First day at the beach on our vacation

Ok, so back to our vacation (maybe by the end of September I'll have blogged about the whole vacation!)

After a lovely time in Atlanta, we headed off to Hilton Head.  I had been there many years before, and I absolutely loved it, and looking back now, I'm so glad we picked it as our destination this year.  I can easily see me spending every vacation there..not sure how Joacim feels about this though.  It's not as though it'll be within reasonable driving distance next year :(



We got to the rented house a little later than planned, but still with enough time to enjoy it.  Oh, geesh...I guess I forgot to mention that my friend Emily and her son, Will, joined us at this point of our vacation.  They met us in Hilton Head, and got there an hour or so before us.  We weren't able to make it to the beach on the first day, but still had a good time getting settled in the house.  We got unpacked, and then Emily and I headed out to the grocery store to stock up for our week.  And apparently everyone else had the exact same idea...that Piggly Wiggly was HOPPIN'!  Rentals on the island are from Saturday to Saturday, and you can see the wave of people coming to the island.  It took us about an hour to get to our house once we got on the island.  Later in the week it only took us 20 minutes.

The house we rented was great..it was LIVED in, so we didn't have to worry so much about making a scratch on the wall or anything, which was a relief.  But the house was really nice, with a private pool downstairs.  Here's a link to the house we rented.  Speaking of the pool...here's Izzy and Joacim taking their first dip in it.

After the kids were in bed, Joacim, Emily and I hung out, had a few drinks (ok, a little more than a few), and an impromptu dip in the pool. Great way to start off a great vacation!

And for some reason, I woke up early the next morning.  I take that back...Izzy and Bri woke up early and woke me up.  I let Joacim sleep off the gin hangover I thought he might have, got the girls some breakfast and got ready to walk to the beach.  Emily and Will woke up and decided to join us.

And what I was most excited for when planning the trip was Brianne's excitement at experiencing the ocean for the first time.  I was not disappointed.  She was just awestruck and giddy as we hiked over the sand dunes and she saw it for the first time.

Her excitement made me happier than I could possibly describe, and I'm so happy that I got to experience this with her.  It's a memory she and I will always have, and I treasure that.

What I love about Hilton Head this time of the year is how warm the water is.  When we took Izzy to Ft. Lauderdale a couple of years ago, the water was freezing.  Granted, it was in late April, but it was still frigid.  Not here though...the water temperature was around 84 degrees, which suited us just fine.  Even Will didn't mind.  Here he is taking a dip. This isn't his first time at the ocean, but he was only a couple of months old the first time on the west coast.

I love Izzy in this dress.  She started calling it her "fireworks dress"...I like it!

 And both of their expressions in this photo crack me up.

 And what was even better is that after our dip in the ocean, we came back and took a dip in the pool (this pretty much became a daily occurrence).  Here's a video of Izzy swimming...there was a pretty strong jet of water that ended up creating a little whirlpool effect.  In this video she ends up getting stuck in a little, and getting quite upset.

And at the end of the day, a cute little baby in the bath :)

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