walk, with the hopes that she would be rocked to sleep. Shortly into our walk she was passed out, and suffering from what we fondly have termed "broken neck syndrome" (where she falls asleep and her head falls over in a way that look terribly uncomfortable. Try as we will to straighten her neck, she continues to return to this position. It must not bother her!) This picture doesn't do the "syndrome" justice.

It was shortly before she fell asleep that we started noticing the jellyfish. Every 20 feet or so we would see one washed up on the beach. Now I don't know how many of you know this, but I'm pretty much terrified of jellyfish! We had one bad trip to Edisto when I was a kid where the whole family got stung at least once. I've been scared to go into the ocean alone ever since! Seeing all these jellyfish this day sealed the deal on us not doing any real ocean swimming for the rest of the trip! I do however think that jelly fish are stunning to look at. Here's a picture of one that we passed on our walk:

Also on our walk, we saw a man fishing catch a shark. The poor thing was probably only 2 feet long. I hated to see it lying on the beach. I also found my one and only shark tooth of the whole trip. For those of you not familiar with Edisto Island, the beaches there are great for finding fossilized shark teeth. Each year I've gone with my family, we usually bring home a nice haul of teeth. This year though, with Lily, it was hard to sit and take the time to look for them. I look forward to when she is older, so I can each her what to look for!
That afternoon Sean, Lily and I went into Charleston by ourselves for lunch at Hyman's Seafood. It's one of the best places for fresh seafood in the city!
Lily waiting outside for a table:
Lily started making fish kissy faces a lot during our trip. It became a fun game where she would fish kiss towards us, to make us do it back! Here's my favorite picture from our whole trip, of her fishy kiss face:

Sorry it took me so long to get this post up. I've had a double ear infection for a while now. It's FINALLY starting to heal! I'll be glad to be able to hear normally again! Hope all is well with everyone! Hopefully it won't take me as long to get the last set of pictures up! Happy Fathers Day to all the Daddy's out there!