Kiawah

Ah, Kiawah. Every year as we pack up and contemplate the looooooong drive, we wonder why we do it. We have a beach 90 minutes away. Okay, so it is the Jersey shore, but it is technically a beach.

And every year we get there and Jeff is instantly looking at real estate and talking about quitting his job and becoming the engineer at Kiawah's sanitation plant or something so we can live there. We just love it. The kids love it. This year was even more special because we got to share it with my in-laws. Although we were very sad Andrea and Dave couldn't make it, it was really fun to show off Kiawah to people who have heard so much about it.

The drive was okay. We hate D.C. What could be an 11 hour drive was stretched into a 13.5 hour drive. Ugh. No one slept. But they happily watched movies and opened their state line gifts with as much delight and enthusiasm as Christmas morning. Honestly.

And we had a fabulous week. We saw this big guy almost every day on our short walk to the beach:


My father-in-law and Andrew watched a different gator come in our own backyard and try to snatch a bird. We also saw lots of deer in our housing area.


Generally, with the kids getting older, Kiawah was just easier this year. Jeff and I even found some time to get in a squirt gun fight:
And of course we have the obligatory, "How many chins does Giselle have THIS year?" picture. I was holding that board up to hide the underarm/back fat...apparently I should have pulled it up just a shade higher ;)

When we went on a walk to the point (where the Kiawah River meets the sea), Jeff took this picture. Kiawah Island, on July 4th. Seriously. He wanted to have photographic proof why we don't just go to the "the shore"