Vacation Recap

And I'm back online. Not really sure what the deal was, but if all else fails shut down and reboot.

Here's the promised recap of our time in South Carolina. We went to see my brother, Jeff, and his wife, Liz who were renting a beach house on Kiawah Island (about an hour from Charleston), so we decided to go a couple of days early and see Charleston. Here's some of what we did:

Friday:

We left really early and made it to Charleston around 2pm. That afternoon, we decided to just walk around downtown Charleston and then go out to dinner at this great seafood place. We had fun walking out on a pier and swinging.

Saturday:

It rained all day. We were drenched. We wanted to go to the Farmers' Market, which we did, in the torrential rain. Smart, right? But I was determined to go. We bought some great ginger snaps there.

Since it was raining so much, we decided to go to the South Carolina Aquarium. Here we are in front of the big ocean tank. See us in the lower right corner? :o)

Sunday:

It was still cloudy, but at least it wasn't raining anymore, so we decided to go to Folly Beach. It's a great beach with a huge fishing pier. We walked around the beach for a while, rested on the pier, and then Mark did some fishing. Towards the end of the day, the sun finally came out and it was gorgeous. Mark didn't catch anything, but I think he had fun. We saw a dolphin while we were out on the pier, too.

At Folly Beach.

Fishing off the pier. They had these holders for the rods - is it really fishing when you're not even holding the rod?

Yes. That's a shark.

Monday:
Jeff and Liz were coming in that evening, so we decided to go to a different beach, Isle of Palms, in the late morning and afternoon. We had Ben & Jerry's. Yum. After a little more downtown Charleston sight-seeing, we drove out to Kiawah Island to spend the next few days with Jeff and Liz.

The longest cable-stayed bridge in North America, which we crossed on the way to the beach.

Mark's Chocolate-Brownie-Something. I had Coffee-Coffee-Buzz-Buzz.

Charleston is full of beautiful historical buildings. This is the oldest Baptist Church building in the south.

Charleston.

My brother, Jeff, and his wife, Liz.

Tuesday:
We just relaxed around the house most of the day. We did go biking and running in the morning *pat on back* :o)

If that's not enough pictures for you :o), click here to see our full vacation album.

Memorial Day Weekend Recap

Why did you wait so long to post?

Sorry for the delay, we did make it back safely. We were expecting really bad traffic but were pleasantly surprised to see fairly clear highways.

Highlights of the weekend:

• Seeing Ruthie (and her mom and dad, of course) for the first time in almost a year. What a cutie she is - always smiling.

• "The Rainforest Cafe" - One of Marcy and Mark's friend from Brazil also went to Dallas for the weekend and her 3 year old daughter was so fun to watch. It was fun to see all her reactions to the noise and animals at the restaurant (sorry no pictures at the restaurant - it was really dark, so dark I could hardly read the menu...).
• Actually getting up one morning and exercising (!!). Made up for all the eating out, I guess.
• Brazilian food for lunch on Sunday.
• The Fort Worth Zoo - Zoos are fun anyway, but going with kids is so great.

For more fun pictures like this one, go here.

Finally, a long weekend...

We're off to Dallas for the long weekend. Mark's sister, Marcy, and her family are going to be in Texas (they live in Florida) so we're going down to see them. We'll get to see our niece, Ruth, who is turning 1 in a little over a week. She was less than a month old when we saw her last, so we're excited to see how much she has grown.

We saw on CNN this morning that there were floods and high rushing waters in some Dallas suburbs. Swim, little Pilot, swim... :o) It seems like we only plan trips around major weather formations. We're hoping it's a fun, but uneventful trip.

Not sure what we'll be doing this weekend, but we'll post pictures when we get back.