My brother's new wife, Brooke, is from South Carolina. So after their wedding in Salt Lake they were heading back east to do a reception there. My parents wanted all of us to be there - so they offered to take all of the "adults" in the family. AWESOME! Although this was a great opportunity - the timing wasn't great. We would be leaving the day after Madison's first birthday, and be gone for 8 days. Jason and I have never left the kids for a vacation - and to do it for 8 days, with Mads still so young... it was pretty stressful. So stressful in fact I couldn't even really make plans or cope with it until about a week before - any sooner and I just felt anxiety. What heightened my anxiety was that I could not find any ONE person to watch my kids for the whole week. I desperately wanted someone to stay at our house and watch them. When my parents first told us of the trip about 5 people popped into my head of who I could ask - one by one they all couldn't do it - for various reasons. What to do? They all had to rotate and be split up, several times, throughout the 8 days. It definitely added to the stress of it all.
Initially I was worried I would miss Madison's first steps - none of my other kids were walking by their first birthday's - but did within a week or so. So I pushed her a little, and gladly, she walked long before I left. Also, I wasn't quite ready to stop nursing. Since she is my "last" :) I thought about nursing longer than one year; I decided the best thing to do was ween her around 11 months - she did not take well to it. None of my other kids even cared when I stopped nursing, she very much did. It just added to the emotions of leaving her for so long. I would have liked to have nursed for 18 months.
The girls ended up being watched by one of my young women. Paige is 16 and is our main babysitter, she knows my girls, our home, and our schedule inside and out. They LOVE her. I felt good about leaving them with her - but it went better than I could have even expected. She did an amazing job. The girls were kept on perfect schedules and I could just tell they had so much fun. The house was clean and everything was just perfect!
Anyways - here is a "pictures of Jamie and Jason" overload! After years of taking pictures of your kids it is weird to only have you to take a picture of at each different activity.
The kids had a blast while we packed.
Our plane ride. Jason and I have not spent a ton of time alone together over the last 6 years or so. Being right by each others side 24 hours a day for 8 days with no one interrupting us was awesome! I was nervous we might get on each others nerves, but we never did. I remembered what it was like when we were dating and wanted to be together 24/7, and why we fell in love. He really is my best friend.
My dad, mom, and little sister, Ashley sleeping on the plane.
Our first day was Monday. We went on a cruse of the Charleston Harbor and saw a lot of really cool civil war and revolutionary war sites. Jason and I both really like history, so this was a great town for us to visit.
On Tuesday we had a lot to do. We went to Cypress Gardens. This is where the Notebook and the Patriot was filmed. It was BEAUTIFUL! We saw alligators, a million butterflies, a heron, and several other wildlife.
They have walking paths all throughout the swamp. You could spend hours and hours there - plus you can paddle a canoe through it - which we did (see below).
Ahh, we are just like Noah and Allie (from the Notebook) - this is RIGHT where they filmed.
Then we went to the Boone Plantation. This is the "Avenue of Oaks" - it is in several movies. It was so beautiful. This was Jason's favorite thing. He loves stuff like that.
The plantation was really cool. It is the only colonial time plantation still in use. They have a large farm and farmer's market. The house is still even being lived in!
Then we ended our night with an evening walk on Sullivan Island beach. This was my fist time to the ocean. I didn't really expect to care so much - but as soon as we got there I found myself running into the tide. There is definitely something majestic about the ocean.
Those were are first two days. It was funny, that this point we were missing the kids like crazy and often talked about their cute nuances and wondered what they were doing and mentioned how much they would have LOVED our activities - but at the same time I acclimated quite easily to having no children around. I thought it would feel weirder than it did. We were truly able to relax and have so much fun and not worry at all about the children - I KNOW we were only able to enjoy it this much because our kids were being taken such good care of. Our babysitters never called us with any problems and our children were so happy - I am so grateful to all of them.
