Part 4- North & South Carolina

To finish up our 2 week vacation, we headed up to the Carolinas to meet up with the rest of the family for Chanda & Nate's open house. We left right from Typhoon Lagoon and within a few minutes our kiddos looked like this in the backseat...

They were out! We tried to wake Ethan up to eat at Subway and he just couldn't wake up, so we let him take a little snooze on the bench.

We stayed that night at our half-way point and then made the rest of the drive on the day of their open house.

I thought it was so cool to see where the I-10 begins!

We arrived in Charlotte, NC just in enough time for me to fix Chanda's hair and get myself ready before all the guests arrived. Justin was amazing with watching the kids and getting them ready for all the wedding stuff while I helped Chanda out!

I love this picture of Ellie eyeing down my food!

Chanda of course looked so happy and gorgeous even though we received a good ole' southern rainstorm right before the reception that made them move everything inside.

Once the rain cleared up, everyone made their way outside. I thought that this was such a cute picture of Justin, Ethan, Chay & Jordan.

Ethan was loving all the attention he got from everyone and he was intrigued by this toad that was found. He is fearless when it comes to holding yucky reptiles! Sorry, no offense to all you reptile lovers out there!

The Watterson's backyard was incredible. It should be featured in Better Home & Gardens or something. This picture is only a glimpse at what this yard was like.

It felt like you were walking into a tropical oasis. I could live here if I had a backyard like that, even with all the bugs and humidity :)

The next day, after church, we drove down to Charleston, SC where we stayed at a gorgeous beach house located right on the beach. The Wattersons were so nice to rent it out for all of us to stay in. On Monday we headed down to the beach and spent a big chunk of the day there.

Ellie loved the water and spent hours just meandering around, doing her own Ellie thing. Caryn was so sweet to watch her while I went out and played with everyone in the waves.

By the afternoon, she was exhausted!

But she got her second wind and was ready to explore some more....

Ethan LOVED playing out in the waves with all the big kids.

We found out that floaties don't really work too well in an ocean with waves. Ethan was up on a raft that Justin was pulling and there was a huge wave came that flipped Ethan out of the raft. We were all near the raft and Ethan had his floaties on so I didn't really worry previously but when I came up out of the wave to look for Ethan I saw his floaties drifting with the wave separate from each other, I panicked (ok, freaked-out!). That is the worse feeling in the world and we started searching frantically for Ethan. Luckily, Nate somehow saw him underneath the flipped over raft so we quickly grabbed him. He ended up being just fine but was a little scared of the waves after that. Justin was so good to hold him and help him to not be scared of the waves anymore. Ethan then went back to being his fearless self. Now we know that life jackets are essential for our little ones in the ocean!

The sun can really wear you out and so we went back to the house in the late afternoon. Ethan loved wearing Jordan's goggles and I thought it was cute that Ellie had to have them on as well to be just like her big brother!

Tuesday we headed to downtown Charleston to take a ferry to visit Fort Sumter where the Civil War began.

This place was fascinating and it was cool to be in the actual place where the bloodiest battle in our history began.

After that, we took a bus tour around Charleston and admired all the beautiful, old colonial homes and saw and learned a bit more of our nations history. Our bus driver was awesome and really made for an entertaining ride!

At the end of the tour we stopped to watch the sailboats and play in the water fountains.

Once we returned back to the beach house, the kids went down to the beach to see what they could find at night. They found a big crab, I think some other small things, and a baby shark!

The next day we flew back to AZ. We had such a fun vacation and hope to visit that part of the U.S. again someday. Even though it was a blast, we were glad to be home again and not living out of a suitcase. You know how it goes :)