We left our hearts in Charleston ...

Last weekend we had a wonderful opportunity to go to Charleston, SC for a couple of days. My brother-in-law lives there and he was so excited to see the kids. He promised three days of worn out kids! And he was right!

We planned on leaving at 6am and we were on the road at 6:09am! Even with giving the kids frequent run around breaks we got to Charleston at 12:30. We immediately met up with brother-in-law and headed to his house which just happened to be 2 blocks from a beautiful beach access. My children have never seen the beach and it was wonderful! The Girl just dove on in and didn't even let me get my pants off before we were in the water! She had a wonderful time jumping waves with her uncle and Daddy. Little Man is my more cautious child and he was a little nervous when we saw the waves. He kept saying, "Hurt! Hurt!". So I just sat with him at the edge of the waves and we played in the sand and waved "Hi Water!" and "Bye Water!" as the waves came up to us. Eventually the waves came closer and closer and he had no problem when we were sitting in the water. By Sunday (our last day there) he was jumping (little) waves and yelling "Fun! Fun!". That's my tough guy! He may be a little nervous and cautious about new things, but once he watches for a little while and as long as we are patient he will jump on in! :)

Saturday we walked around downtown and saw a neat little farmer's market in the park. The kids got to ride a pony - which they LOVED! Could The Girl have had a bigger grin on her face? Then we walked next to the water down to see Battery Park. At that point we were all hot so we decided to go to the beach by the fort on Sullivan's Island, but a storm was starting to blow in so we took a few pictures at the fort and headed for dinner. It rained while we were eating and was a beautiful, cool evening by the time we got out.

Sunday we got to go back to the beach. It was low tide and we found some wonderful creatures. The kids loved seeing the hermit crabs, starfish, conch, and few dead jellyfish. The Girl decided to start a shell collection and we found her some really neat ones! After a few hours we headed to the pool to rinse the salt off and play a little more before having to head back to the mountains. It was hard leaving. The Girl said , "I want to live in Charleston, Mommy. Our town is yucky!" ;) We ended up tearing ourselves away at 3 in the afternoon, so we didn't get home until 9 at night. And it was SO cold! We left a gorgeous, sunny, 80 degree day in Charleston and came back to a cloudy, rainy, chilly 50 degree evening! Brrr!! Take me back!!

Beach pictures: