Isle of Palms 2017

We took our annual Isle of Palms trip with Michael's extended family last week. It's an 8 and a half hour drive from Nashville without stopping, so you can imagine how long it takes with three young kids. We left at 3:30pm on Saturday. All the kids were asleep before we even got on the interstate. Unfortunately, our first hour was a torrential downpour with tornadoes all around us, so we went about 30 miles an hour for the first hour or so. Conor stayed asleep for about 2 hours, which was really nice! Patrick gets extremely car sick, so we tried the drive with Conor in the way back. He didn't make a peep the entire drive (except for some clapping to the movie).

We arrived in Isle of Palms around 1:30am, so it was a long day in the car. The boys were awesome! I was so impressed with how well they traveled.

We started our first morning on the beach. The boys tried out some boogie boarding.

There are 10 children 6 and under, so the boys always have a playmate.

They had fun running back and forth into the baby pool from the big pool

Synchronized jumping

I attempted to get a family picture each night hoping that I would get one where everyone was smiling. But i'm not sure I got one the whole trip. The picture below is our first family picture attempt. Patrick said he was covering his nose because he got too much sun on his nose.

We took nightly walks on the beach

    This baby was so excited about running on the beach

Patrick loved the beach this year. He would bury himself in the sand, jump waves and build sandcastles.

This little guy loved to nap on the beach in the shade

Peyton was not fond of the beach and much preferred the pool, but he attempted it each day

This little guy was a fish this year! He is finally able to get in the pool by himself with his wings, which is a godsend for us parents! Last year he was too little and the wings flipped him over.  He was pretty excited about his new independence.

The predators played a couple of nights we were at the beach, so you will notice that Michael is all decked out in his sweatshirt at the beach, ha! Here is our attempt at a family picture on Memorial Day.

Michael tweeted at 102.5 and they re-tweeted his picture. He was pretty excited about it.

These two buddies are attached at the hip. Just love them

Love watching them interact with each other (when they aren't smacking each other silly, of course). They are just too cute giggling away.

I love 2 year olds and hate them at the same time. But seriously he is just the cutest.

These precious cousins are just a couple weeks apart in age. 

Patrick found a whole sandollar

It was windy on the beach!

My 3 little Memorial Day cuties

I missed out on all the night time shennanigans, but it looks like lots of fun was had

I only took one picture this day, but Uncle Mark got a workout throwing Peyton in the pool

Another nightly walk on the beach

With another attempted family photo...

They played keep away with a cup on the beach. Patrick is so fast that some of the dads had to get involved to try and catch him. 

Pure joy....

When all of your cousins are from Tennessee and are UT fans, you learn this song pretty early on. This was completely unprompted.

On the last day, the boys helped with a massive sandcastle

Another nightly stroll on the beach

On the night we cooked dinner for the whole family, Conor rocked out to some music. I love this little baby. So much joy!


On the last morning, it was really cloudy but we got up and headed out to the ocean to take a few pictures. 

Love these precious little ones

Harper joined us for a little bit

Bye beach...see you next year!