Linc and I went to the Mystic Aquarium this morning, with no real agenda and as much time as we wanted to wander. I realized with school ending tomorrow we’re at the end of the “off season” and from now on we’ll basically avoid Mystic like the plague, because tourists are the worst. Even if we go on less-nice days, or weekdays, or days you wouldn’t expect it to be crowded it will be the Special 15 Day Camps From Long Island All Come At Once Day or something. But today at 9 am we were golden and after 2 hours of saying hi to all the animals, we left just as the buses started pulling up outside for end-of-the-year field trips.

Photography at the aquarium is always fun but definitely a huge challenge for me. The indoors is very dark and has lots of colored light. Outdoors is super bright and sunny and without a really nice zoom lens the animals are too far away. Remembering to switch settings back and forth between those locations seems to get forgotten while I’m also trying to make sure I don’t lose Linc or let him throw stuff in the touch tank. One of these days I’ll go ALONE and bring a macro lens and try to just get fish shots, but for now you mostly get the back of my kid’s head while he looks at things.

Linc took a nice nap today and everyone got 100% green points at school which means they earned some iPad time, so I managed to get these sorted AND edited less than 12 hours after taking them. I’m very proud.

This part of Connecticut is pretty rural, despite the fact that we technically live in a city. One of benefits of all that open space is stuff like orchards and farms, where my children can pick their own food, meet the animals that make their milk, or say hi to the pigs that will one day be delicious bacon. We’re all about the circle the life over here.

On Saturday, we visited the new location of Terra Firma Farm‘s dairy. We only bought milk on our first trip, but I’ll be back for eggs, hot dogs and bacon ASAP. Eating local just got way easier.

Caroline’s AMAZING dress is from a shop called Rainbow Waters on Etsy. You can follow her Facebook page to see when she lists stuff.

Linc was NOT happy about sharing the chocolate milk.

There was a pond full of tadpoles to catch and a waterfall to throw things into on the property. The kids actually enjoyed it, despite how their faces look in this picture.

I actually couldn’t handle looking at vacation pictures yesterday when I was supposed to do this, because it was dreary and pouring rain and my house was a disaster and my children made me insane and basically it was too depressing to think that THIS is my life versus the beach. But today I am facing reality. At least until Friday. Then school is out and we can pretend life is all just vacation again.

Sunday:

Bubbles on the pool deck

He actually DOES like lunch, I swear

Bo ssam: aka the MOST delicious meal I eat all year

Monday:

As long as it’s not ACTUALLY raining, it’s a beach day

Tiny frog friend in the outdoor shower

Hand and foot, because we force everyone we know to play

Tuesday:

Vacation breakfast of champions

So much driving

That face is because this is NOT the beach house

Wednesday:

MORE DRIVING

A+ relaxing

Embracing lake life

Thursday:

Not bad

Super happy it’s almost summer

Tents for Linc’s upcoming party

Friday:

Cannot be trusted with my iced coffee

I think she’s tired of pictures

MORE CARDS BECAUSE ALWAYS

Saturday:

Visiting the cows

That was supposed to be MY beach lounger

Inescapable floaty is inescapable

Did I mention this is the LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL? I’m feeling a little unprepared for summer (who is going to feed these kids all day?) but I’m so ready to not get up at 6:15 every morning. Plus summer is exhausting, so EVERYONE will do more sleeping. More sleeping is basically my only goal in life right now at 28 weeks pregnant.

Our Kiawah trip each year is fun for a lot of reasons, but the number one reason is I LOVE the people we go with. These are my oldest friends, I have known them longer than I have known my husband (although some of them have their own husbands now), and somehow they still like me. They’re basically family, so the kids call them Aunt and Uncle, and they are the kind of people who let Caroline “help” crack eggs or read Linc the same book 15 times. My life would be 1000% less awesome if they weren’t in it.

There is a small…medium…maybe slightly larger than medium chance that we (the Davis family) will be moving in the next year, which means we might also miss a year or two at the beach house. All I can do is make everyone promise they will still go, so when we eventually move back to the east coast we can pick right back up with our favorite week of the year.

In case you haven’t seen all the previous years (here: 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011) and are wondering about The Beach House, it is the vacation home of a friend’s uncle who is incredibly generous and kind and amazing and allows us to use it for a long weekend each year. It’s nicer than any other house I have ever been in, on an absolutely stunning stretch of Kiawah Island off the coast of Charleston. There is a bunk room for the big kids to share, separate bedrooms for each adult/adult couple, and approximately one million bathrooms. The toddlers sleep in closets that are actually bigger than some of their rooms at home. It is air conditioned to a perfect 72 degrees, the pool is heated to 88 degrees (I know because the pool guy came to clean it and check the temp for us), and there is a house-keeping staff that scrubs the whole thing right before we get there and right after we leave. It’s basically heaven.

I promise these are the rest of the pictures. I won’t make you sit through a third post.

The first floor (the one that walks out to the pool, not the basement with the cars) is the movie room, where the kids can control the TV and no grown ups have to watch it.

All the kids, wearing Hanna stripey jams! Almost all looking at the camera!

These are from our first, not-s0-good family photo session. It was very dark and I messed up my settings and I don’t like my dress and Linc got soaked within 10 minutes. But I still edited all the decent ones.

We bought an inexpensive underwater camera for the trip, since we’ve had fun with them in the pool before. When this one eventually breaks we’ll spring for a much nicer underwater camera, because this are not what I was hoping to get. I really need something that shoots RAW so I can edit them nicely.

ALL THE TOES!

And the rest are our family photos – the good ones! – from the second try. Instead of a tripod I got my friend Erin (who is also a photographer) to press the shutter button when I wanted the whole family in the shot. MUCH better than a timer or a remote. I am so happy to have these.

Is it too early to start the countdown to NEXT summer??

Once I got to 80 pictures, I decided maybe this year desereved 2 posts. Theese are straight chronological, so there are some random food photos thrown in between actually intentional sessions between pool photos between snapshots.

Waiting for cookies, because there is ALWAYS something baking at the beach house.

I hate when people wander wander into my beach photos. Obvious I should get the WHOLE BEACH to myself.

My college roommate and I (we went to college here in Charleston) took our girls into the city for “shopping and lunch’…but mostly to take pictures. You can tell, because I bought them matching dresses for pictures.

This is the fence for the church where I got married.

This is the theater across from the church. I havea beautiful painting of it in the entryway of my house.

Our church.

Chocolate cake for breakfast, because vacation.

Erin and I took the boys to the Angel Oak for their photo opp. It was SO crowded, even at 9 am. It’s a miracle there aren’t tourists in every single photo.

He’s winking, in case you couldn’t tell what that face was.

We take turns cooking at the beach, usually the same menu every year (because we’ve almost perfected cooking for 13) but Erin added these AMAZING shrimp and grits this year. They’re extra good because the local shrimp came from a only *slightly* sketchy cooler at the farm stand down the street.

We went through 6 pounds of strawberries in 5 days.  Also, these babies think they are big kids who can sit on stools. Next year we’ll have actual babies again (mine PLUS another!) for a total of 8 children, so maybe it’s ok that these toddlers will be a little more self-sufficient.

Part 2 will include both our first, mostly failed family photo session and our second, much better photo session. Our stupid photographer (me) messed up her settings on the first one with a stupid rookie mistake. Thank goodness the weather cooperated for a do-over.

I miss you already, Kiawah.