Greenville~Week Eight

Warning: This post contains a ridiculous amount of pictures, even by my standards. It's the last week of our South Carolina experience, and we crammed a lot into those final days.

This is the first mouse of the hunt for the mice on Main Street. It was the only mouse that we hadn't found yet on our trip, so they were very excited to finally see it. By the way, those are mosquito bites on Gray's forehead. The bugs there were horrible. We were all covered with bites the entire summer.

We saw this squirrel on Main Street and the kids followed it around laughing for so long.

This park is downtown. It has a free miniature golf course. You just have to bring your own balls and clubs.

I was dying laughing when he was doing this. He wanted some candy in my purse and I wouldn't let him have anymore. He's obviously not happy with me.

He doesn't seem too upset about this lost ice cream.

This was at Denny's. They were having a drawing for kids to enter when they came in. Halle won and chose that coloring picture. Gray was not at all happy for her. He kept saying over and over how mad he was that Halle won. I tried telling him that if he had won, Halle would have been happy for him. He's a bit of a sore loser.

We took a trip down to Charleston one weekend and stayed with my sister, Jess', best childhood friend, Rayna. We loved it. It is gorgeous and we had so much fun.

On the way to the beach. I loved this bridge.

The beach here is so different than the Florida beaches. The sand is so hard, people were riding bikes like they were on the road. This was the most fun I've ever had at a beach. We were there for hours and everyone loved it.

We always have to play wiffle ball at the beach.

Thank goodness our bishop there let us borrow a big umbrella, some chairs, and boogie boards. I love naps at the beach all covered with sand.

At about noon, the water started receding and pretty soon it was this shallow for hundreds of yards. It was the coolest thing. There were starfish and shells everywhere. The whole ocean floor was suddenly uncovered. I wanted to take a starfish home, but I felt too guilty to kill it.

You can see Gray, Halle, Nash, and Jason all in a line. Our umbrella and chairs are right behind where Jason is standing. That morning, our stuff was only about 10 feet from the edge of the water.

I love the Spanish moss growing all over in the trees. I wish there wasn't a Speed Limit sign in the only picture I got.

That evening, we went to eat at this great little taco place called Taco Boy with Rayna, then we put Nash to sleep at home while Rayna wrote her talk and the rest of us went to see downtown Charleston. It has to be one of the most beautiful, neatest old cities in America.

Is it disrespectful to sit on the historic canons?

We walked around and looked at houses for so long. They were beautiful.

Halle and Gray with Rayna the morning that we were leaving. They loved her so much. She is the sweetest girl ever.

Rayna has two of these dogs. This one is Farley and the other is Hampton.

I love the architecture in the South. This is my favorite house from Rayna's neighborhood.

Halle walking Farley right before we left.

Gray just measured things along our entire walk.

The last place we went out to eat. Delicious hamburgers and fries. It was so good, but made me feel so sick.

One of the last things we did was go blueberry picking. This was a definite highlight of our trip.

I don't think a berry ever hit the bottom of Nash's bucket. He ate the entire time. Blueberries are still his favorite.

Yes, that is sweat dripping down his forehead. It was brutally hot.

Who's going to miss the air mattress that Dad had to blow up every night before bed?

We wanted to pick peaches at a peach orchard, but it was about to rain when we got there, so we bought already picked peaches and homemade peach bread and went and had a picnic at this cute park that we discovered.

Standing in the mist.

I think it's time for some new pajamas.

We made the mistake of watching Coraline. It was the creepiest children's movie ever. The next day the kids made a pillow mom like in the movie.

Some of our friends had a going away party for us the night before we left. This is Halle with Kate, Claire and Bowan. The props were their idea. The name Bowan always reminded me of when Gray said to Jason, "I have my arrow, now I just need to go and get my bowan."

Waiting for our plane to go home. I was so sad to leave Jason for a month. I don't know what we were thinking when we planned that.

Good bye South Carolina.

Hello Jojo. Nash was so happy to be home, he kept running around looking at all of his stuff.