Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles!

Well, believe it or not, we had a good time. I'm not saying it was perfect -- I'll just say one word and leave it for another post - ANTS! All in all, though, it was a good trip.

We got up really early on Friday because our plan was to get to Charleston early, go see the U.S.S. Yorktown at Patriots Point, and go with the cousins to see a Charleston Riverdogs game. And we made really great time, even taking into account the fact that Mr. Daddy realized not even three miles out of town that he had forgotten the key to the camper. Needless to say he was not pleased, but still I say that was WAAAYYY better than realizing it once we'd arrived 5 hours later in Charleston. Right? I would definitely not want to be around for that cussin' fit. So anyway, we got to Charleston in great time, around 10:30 in the morning, in fact. And guess what? It was pouring!! It rained ALL day. So, we hung around with the cousins (of whom there are 5, with a 6th on the way!) and then when none of us could stand to be in the house one more second we went out to a nice-- and by nice I mean family-friendly because between the four adults we had 7 kids! -- seafood restaurant and gorged ourselves on fresh seafood. Then we went back home for the moment of truth -- BEDTIME!

Would Punkin' sleep? Would she cry all night? Would we have to pack up in the middle of the night and go home? Find out next time on....Oh, sorry. Back to the story. It's about 8:00, which is an hour past her bedtime, but it's vacation so we let the bedtimes slide a little, plus I figured the darker the better in the camper, you know? So, I went to bed at 8:30 with both the kids. Punkin' slept on one side of the pop-up with me and Bubba slept on the other side with Mr. Daddy. And they both slept. Now I'm not saying it was easy. They both tossed and turned and squirmed like a worm in hot ashes all night long. But they slept. I told Mr. Daddy that next time we should put both kids on one side and we could worry about undoing the resulting tangle o' kids the next morning. At least that way WE could get some sleep.

On Saturday the day dawned sunny and we all packed up and went to the beach. If you think it's easy getting ready to take 4 adults and 7 kids to the beach, you've got another think coming. You gotta think about lunch. You gotta think about snacks. You gotta think about drinks. You gotta think about sunscreen. You gotta think about diapers. But, we got it done and we headed out to the Isle of Palms. The beach was crowded but we found a spot and the kids had a blast. Here's Punkin' on her first trip to the beach.


And Bubba, who's been to the beach before but not since he was a baby.



There were only three small bad things about the trip to the beach. One, I was wearing a baseball cap and COMPLETELY forgot to put sunscreen on my ears. I walked around the rest of the weekend looking like I was embarrassed about something. Plus, they hurt like a mother. Two, Punkin' got stung by a jellyfish, we think. She grabbed her leg and started saying "Ow, ow" but then she kind of forgot about it and later we noticed she had a really red mark on the back of her leg. Either it was a very small jellyfish or she's really a trooper! And three, no matter how many times you tell a 2 and 4.5 year old "Don't put your sandy feet on the towels" they just don't listen.

On Sunday we got up and did the church thing. We had promised Bubba that we would take him to see the big battlship on this trip, so we drove from Bonneau to Mount Pleasant and Patriots Point. Now I don't know if you noticed what the weather was doing in this part of the country, but in SC it was about a go-zillion degrees with a thousand percent humidity. The thought of walking around a giant hunk of steel with no air conditioning made me want to just die, so we told Bubba we were just going to "look at it." Now of course, this was after we stopped at an Old Navy to take advantage of South Carolina's tax free weekend and it was so miserably hot and humid just walking from the car to the store that we were tempted just to drive by and look from the car ("Hey kids..Big Ben, Parliament.")\. But as we drove up Mr. Daddy said "Okay kids, let's get out, take a picture, and call it memory." So here they are...

And on the cannon...

And finally, Mommy and Punkin'. We're not sweating. We're glowing. Hah!



As I said, all in all it was a good trip. The kids had fun because they got to play with other people's (i.e. new to them) toys all weekend. Can I just tell you, though, how exhausting it is to worry about your kids breaking other kids toys all weekend?? And they must have a million toys.

And the icing on the cake? Look who was here when we got home....



Hot, hungry, and thirsty, the prodigal cat has returned.