2019 Isle of Palms Beach Trip

Our family beach trip this year was to a new place we’ve never been before: Isle of Palms, SC. It’s a beach right outside of Mount Pleasant near Charleston. Mom found the house after doing a bunch of looking online, and everyone from the extended Cushing family was able to be there for at least part of the week. It was the first time we’ve all been together in years. The trip was from May 25th to June 1st, so it was just a couple of days after Brooklyn got out of school. We had a fun week, and it was neat to try out a new beach.

I thought we did pretty good leaving the house by 8:45 AM, but it was still a long day despite our best efforts. We only stopped 3 times the entire day and didn’t make it there until around 8 or 8:30 PM (eastern time). I’m blaming it on Atlanta traffic and the fact that our stops for lunch and supper took a while. The kids did really well in the car though! We have a DVD player in our van that we’d never told them about (ha), so we dropped the bomb on them during the trip, and they were so excited to watch TWO movies on the way there. Poor Peapod couldn’t see anything since she is still rear-facing, but she enjoyed the songs at least :)

So excited to be on our way! (This was at our stop for lunch).

Abigail was happy to get out and stretch her little legs! We were so happy when we finally got to the beach house that night :)

Abigail was THRILLED to spend a week with her Paw! She would sit in his lap all day reading books if she could.

After morning worship and lunch on Sunday, we got changed and headed to the beach. Our beach house wasn’t directly on the beach, but it was an easy walk down a paved path to get there. Mom bought a wagon to use for pulling all of our gear, so that definitely made things easier too!

I realized on our walk that afternoon that this was Savannah’s and Abigail’s first time to see the Atlantic Ocean! Brooklyn went to Fripp Island (also in SC) when she was 4 months old, so she had technically seen the Atlantic Ocean once before :)

Pretty happy to be at the beach!

The girls got right to work building a sand castle and playing in the sand…

Abigail was NOT sure about the ocean at first. She would start backing away from it when a wave got near her feet. It was funny!

She definitely felt more comfortable with Daddy right beside her :)

…and pretty soon she was loving it! It didn’t take long at all.

Savannah wasn’t scared of the water this year…yay! She had no fears about filling up her buckets with water and getting a little wet.

Brooklyn was still on activity restrictions while we were at the beach after breaking her arm back in early May (spoiler alert since I haven’t written about that yet!). She wasn’t allowed to run, jump, dive into the water, or get in the ocean unless the waves were very calm. Basically, her doctor wanted us to avoid her falling on her arm and making the injury worse. She did a great job all week of not complaining and making the best of it, and she still had a lot of fun :)

I loved the cozy living room at our beach house…the whole house was decorated so nicely and stocked with just about everything we could have asked for.

Brooklyn really enjoyed hanging out with Rob (my cousin) over the course of the week. He is really good at drawing, so of course she loved drawing with him and seeing what he could draw. He also tried to teach her how to play Solitaire and shuffle a deck of cards. He was very patient with her and a great teacher!

On Monday morning, we decided to check out the pool. Our house was located in Wild Dunes, a resort in Isle of Palms, and we had access to the pools that were a couple of blocks away. The pools were located at the end of a boardwalk. It definitely had a different feel to it than other beaches we’ve been to in the past!

The pools were pretty crowded that day (it was Memorial Day, so I think that made it more crowded than normal), but the girls still had a blast.

Even Abigail enjoyed splashing around in the water :)

Brooklyn didn’t have any trouble with her arm while she was swimming, so we were glad about that.

Cool kid!

Abigail wasn’t quite sure how to eat her Pop Ice this time, but by the end of the week, she had it all figured out!

The big girls still love Pop Ices too, of course :)

That afternoon, Abigail sported her red, white, and blue while we were sitting on the back porch during nap time.

After Brooklyn and Savannah woke up, we made a late afternoon run to the beach for some more playtime. Abigail enjoyed digging in the sand and filling up buckets.

Paw took Brooklyn and Savannah to hunt for shells. This beach is THE beach to go to if you love looking for shells. It was incredible how many unbroken shells you could find without much effort. There were so many shells that the sand wasn’t just straight sand…it was made up of mostly ground-up shells (at least close to the water). I’ve never seen anything like it.

There was a lot of back-and-forth to fetch more water that afternoon :)

Everyone was ready to rest after a busy day of swimming and playing in the sand!

On Tuesday morning (5/28), we decided to head back to the beach! The girls look like little ghosts with their sunscreen on, but I thought the picture still turned out cute :)

Brooklyn decided she wanted to dig a big pool in the sand near the water…

…so of course she enlisted Savannah to help!

Savannah’s job was to fill up the “pool” with water from the ocean…haha. It was a never-ending job because the sand just absorbed the water right up :)

Oh Abigail – she definitely got tired quickly each day from all the activity. She slept pretty terribly the entire week too, which didn’t help. She still had fun and enjoyed the week, but she did her fair share of crying and screaming too ;)

Already time for a nap at 10 AM :)

Brooklyn and Savannah enjoyed decorating their sand castles with shells on top…

That afternoon, we played cards, and Daddy had a little helper…

…and then we went to the pool for a late afternoon swim!

Abigail’s hair was cracking us up!

There was a little ice cream shop on the boardwalk right outside of the pool area, so we stopped for ice cream on our walk back to the house. You know you’re on vacation when you get to eat an ice cream cone at 5 PM not too long before supper!

That ice cream hit the spot because it was so hot outside!

Abigail got to ride around like a queen in the wagon all week ;)

Paw shared some of his ice cream with her, which she definitely enjoyed.

On Wednesday morning (5/29), we headed back to the beach for some more fun. Aunt Gale was sweet to offer to take our picture. We hardly ever get all 5 of us in the same picture these days.

Another day…another nap at the beach :)

After Abigail woke up and Brooklyn and Savannah got back from going on an “adventure” with Daddy (a.ka. walking down the beach), the girls had a picnic lunch under the umbrellas. It was the only day that week that we took lunch to the beach, but it worked out well that day.

We had a chill afternoon of naps and reading, and got takeout from a local seafood restaurant called Acme Lowcounty Kitchen. Everyone agreed that the food was delicious! If we go back to Isle of Palms in the future, I’d definitely like to eat there again.

On Thursday (5/30), it was clear that Abigail needed a break from all the fun. She was just not a happy camper, and neither of us felt like dragging her to the beach or pool if she was just going to be miserable the whole time. So we joked that she was in “in-house suspension” that morning :) Travis didn’t mind staying at the house with her, and I took the girls to the pool by myself.

It was definitely less crowded by the end of the week, which was nice. We had a fun morning and stayed until about lunchtime.

Abigail ate an early lunch and took a good nap that afternoon. She needed it for sure!

Late that afternoon, we took everyone to the beach (even Peapod!). We had promised Savannah that she could fly her kite one day, so she was excited to try it out.

Turns out that it’s much easier to fly a kite at the beach than in our tiny backyard at home! :) It was pretty windy that day, so the kite took off right away.

Abigail even got a turn to help fly it :)

This was probably our favorite afternoon at the beach the whole week. The tide was coming in and the tide pools were perfect for the kids to splash around in.

The water was pretty rough that day, so of course Travis wanted to go out in it. It cracks me up how he never gets in the ocean until the waves are big. He asked Savannah if she wanted to go out there with him, and I was surprised when she said yes.

They were only out there about 30 seconds before she changed her mind (ha!), but I was proud of her for being brave enough to go out there at all.

I think she was definitely happier just digging in the sand though :)

Rob has always been great at making sand castles (he got all the creative genes in the family!), but this year he decided to make a dragon out of some of the shells he found on the beach.

It turned out incredible! The pictures don’t do it justice because the black shells are hard to see against the brown sand, but it really looked amazing.

The girls thought it was really cool too!

Brooklyn was so excited about it that she drew her own rendition the next morning :) I liked how the dragon was breathing fire, of course!

…and here is more of the artwork Brooklyn did that week…

I loved this one with the surf board, big wave, and sand castles :)

Mickey Mouse!

Friday morning (5/31) we went back to the beach for the last time that week. Brooklyn had brought her homemade kite (from Kate and Olive’s birthday party back in February), so she wanted to fly it for a few minutes. This picture also gives you a better idea of how prevalent the shells were…they were everywhere!

I think Abigail ate 4 Pop Ices that morning…she was definitely hooked!

What a big girl!

Travis took the big girls on one more adventure…

…and Brooklyn came back all excited about this sea clam that she found!

She also got to touch a baby lemon shark that some fishermen nearby had caught. She was really excited about that!

That afternoon we went to the pool, but only got to swim for a few minutes before we heard thunder nearby and had to get out of the pool. Oh well…it was a good opportunity to get one last ice cream cone for the week! :)

Such a hard life!

That night, we sorted through the girls’ shells. I told them to pick out about 10 shells each to take home. Earlier in the week, a lady stopped and gave Brooklyn a whole sand dollar she’d found on the beach. Brooklyn was so excited…and then it got broken Friday night…the last night of our trip. She was so upset, and I felt terrible that I hadn’t done a better job of making sure it stayed in a safe place where it wouldn’t get broken. She is determined to find another one next time, so hopefully we will :)

Savannah enjoyed storytime with Aunt Jenn that night before it was time for bed :)

Saturday morning (6/1), there was time for a few more Pop Ices on the back porch before we hit the road back home :)

We had a fun week, but we were definitely glad to be home by the end of the day (it was another long travel day).

We always enjoy these family beach vacations so much! I can’t think of a better tradition than this one. We look forward to it every year! And this year was extra special because we got to see my extended family that we don’t get to see very often. We really enjoyed spending the week with everyone (despite the fact that they aren’t in the pictures I took…haha). Thank you, Paw and Rae Rae, for such a fun week!