Kiawah Island 2015
This is our fifth year in this borrowed beach house, but only the second time E has been able to come. Technically he was there for 24 hours last year, but I did the 2 day drive by myself so that doesn’t count as being there. He drove this year, the whole way, and I got to sleep and hand stuff to the kids in the back which is the perfect start to vacation. It turns out Linc is an amazing road tripper and his presence barely slowed us down, so the driving was well worth the end result.
Kiawah is amazing. It’s an incredible vacation just because of the setting, but the key to a true dream vacation is to have more bathrooms than you have adults. Never having to wait for a bathroom or use a bathroom on the same floor where everyone is eating or worry someone is hearing you in the bathroom or having to take a cold shower because everyone else used up the hot water is an amazing luxury. It’s why rich people are so much happier than regular people. Bathrooms.
Bathrooms are especially key when the main sources of beach house entertainment are eating and drinking and drinking. We’ve gotten pretty good at our menu and consolidating our shopping down to two big trips and then only a few smaller trips for emergency supplies (like limes, and another 5 pound bag of sugar since we managed to use the first one up in less than 36 hours). There was cake and more cake and an apple crisp and Lowcountry Boil, which is seafood and corn and sausage, and Bo Ssam, which is huge plates of pork with rice and lettuce and ginger sauce, and one thousand cocktails, which is the appropriate number of cocktails on vacation. We ate until we could barely move and then we played cards, because even though we were on vacation we are all responsible adults now and can’t get falling down drunk at 2 pm. I like cards better than throwing up anyway.
I took thousands and thousands of pictures, culled and edited them down to several hundred, and I uploaded exactly 100 photos for this post. I know that’s a ridiculous number and I ought to feel bad about my self-indulgence, especially because even though there were 7 adults and 6 kids at the beach house 99% of my pictures of just of my children. But I don’t. While we were in the kitchen, trying to remember specifics from previous years, one of my friends pulled up pictures from a previous year. I was surprised she still had them on her laptop, but she said actually she didn’t, she just looked at them on my blog. So it’s my duty to document this glorious vacation for posterity. Or at least so I can show the kids in a couple months and remind them that they are some very lucky children.
Previous years: 2011 2012 2013 2014
There is a hair in my lens. It makes that shadow in the top right and the line just left and below center. If I print anything I will take the time to clone it out, but for now I don’t care enough. It ONLY shows when I photograph landscapes/sky at 28mm.
Tags: beach, Caroline, E, evan, food, friends, fun, kiawah, kiawah 2015, kiawah island, lincoln, photography, pictures, pool, south carolina, stars, sunset, swimming, vacation
Things I need to know –
1) Where did you get that adorable, perfect boob fitting bathing suit?
2) Is this house on HomeAway, I need all those bathrooms in my life?
3) How are your children so ridiculously cute all of the time?
My suit is from http://www.swimsuitsforall.com (it’s this one: http://www.swimsuitsforall.com/Swim-Sexy-Polka-Dot-Plus-Size-High-Waist-Bikini) who I really recommend because they have good prices and both suits I’ve bought from them are really nice. The house is sadly not a rental, it’s just the “family beach house” of people who have a lot more money than I ever will. And they are not, I just make it look that way with pictures. I’ll let you babysit sometime to completely ruin the illusion.
I’ve been meaning to break out my laptop for weeks to leave this comment, but you know…life. I wanted to tell you that all of your pictures are absolutely stunning. Like seriously gorgeous. We just got home from our own beach trip in South Carolina and I referred to this post to get ideas of what kinds of beach pictures to capture and every time I scroll through these pics I’m just so blown away by how awesome they are. I failed miserably at taking pics on our trip…partly because I’m just not very good at taking them yet and partly because I was terrified to take my camera on the beach and by the pool. I obviously need to get over that and just get out there :) I’ve been following your blog since probably one of my first Blogher’s and I’ve loved seeing snippets of your life from afar. Your kids are so precious and you are such an incredibly fun mom. I know we all live real life with our kids, and there are days that it’s super NOT FUN, but seeing the way you are always out and about seeing fun things and exploring and eating delicious food makes me wish you were MY mom! I’ve been so inspired by your mothering and it’s gotten me out of the house and encouraged me to take more pictures. I mostly wanted to just tell you how beautiful your pictures are and how awesome you are mothering. I also wouldn’t hate if you gave an enthusiastic, albeit very novice, momtographer some pointers on how you learned to take such amazing pictures :) I joined shootflyshoot.com and I read all the posts I come across about photography but I’d absolutely love to get better at taking pictures of my family and if there are any other resources that might help me, I’d really love to find them. Keep up the amazing picture taking and parenting…we love to see it :)
Rebecca!! Ths is one of the nicest comments I’ve ever gotten. I am sure your vacation pictures are great, if only because ALL pictures we take of our kids are great. Those memories need to be captured. Taking your camera everywhere is a really great place to start.
I would love to write a post about what I think about and focus on when I photography the kids on our adventures. If you look back at my first beach trip photos it is SUPER obvious that it’s been a long long learning process and I still have a long ways to go. I have taken quite a few breakouts and a couple of full class sessions from Clickin Moms and always recommend them – the forums can be really overwhelming for me, but the stuff I learned from the PDFs, videos and articles has been invaluable.
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