We left to go to Murrell’s Inlet in South Carolina on Saturday morning for our yearly family beach trip. This trip includes our family, my parents and Doug’s family. We always rent a house right on the beach. Because it is much, much cheaper to go before Memorial Day, we decided to take Faith out of school for a week and go now instead of after school lets out in two weeks. Seeing that it is only kindergarten I didn’t have much of a problem doing so. Saturday morning we left around 11:00am – after I taught water aerobics, Wilson had soccer and Faith had auditions for her camp this summer. It was a busy morning, but we got it all done (I had been packing all week).
We met Doug, his kids, my parents and Grandmama at the Strawberry Festival at McLeod’s Farm on the way to the beach. We picked strawberries, ate lunch, ate ice-cream, and the kids bounced on the bouncy castles. After we had our fun there, we loaded up and continued on our way to the beach. Here are some Strawberry Festival pictures.
The house is great! This year we had to get a different house than last year, but it is even better. This one has a swing set and a fenced in back yard. We eventually had to rig a baby gate up on the walkway to the beach because Miller and Shepherd kept going down the walkway to the beach by themselves. Not good!
It has been so much fun to see the excitement that the kids have for being at the beach. Miller was so in awe of the ocean when he first saw it. He looked at it in amazement and said, “That’s big water!” He was right. The whole first day, he and Shepherd ran back and forth picking up shells and then throwing them into the water. The weather has been a bit chilly in the mornings, but that hasn’t stopped the kids from going into the water anyway. The kids keep playing in the water, getting cold, going to take a bath, and then drying off only to go straight back to the beach again. It is almost comical.
The most amazing thing that I have seen so far, which is scary but fascinating at the same time, is sharks. They were not in front of our house, but were down under the pier which is about two miles away. Jacqueline’s sister, Monique, and I were looking off of the pier yesterday afternoon and saw more than eleven sharks swimming underneath us. It was crazy!! The sharks were circling around waiting for the fishermen to either throw back fish or steal what was on their hooks. They weren’t small sharks either. Most of them were 6-8 foot Black Tip sharks. I had never seen sharks in the wild before. It was truly frightening, but I have been back to see them again. Thankfully, no one has been bitten here in years. I have decided that these sharks are like pigeons: they go where the food is given to them and they go back daily and never want to leave. Hey…maybe all of the sharks around here are actually down at the pier getting fed instead of out in the water where we swim. That thought makes me feel better. I have to say that I am thankful that the water is too cold for us to swim out in this year. I don’t have to worry about it.
Overall, we have had a very enjoyable first couple of days. It was a bit windy yesterday so we didn’t play on the beach much, but we stayed entertained riding bikes, playing games, going to the pier and playing on the swing set. Today is supposed to be warmer.