Fripp Island, SC

Our beach week is coming to a close. We'll hop back on an airplane tomorrow afternoon to head back to Texas from South Carolina. We spent the week at the Durand's friend's beach house on Fripp Island (near Hilton Head). It's been an absolutely lovely and relaxing trip. Here's a quick rundown and I'll post pics to go along with it when we get settled at home (probably Monday)...

Our flight last Saturday was at 7:30AM so we woke the kids around 5:30 and headed to the airport from the Durand's house in FW. They were so thrilled with the entire airplane experience that it was almost easy on the rest of us...well, easy for me anyways. Jeff and John were lugging most of our stuff around--the carseat and 5 carry-ons. We didn't even break out the "Travel Bag" full of new activities, toys, and special snacks I packed to keep them quiet on the plane. No need...they had Nana and Grandpa to keep them entertained for the flight. I hope tomorrow goes as smoothly as well.

We're staying at the Ramage's beach house and it's about a 3 minute golf cart ride to the beach and even less to an awesome park. The kids LOVE the beach...Addi just goes racing fearlessly into the water without looking back. She loves to swim and splash and run along the beach looking for shells. Jackson likes digging in the dirt the best but if we stick him in a nice knee-deep tide pool, he's content for an hour just splashing around and looking at the fish. He is hilarious to watch on the beach because he'll try to follow Addi into the surf but as soon as a "wave" comes toward him and possibly covers his ankles, he turns and runs, shreiking, back to the dry sand. He does NOT like the water rushing over his feet AT ALL. He gets back at the waves for scaring him by throwing handfuls of sand into the water--he just tosses them and hustles back to safety. So cute. Both of them get excited about all the birds and Addi loves to watch the guys catching fish from the shore. She's also a bit obsessed with the shrimping boats we can see out in the ocean.

There is a great park about 1/4 mile up the road and we've burned a lot of energy playing there. There's a lighthouse that has a very steep slide coming down that Addi has mastered. She loves being the "Lighthouse Keeper" and shooting down that slide.

We take the golf cart almost everywhere and have LOVED that. There are 2 golf courses on the island and alligators (yes, real GATORS!) live in most of the ponds on the courses. We take several drives a day to go look for alligators sunning themselves by the ponds. It's crazy fun, believe me. We always get excited when we spot one in or out of the water---I mean, what Texan gets to see alligators on a golf course? Everyone here just ignores them...unless they're walking their dogs and then they better pay very careful attention and stay away from the gators. There are also lots of deer (too many--it's one of those places where the deer are "pets" and therefore not hunted for population control so they're extremely overpopulated, unhealthy, and inbred. So sad. End of rant). We've enjoyed the deer and have even fed some of them out of our hands. We were having a picnic at the park one day and Jackson was walking around with an apple. A buck came trotting right up to my boy intending to steal his apple. Luckily Jeff was right there and he grabbed Jackson. The buck didn't give up but followed them over to the swing so we all sat there feeding him crackers from our hands. Very crazy indeed. We'll be hunting his Texas cousins in a few weeks. He-he-he : )

Jeff and I have very much enjoyed running on the beach in the mornings. We ran SIX miles barefoot on the beach a couple of days ago. It was beautiful and we found 2 sand dollars for our efforts. There just happens to be a 5K race here on the island tomorrow morning. We signed up immediately and plan on winning the thing. The guy in charge said there are about 70 participants (small for a DFW area race, but great for an island smaller than my neighborhood) but only 6 planning on actally running. SIX! Can you believe that? I guess since this is a place with mostly nice elderly folks summering here, they'll be happy to walk the entire thing. Anyways, Jeff and I are going to try and win our age group (he-he-he---we'll probably be the only ones in the "below 55" age group).

We've had a few adventures to add to our relaxing vacation...we rigged up and put out crab traps. Today we checked them and found 12 good sized stone crabs that are currently cooking on the stove. Can't wait to eat those suckers. We're also headed out shrimping tonight at low tide (around 11:30) if the weather permits it. We tried last night but a huge thunderhead built up suddenly just off the coast and the lightening kept us in. Hopefully we'll be catching some shrimp tonight though--Jeff's very excited about that. I don't prefer to eat shrimp but I do think I'll enjoy the catching part. We also took a boat trip out to another island called Capers Island. It's uninhabited and is great for sea shell hunting. We found 5 buckets full of beautiful shells---sand dollars, Whelk shells, Conch (sp?) shells, and many, many more. We found one star fish, a sea urchin, and several horseshoe crabs. There were tons of birds and lots of porpoises jumping just off the beach. It was beautiful.

We had our biggest adventure today after finding sea shells. While the Durands, Jackson, and Dr. Ramage drove the boat back through the marshes toward the house, Jeff and Addi and I walked the length of a neighboring island (Pritchard's Island) and planned to be picked up at the other end. We definitely did not realize how far of a walk it was. What we thought would be a 45 minute walk along the beach turned into 2 hours of walking/carrying heavy loads and wading across a couple of inlet creeks. Jeff was carrying a 5-gallon bucket FULL of shells and I carried Addi most of the way...and we walked about 4 miles to get to our meeting point. The Durands were frantic that we were taking so long and were ready to call out the US Coast Guard to search for us. We were never really in danger or anything like that and the 3 of us had a GREAT time walking along, but the Durands are still recovering from the shake up of imagining all the aweful things that could have happened to their family. All's well that ends well though, right?

Well, we'll head home from beautiful South Carolina tomorrow. We have had an absolute blast here and are so thankful to the Ramages for allowing us to stay in their lovely beach home. Look for pics soon...I have some cute ones of the kids at the beach, some close ups with the gators, and some fun ones of all of us playing. Stay tuned...