Make Me a Mermaid

When your little girl says "make me a mermaid"  Daddy gets into sand building mode and makes her a mermaid! What a sweet afternoon on the beach! They had so much fun together and Erin was more than pleased with the results. She sat patiently and waited for me to take pictures and to get Kyle to check out the final result. Her prince did rescue her and help her out of her "tail" and they walked off into the surf together...

Picture Night - Take One!

We have always taken pictures one evening on the beach but over the last couple of years we have been doing this a couple of nights. For a couple of reasons, one being there are more kids and two they are all old enough to have an opinion about what they wear. Night one is everyone chooses their own outfit and I do lots of individuals and night two everyone wears what mom chooses and we do our Christmas card picture. All the kids like the results of the pictures so they don't complain about getting ready, only when we are on picture 127 do people start to get done with the whole thing. This year went really well. Paige and Lindy chose their outfits last spring when shopping for summer clothes. There was lots of "oh this will be perfect for the beach picture, you get this color and I'll get this one." Which I love they think about it 5 months before the event! The boys really don't care a bit what they wear and Erin brought enough to do a photoshoot every night but settled on what she calls her "July Dress".

Our only glitch this year were the mosquitos which chewed up Paige. I got lots of picutes of her bending over to scratch her legs! Enjoy!

Beach Babes

If you can't tell we all LOVE the beach and the ocean. We don't need a pool on vacation. We have the biggest pool in the world right out our door! And we are on the beach morning, noon, and night. We break at lunch time for a couple of hours but still we hang out on the deck, watching the ocean! One morning things were pretty calm. Paige and Ethan drifted off on boogie boards and looked like they were practically asleep. Well within an hour things started picking up and the normal rough and tumble waves kicked in. But for that hour or tranquility it was so sweet to see the kids float over to each other, chat, float to someone else on and on...

Dolphins at Lunchtime

One day we were sitting on the deck eating lunch when Ethan spotted this pod of dophins coming down the coast. There had to have been at least a dozen and we watched them jump and come up to the surface for about thirty minutes. It was so cool! Not many days go by that I can say I've been eating lunch while watching dolpins swim. Awesome!

Drayton Hall

This year we chose to go to Drayton Hall for our plantation house visit. We had read about Drayton while doing our study on South Carolina and the kids were very interested in seeing a house that was preserved rather than restored. Built in 1738 it is a beautiful Georgian architecture style home built on a rice plantation. We did the house tour which all the kids really liked. There was then a special 45 minute presentation on the African Slave connection to the South. Since we are going to be studying the Civil War after Christmas and studying slavery and the Underground Railroad I was very excited! We had a great tour guide and I knew the kids would get great information. They learned so much about slaves lives on the plantation and about rice cultivating. 

The view from the front of the house where visitors by carriage arrived. Below is the view from the other side of the house overlooking the Ashley River.

The front door.

Original paint is still on the walls.

There is a room in the house that has a growth chart of the Drayton family. Every year over Thanksgiving the house is opened to the family decendents to come to visit and they remove the plexiglass covering and allow them to add their measurements.

Lindy, Ethan, and Erin are standing in a fire place that was in the basement of the house.

The resident spider.

Ethan by one of the huge oak trees.

Erin holding the rice box.

We learned about growing rice and how it was gathered and sifted. We also got to see artifacts like this pot and a Gullah New Testament Bible.

More house pictures! We all had a great time visiting!