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??

Oh, the beach house. Why can’t real life be like the beach house?

If you haven’t been reading for years, the beach house belongs to the uncle of one of my friends. He allows us to borrow it once a year for a long weekend. It has 6 bedrooms, each with their own private bath, a huge kitchen, 3 wine fridges, a fully stocked (with alcohol) butler’s pantry, every TV channel ever, a deck and private pool, and beach access to an always deserted private beach. Everything about the beach house is nicer than my own house, including the dishes and beds and beach toys. There is a planter full of herbs that grows on the deck, so if you need fresh basil for dinner it’s right there. The towels and sheets are color coded to the bedrooms, so the cleaning service can put them all back in the right place when we leave. I imagine the beach house is what life is like for celebrities every day.

This year we went from three kids at the beach house to SIX kids at the beach house, ranging in age from 2 months (Linc!) to five years (Evan!). The number of adults actually fell. The weather wasn’t very good and I only made it down to the actual beach once and I drove alone for two days each way to get there AND my car broke down 10 miles from Kiawah…but it was still an amazing vacation.

The beach house is lucky. It turned out my car just had a dead battery, the baby slept through the night, and my often-missing husband even made it to the house for a very brief visit. It was so great to see my friends and talk about life and jobs and changes and babies. We’re already planning for next year’s trip (and saving up for a nanny, since we’ll have 6 actual kids, rather than 3 and 3 babies). I can’t wait.

Having kids at the same time as your friends works out well.

The pool was pretty cold. They did not care.

We try to buy a gift for the owners every year. This year we bought a huge crab pot, so next year I can fit all the lowcountry boil in it.

So much foooood.

There’s an old fashioned pharmacy/soda fountain in the shopping center on Kiawah

The beach was a little bleak without the sun, but it wasn’t too cold for the kids.

He really wants to learn how to surf

He was really good at boogie boarding though!

Linc likes the beach for about 5 minutes.

The “O” has a sad face in it, because Princess Sadface had a meltdown about…something. We still aren’t sure what.

Then she cheered up.

Couch naps, not just for babies!

Caramel apple pie. Recipe coming soon.

Caroline LOVED that there were lots of people who let her help in the kitchen.

Eating cake in her jammies. It was both early for cake and late for jammies. Vacation!!

He’s not actually that grumpy, he just makes that face.

Helping with important work. Or maybe playing games.

Reading to Baby Jesus.

The appropriate way to eat chocolate ice cream.

Linc is almost exactly the same size as his 4 month and 6 month old baby friends. FAT BABY, OLD MAN FACE.

Last morning at the pool

Goodbye beach house! See you next year!