ISLE OF PALMS VACATION 2010

This year we vacationed 5 miles from home. Before we had decided to move to Charleston, we had begun making arrangements to travel to Charleston for vacation. Marga and Dhanesh had rented a beach house and had invited us, among other people, to spend the week with them. Let me tell you... "It was AMAZING"!!! The house was gorgeous. It had everything from an elevator to a private pool. We spent 7 days in heaven. We relaxed by the pool, took morning and evening strolls down the beach searching for seashells and catching crabs in the tide pools, we ate great food and were in great company. Trying to describe the house would not do it justice. Prepare for picture overload...




















The boys could not get enough of the pool while we were there. They probably swam about 8 hours a day. In fact, they swam so much that Brady learned to swim without floaties. When we arrived to the beach house on Saturday, Brady was wearing floaties in the pool ... by Sunday he was swimming like a fish. They had a great time playing in the water.







We had a blast going for walks on the beach in the morning. In the morning there are a lot of crabs in the tide pools. We caught one in our sand bucket. It is one of the funniest memories I have with my boys and Jesse. The crab was pretty big. Broc was walking through the tide pool looking for shells when he screamed, "There was a HUGE crab by my foot." Jesse responded, "alright... you don't need to scream like that Broc." No sooner did those words leave his lips when the crab went racing past Jesse's foot. What do you think Jesse did? He screamed... just like Broc. We all had the same brilliant thought, lets see if we can catch him. The only thing we had in our possession was a 2 quart pail that we were putting our shells in. We emptied the pail and began our "crab hunt". For the next 30 minutes we chased this crab, along with about 5 others through the tide pool. The crab could sense that we were trying to catch him because he went into his defense mode. I had no idea that crabs did this, but he would raise his pinchers over his body and clap them together, then run through the water to the opposite side of the tide pool. At one point, Jesse had lost track of him. He yells over to me, "Ash can you see him, I don't know where he.... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" I looked down and the crab is standing between Jesse's feet, with his pinchers above his body, claws open, trying to pinch. Of course jesse screamed. It was quite possibly one of the funniest things I have ever seen. We laughed until we had tears streaming down our faces. We finally caught him. We took a few pictures of the boys with the "prize crab" then released him back into the ocean. It was so much fun!




The boys and I also caught a huge sand crab. We were walking down to the beach when Broc noticed something buried in the sand. He touched it a few times and it didn't move. He called me over to look at what he had found. I told him that it looked like a dead crab, but I could only see the top of its shell. The rest of it's body was buried under the sand. I thought maybe it got stuck clear up here when the tide was high, but when the tide pool dried the crab was stranded and died. Broc wanted me to see if I could dig the little crab body up so that he could take the dried up crab shell back to the house to show Jesse. Broc ran and grabbed a stick so I could pry it's body out of the sand. I put the stick down in the sand, under the crab and pushed down forcing the crab out of the sand, when all of the sudden... the crab popped out of the sand and ran across the top of my foot. It was alive, and of course... I screamed in sheer terror! Once again we grabbed our trusty bucked and trapped the crab. This thing was disgusting. He had a crab body and trianchula legs. Eeek!


We got so much sun. One morning I woke up and my lip felt numb. I got up and looked in the mirror, I took one look and gasped. I woke up Jesse, I am sure he thought there was some emergency. It was an emergency to me! My bottom lip was about twice the size it is supposed to be. I looked like I had some bad collagen treatments or something. Apparently my lip was really sunburned and that is what caused the swelling. The funniest part is the exact same thing happened to Garin. We looked hilarious.


We had such a wonderful time. We can't wait to go back next year and sit on the back porch and look at this....


A HUGE Thank you to Dhanesh and Marga. We had so much fun. We have wonderful memories and fun times to look forward to again next year. Who said you can't have a vacation in paradise 5 minutes from home? We can!!!!