We took time out of the ocean to play in the sand. By far, one of Josiah’s favorite things…

We have a nice little sunshade tent that is open on three sides so it was a nice get away for the sunblockless girl (no sunblock until 6 months). Since I don’t want to stay in a room all day, and we’ve had children before who were too young for sunblock, we bought this sling, which has been wonderful! It’s made of solarveil material that has UVA/UVB block on it. Ceili Rain stayed snuggled in it in the ocean and in the pool and didn’t get a drop of sun to hurt her!

We didn’t play at the beach upon our arrival on Friday because we wanted to take the kids to hear Gregg Russell. He’s been singing on Hilton Head for over 30 years. He sings mostly children’s songs. What we didn’t realize is that Friday is typically the last night for most vacationers and so they all jam in going to hear Gregg Russell…it was very packed! The cool part was there were a ton of other free activities before the concert including, our kids’ favorite, puppets.

The big oak tree where Gregg Russell sings.

Gregg lets the kids get on stage but Ace, Liam and Josiah were very hot and very tired and opted for the steps near mom and dad. It was extremely humid with no breeze…making for a long wet night.

What Ceili Rain did…surprised???

Zoe, of course, sat on stage and made friends. Those homeschoolers are sooo anti-social!

Saturday, we hit the beach. The kids (including Mark) had a wonderful time actually getting into the water.

Liam was “holding back the water.” He told Mark, “I’m doing it daddy…Look!”

Josiah and I were walking back up to the tent when we spotted this. A starfish! This is the first time I’ve seen one at the beach. Josiah touched it but by the time the rest of the kids got out of the water, he was curling up and they didn’t want to touch it. So, Mark scooped it up and we had a quick Science lesson on why it was sand colored and how it ate and felt around. Then, Mark threw it back in the ocean.
Josiah tried to figure out where it went. While we were all out in the water, a man came up and handed us a few sand dollars to look at. That was neat. I’d never seen them up close. After we looked at them and put them back, Zoe informed us that she had picked up one when she was scooping sand up and promptly screamed and threw it back in the water.

This was Josiahs’ first time to the beach…well, his second actually, we went when he was negative three weeks (aka, he was in utero). He doesn’t remember that much, so, this, he can enjoy.

Mark got a pretty rockin’ Father’s Day this weekend! We went to Hilton Head in South Carolina. Just a weekend trip…one of the perks of living only a few hours away…It was a ton of fun. On Sunday, we surprised him with these shirts from Union28. In case you can’t tell, they say, “My Daddy Rocks (Mommy’s Right!)!” He got a good kick out of that. I’m so blessed to have a wonderful husband who does late night bad dreams and has walked our children enough to have walked around the earth (or at least the moon).

Stay tuned for even more pictures of our weekend trip!