These are all from Saturday on Kiawah Island, South Carolina

Crab boil. We went through two loaves of bread just dipping it in the broth.

The next three I took with the 200mm lens that lives at the beach house. It weighed a TON but holy gorgeous shots, Batman.

Pim’s cups, courtesy of our English bartender

As I type thing, I am drinking a boozy milk shake that contains a ground up chocolate chip cookie and coconut fudge ice cream. Just to give you some context on how TOTALLY worth it the 16 hour drive to South Carolina is.

Sunday:

The rarest animal in the aquarium: my husband

Cupcake face

I took this picture with a telephone.

She’s a cat burglar making her getaway.

Monday:

PEEK A BOO

Extremely loud trip to BJ’s

Happy Birthday Mr. Sendak. We’ll keep the wild rumpus going for you.

Tuesday:

Hanging up his coat for his last day of school

She really, really loves lemonade

Taking the animals to the vet

Wednesday:

Stuck in traffic and we haven’t even left Connecticut. Evan’s face explains it all.

Too cool for Delaware

Old timey fun with Mormor

Friday:

Spoiled, spoiled children

Spoiled, spoiled me

Never leaving.

Saturday:

Pre-pool relaxation

A very Low Country lunch

Who needs forks when you can pick up your cake like a sandwich?

I can’t even believe we have MORE DAYS of vacation before we leave…and when we do we have MORE FUN STUFF to do before we go back to Connecticut. My children are going to sleep for a week when we get home. It will be glorious.

This is our third year on Kiawah Island and it’s the best one yet. There are more friends, more food, an endless supply of cocktails, a pool at the perfect temperature and a beach that feels like it’s all for us. Apologies for nothing but pictures for the next week.

This weekend was the last of our family time, probably for a long while, and we wasted it on the couch. Or at least, I feel like we wasted it, since I wanted to get out and Do Things. Make Memories. Have Experiences. Enrich The Children’s Lives. Instead we watched Disney movies and played “Runaway Evan” (in which Evan runs away and we chase him) and tossed ALL the toys on the floor and read lots of books and threw some tantrums (mostly the children) and wore comfortable pants.

I felt sort of bad about it but I’ve decided to not feel bad about it. Sometimes wearing comfortable pants is good for the soul. Dragging E out to Do Things with his kids when he will barely even see them for the next few weeks could end in a toddler meltdown that ruins everyone’s day and leaves us all disappointed. I’m not saying my children are terrible monsters or anything, but they are 2 and 3 so…sometimes they’re terrible monsters. And honestly I don’t mind using my solo-parenting days for outings, since staying home means the only adult I talk to is when I shout at the incredibly fit jerk-faces in my workout video. I’m going to forgive the lazy end of our lazy vacation and call it “recharging with my family” instead of “not wearing a bra again”.

Staying home doesn’t mean doing nothing. Family isn’t nothing – it’s everything.

And I can wear my comfortable pants.

It’s not technically a snow day, since we were already on vacation, but it was definitely a day full of snow. OK, maybe 45 minutes full of snow, 40 of which involved someone crying and/or whining. To be fair, it was really cold and the wind on the sledding hill was vicious – I didn’t want to be out there myself – but when you’re 3 it’s hard to understand that you can EITHER be warm OR play in the snow. But once we got home to our yard both the boy and the dog had a fantastic time pushing snow around.

p.s. I do not know why Caroline insisted on the Tinker Bell backpack, but she did indeed INSIST.

p.p.s. I got Evan’s coat and snow pants from Zulily and they were pretty much the deal of the century. He loves them and they kept him totally warm and dry despite being covered in snow. Not bad for $40.

p.p.p.s. Happy New Year!