Vacation Part 3

Here is the last part of our vacation! Our last 3 days were spent like the others, at the beach and the pool! I'm going to get right to the pictures, since I know that's really what everyone cares about!
Lily looking out the window. I love the way this picture is lit:

The sunset from the June 3rd: Same sunset again, just more clouds:

The beach access we used every day:
Look Ma...I caught an 18 pounder!!:
Lily loves to hang upside down like this....she was laughing up a storm the whole 20 seconds Sean was holding her in that position!

Look at those eyes:
While watching the sunset on the beach this night, Lily thought it would be funny to bite my arm. Sean thought it would be funny to photograph my reaction.

Lily sinking her teeth in my arm:

"She BIT me!":
"She actually bit me!"
I just love how Lily looks so pleased with herself. Silly girl!

That same night there was a flock of pelican birds floating in the bay. There were about 4-5 of them that were just floating along, every now and them flying up to dive and catch a fish.


On our second to last day there, we went out to the state park beach...which is the beach where all the shells can be found. Normally this is my favorite beach on the island to visit, but with Lily, we were only able to get over there once the whole vacation. To get Lily to sleep, Sean and I took her for a long walk in the stroller down the beach. She slept the whole time, allowing Mommy to look for shells and get some pictures!
On our walk we discovered this really interesting memorial, or art piece. Someone (or maybe many people over time?) had taken drift wood, and arranged it with broken shells stacked or skewered on the wood. It was very neat!
This part of the "sculpture" reminds me of a camp fire:
Even though we were on the beach that you can usually find shells on, we only found a few nice enough to take home this trip. Here are a couple of the shells we found.
One of the nice olive shells we found:
One of the only 2 nice whelk shells I found:

After our walk we played some on the beach. Lily really enjoyed her sand bucket this day:
Stealing Daddy's sun glasses:

Someone is not happy here!


Me laughing at Lily spitting in my face:One of the things Lily started trying to do over vacation was look like she was about to take steps. She would stand up, then start to move like she was going to let go of whatever she was holding, and take a step. Then she would chicken out and sit. So no first step yet, but it looks like she'll be trying it soon! Here's a couple pictures of her attempting to take a step outside.
Moving one foot forward:
Chickening out and sitting down again:

Mmmmm...Salt water:
Looking pretty on our last day at the beach:
The crab we found on our walk that afternoon:
Of course Lily feel asleep on our walk:
Granny naps are the best!:
Last night at the beach:
Look at my 6 teeth!
Splashing in the waves:
Last sunset:

Thanks for taking a look at the multitude of photos I shared of our vacation! Edisto Island is one of my favorite places on Earth, and I wanted to share it's beauty with you all! I can't wait till the next time we go back (because we WILL go back!) Some day I would even like to live there for a year or two!
I have one last picture before I'm done. Here's one of the only pictures we got of the three of us, taken the last night on the island:
Thanks for reading!

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!

Happy Birthday Sean!

Today Sean turned 26! Happy birthday sweetie!!

Sorry I haven't put up the second set of photos of our vacation. I have a double ear infection today, so I haven't felt up to being on the computer much.

I hope everyone is doing well!

Vacation Part 1

As I said in my last post, we had a great time on vacation! We left bright and early on the 28th, and drove 8 hours down to Massanutten Virgina, where my parents had been vacations that week. Lily did great on the drive...she slept most the way, and was soothed with rice puffs and Cheerios when she got bored of sitting in her seat for so long. We took an extended lunch break on our ride down at the West Virgina welcome center. Lily was SO happy to be out of the car!
Here are Sean and Lily playing at the picnic area:
We spent the next two nights in Virginia with my parents. The resort in Massanutten had a great kiddie pool, where the water very gradually got deeper. Lily loved sitting in the water where it was only about a foot deep! She loves to watch other kids play, and splash in the water!
On Friday we drove the last 8 hours down to Edisto Island, South Carolina. My mom came down with us, and my Dad drove back home. This time we weren't so lucky, and Lily was fussy most of the drive. I was just about as exhausted as she was when we finally arrived, and was equally as glad to be out of the car!
We took Lily to the beach as soon as we got to our resort...and she just LOVED it! She started crawling right out into the water as soon as we put her down!
Getting her toes wet for the first time:

Splashing in the water:
Sean walking out into the water:The other thing Lily loved to do in the water was stand up and splash back down into the waves. Depending on what the tide was, the sand was sometimes to soft for her to stand, and she would get SO frustrated! However this first time at the beach the sand was just firm enough for her to stand up:
Crawling out into the water:


She must have gotten a mouthful of sea water here...haha! I'm sure it didn't taste very good:
We were blessed that first night with the most beautiful sun set! Sean got this gorgeous shot from the board walk that was right outside our unit:

Well that was our first three days of vacation! Look back hopefully tomorrow for the next few days (though I'm not promising I'll have time to work on it...Lily has been very clingy this past week, making computer time near impossible....she napping now...thank God for small favors!)
I hope you all are having a nice week!

Back From Vacation!

If you're wondering where we've been, Sean, Lily and I have been on vacation in South Carolina for the past week and a half. We just got home yesterday afternoon! We had a GREAT time! Lily loved the water, sand and pool. There are over 1000 pictures from the trip, and quite a bit of video, so it's going to take a a while to weed through it all for the good stuff. I thought I'd share one picture from the last night there though.

Look for a series of posts detailing our trip in the coming week!