HHI Thurs-Sat

On Thursday I got up for another beautiful beach sunrise.

And dolphins. There was a whole herd of them also enjoying the sunrise.

At lunchtime we decided to bike to South Beach again, this time for lunch at the Salty Dog.

We saw this guy along the way.

But made it there alive.

Some of us biked back along the beach instead of on the shady, paved bike trails. I’m not sure if it was supposed to be a shortcut, but it didn’t feel like it. It was beautiful though.

After that a cool-down in the pool was in order.

We had a birthday party for a birthday boy.

He requested, and received, Carolina barbecue.

Jason and I were whupped by our long day, but some people made it out to the beach at dusk.

Personally, I waited til dawn to see it again.

On the last day everyone’s always motivated to spend the day on the beach, which we did, until the beach patrol came tearing down from the lifeguarded section in a pickup truck, shrilling her whistle out the window for us to vacate the water due to sharks passing by.

We complied. 

She said “Give it half an hour,” which isn’t terribly confidence-inducing even after 45 minutes of staying on the sand. The kids built a sand castle and we sat in two-inch-deep water and no one felt much like going back in.

Jason caught a fish in the shallows with his bare hands—undoubtedly a descendant of Caleb’s old friend Alex. This one was still alive, though.

Later that evening we gathered ourselves for one last walk on the beach. Grandma always likes a glow-stick party.

We were out the door at 8:30 on Saturday morning, rather impressively. It helped that Ada left a day early (for a youth group road trip to Maine!) and so we had already packed most of our messy water toys off with her.

That meant that Jed, Maddie, and Potato rode home with us. Maddie wanted Potato to have a good view so he rode up front with me most of the time.

We arrived home around 6:30 in the evening with only two kids with us. The car was unpacked and everything put away in no time. 10/10 having big kids who are so very, very much more helpful than a passel (a fever? a roll?) of little kids. See our last-day picture from the beach in 2013, wherein my fake smile is holding back tears and no one else even tried.

This picture makes my heart physically sink. Darling though they were, my relief is profound that now I’m the needy one and they can help me carry in the suitcases. Plus instead of crying all week for no discernible reason, now they can cheerfully put on their own sunscreen, unpack the car top carrier, and cook a frozen pizza when we get home exhausted. 

10/10.

Wednesday at HHI

On Wednesday I woke up unexpectedly early, so I thought I might as well look for the sunrise. 

And then, since I was up so early, I persuaded Jason to tag along with Grandma and Grandpa on their daily bike ride to the Harbour Town Bakery for coffee and breakfast.

And then we might as well stay for a romantic stroll around the harbor where I fell in love twenty-three years ago.

It’s astonishingly different at 9am than when we’re usually there in the evening and you’d have to kill to get a rocking chair.

We came back to Jeddy manhandling little cousins

and eventually made it to the beach.

a man who knows how to relax

Caleb, blissfully unaware of what lurks beneath

Alas, our pancake friends were back.

Skate in the foreground, whippy tail of a stingray above. The National Aquarium may call them elasmobranchs, but I think water pancake is more descriptive. And a collection of them should be a stack.

Standing ankle deep in the surf, I was peering into the water, and when I saw one I gasped and backed away, only to turn around and see another one just behind me, at which point I jumped and spun so hard I threw out my back a little bit.

stingray’s-eye view

One day we actually saw a pair of gigantic stingrays body-surfing a wave with the very tippy tips of their fingers up, or whatever their side edge is called where fingers should be.

After dinner we returned for golden hour, and enjoyed this much less horrifying specimen of wildlife.