Easter Beachin'

We had a great trip to the beach and a fun Easter with the kids! Steve's parents recently moved from Pennsylvania to Georgetown, South Carolina. The new house is less than a mile from the beach, so heading to their house is always lots of fun! Our family is growing by leaps and bounds, with the addition of two new babies in the past six months. Altogether we are now 13, enough for our own football team, plus reserves.

Going to the beach becomes a completely different experience with kids. It's so much work! Gone are the days of lounging in the sun with a beer and absolutely nothing to do. Now, it takes an hour of prep work to even get out the door. There's bathing suits to find, towels that have mysteriously vanished, gallons of sunscreen to apply and oh yeah, getting two toddlers and two infants to cooperate. Aughhhhh! Once we arrive at the beach, it's literally a game of one on one with each kid. We found ourselves regularly counting to 4 every few minutes. The good news is that Stella and Jules had an absolute blast at the beach and Ellie and Simon seemed to enjoy the new experience.

We had one cold, rainy day at the beach so we took Stella and Jules to see The Lorax. After a wild goose chase to get to the movies, the girls loved it along with the popcorn. In fact, the popcorn may have been the highlight for them! I'm so glad that my kids are so close in age to their cousins, it makes for so many fun memories. One of our other favorite activities to do when visiting the beach is gator hunting (not literally... we just take the golf cart for a drive and look for alligators). The South Carolina coast is full of gators, from small to HUGE! The girls love to point them out along the way. We also saw lots of turtles and heron on this trip.

The weekend wouldn't have been complete without an Easter egg hunt. I love this particular Easter egg hunt (it's held at the clubhouse) because it's a truly southern event. What's a southern event? It's a seesucker, sunglasses, cardigan wearing, khaki pants sporting, "Sunday best" degree of fantasticness. One of the many things I dearly love about living in the south (I'm not being sarcastic, I really do love southern charm). It was a perfectly clear morning, not a cloud in the sky. Watching all of the kids running around (fully decked out, of course) collecting Easter eggs was so much fun. We wrapped up the afternoon having a cocktail on the beach (and chasing after the kids...but at least with a cocktail it's more entertaining!).

All in all, a wonderful trip and a very happy Easter!