Neptune Island Water Park

Today we ventured to Hartsville with some friends to check out the new Neptune Island water park! Hartsville is about an hour from Columbia.

We arrived a few minutes before they opened at 10. We got in line to purchase our tickets. I saved a few dollars by buying the season pass and using the 3 guest passes that came with it for the girls and then JP was only $10 more (you have to buy some kind of diaper cover thing if they are 2 and under and it's a one time purchase if we go again he'll get in for free). I will say the line to get bags checked was SO slow and so I definitely recommend either arriving a little before 10 to get towards the front of the line or arriving once the first wave of people have gone in. Also they are super strict on the no outside food or drinks rule. Your water bottle has to be sealed (or you can bring in empty bottles and fill them up at the water fountain) and the only other thing they will allow you to bring in is baby food.
Once we made it through the bag check line we headed to rent a locker. If you have a season pass you get a dollar off locker rentals. The locker rental was all computer automated...you put in your card and created a passcode for your locker and then it tells you what locker you have. I actually ended up putting Ruthie's EpiPen in the locker, along with my keys, wallet, and phone,bc I didn't want to leave it sitting out with our towels and I obviously couldn't take it on rides with us. The lockers were in an easy to get to location so that seemed like the best thing to do with it.
Next we headed to the splash pad area and grabbed a table to leave our water bottles and towels. The kids were thrilled to explore the splash pad area. JP loved all the little fountains and sprayers and he and Ruthie both loved the small slide! Next we headed over to the lazy river! The lazy river is always my favorite water park feature! It took a little bit of juggling to figure out how to manage a float that had Ruthie, JP, and myself in it but we got it figured out and had a blast! (On a side note they have life jackets and puddle jumpers that you can use while you're there so I put one on JP while we were in the lazy river.)
After a spin through the lazy river Emmie and Ellie wanted to try out a slide. Ellie ended up being too short to go down the slide she wanted to ride on and the slide she could go down she didn't want to ride. (Being just under 48in is probably the worst time to go to Neptune Islands. Ellie was big enough to want to go down the tube slides but too short to go down them. She should be tall enough next summer though!)  Emmie loved the slide she chose to go down. Then she did a slide where you go down on your stomach on a mat and she was NOT a fan! We all headed back to the Lazy River afterwards. After that we met up with Danielle, Ainsley, and Anna (and Ainsley's big brother and his friend) and Danielle took the Emmie, Ainsley, and Anna to ride more slides and I hung with the little kids at the splash pad.

Many thanks to Danielle for getting pretty much all the pictures!

Anna, Ainsley, Emmie...sweet (silly) friends!

After some playtime we all headed out to eat lunch. You can't bring food into the park but they have a really nice, shady picnic area just outside of the entrance with a small playground and they just stamp your hand when you leave so you can get back in.

After lunch we hit up the splash pad again and then I took the oldest girls to do slides while Danielle watched the little ones. (Apparently she was lots of fun...JP talked about "Ms Danielle" the rest of the day!) I did the slide with the mats and one of the tube slides. Emmie stuck to the tube slides, and Anna and Ainsley did all the slides...including the big tall one that had a straight drop down! After that we headed back to splash pad area and collected everyone else to go lay around some more on the Lazy River.

We were getting ready to get a treat and then leave after a few rounds on the Lazy River and Emmie decided that maybe she did want to try the big blue slide. Neither one of the other big girls wanted to do it again so Emmie, who is scared of EVERYTHING, decided she would do it herself! I grabbed treats for the my other kids and then we sat at the bottom of the slide and waited for Emmie. I was SURE she would be walking back down the stairs before long telling me she decided she didn't want to do it. But no. This girl is braver than we (or she) thinks! She slid down the slide...jaw clenched and terrified but she did it! Poor thing was shaking when she got off! She didn't want to do it again anytime soon but said maybe when she was older she would try it again! I was SO proud of her for being brave! I told her later that I thought maybe she would decided not to do it and she said she thought about coming back down but she really wanted to see what the slide was like!


We got Emmie her treat, changed our clothes, and headed out about 4:30. We all had a great time!

PS. They also have a wave pool but there was an issue with the filtration system so it wasn't open today. Ellie was super sad about that.

Danielle and I survived the waterpark with 6 kids under 8 and 2 teenagers!

Kiawah Island 2018

We spent our first week after school got out at the beach! We got out of school Thursday, Ben and Ruth got in to Columbia on Friday and we headed to Kiawah on Saturday. We have gone to Kiawah almost every year since I was 7 and we absolutely love it. I am so happy that I get to share such a fun part of my childhood with my kiddos!

When Ben and Ruth arrived I was in the middle of a packing frenzy so I set engineer Ben to work getting the games and books to fit in the bags I had picked out to put them in and Ruth helped the kids make brownies to take to the beach for Grandaddy. Ellie loved getting to lick the spoon!

Ben, Ruth, and I took an evening walk around the neighborhood and found a chicken! I want to figure out which neighbor she belongs to...I want fresh eggs!

Hanging out with Aunt Ruth and Uncle Ben

Saturday morning we went to Famous Toastery for breakfast. It never disappoints!

As soon as we arrived at the beach Saturday afternoon, the kids and I headed to the beach for a few minutes.

Sunday Gin-g and Fred came for the afternoon and we celebrated Ellie and JP's birthdays. Their actual birthdays are in July and September but it's hard to find a time to get everyone together and Ellie LOVES celebrating at the beach so we go with it!

The grandparents and grandkids...Ruth stuck her bump in the picture :) We can't wait to welcome baby in October/November!

We had cake and homemade ice cream to celebrate the birthdays. Gin-g always does a great job with the cakes and my dad and the other guys make an excellent cookies and cream ice cream!

JP had to help Grandaddy get the churn ready.

Most important part of churning ice cream...taste testing the oreos!

JP got a scooter and so Ben and Ruth gave him a helmet. As you will see from the pics the rest of the week he LOVED his helmet and wore it all.the.time.

The kids and I quickly settled into a lovely routine for the week. Beach in the morning then we would head to the pool at the house around lunch time and eat lunch at the pool and they would play for awhile. Then while JP napped the other kids would play or we would ride bikes. Then in the afternoon we would do the park, beach, or pool...it varied depending on the day! The kids usually headed in for showers right before dinner.

Ruth and my mom generally did the beach and pool with us. The guys played golf 2 mornings during the week. Ben and my dad would ride bikes in the morning on the days they didn't play golf and Paul would come to the beach with us on those days. 

Beach fun!

Pool time!

Playground at Night Heron Park. Even more than the park, the kids loved going to the (air conditioned) Nature Center.

Ruth and thegirls woke up early one morning and played a fun game of Battleship on the driveway.

We had lots of relaxing time too where we just laid around.

JP has a spot on the couch, his football, and his sister reading him his book about rescue vehicles...life is good.

Always good to wear your helmet while watching TV...safety first!

JP watching golf with the guys.

They guys had to do some work.

Franklin chillin by the pool...but not too close to the pool of course.

We had lots of good food at the beach thanks to my mom who made countless trips to the grocery store to keep us all fed! She also cooked all our meals! 

We also had some special treats along the way...

Aunt Ruth and Uncle Ben brought the cotton candy machine all the way from Mississippi!

Popsicles were a favorite afternoon snack.

JP...always safe wearing his helmet at meals!

When Gran's around you get to eat ice cream out of the carton. (For the record, Gran would NEVER have let HER children do this!)

Watermelon was a big hit with JP!

What? You don't eat your watermelon with your whole face?

The girls got Uncle Ben to comb their hair one night after baths. :)

One evening after dinner we biked over to Night Heron park for a magic show. At different points during the show Emmie and Ellie were both picked to be volunteers which thrilled them!

We always take our own bikes to the beach but this year we also rented a bike with a tow cart on the back so JP could "ride" too. We rented through the resort and had a great experience. The bike was waiting for us at the house when we arrived and they picked it back up the day we left. Having the tow cart was fabulous and I know the kids loved it too! (And I'm definitely wondering why we never did this before!)

Ruthie upgraded from the scooter to a bike with training wheels right before we left for the beach and she loved getting to practice!

Ellie hopped into the tow car whenever she could!

Emmie is our only non-training wheel bike rider and it was so fun to explore the island with her.

Emmie and I went to the Marsh Tower two different times. Early in the week we went with Ruth and then the last day it was just us as we did the tower and then went in search of an alligator!

JP was very insistent that he bring his train tracks to the beach to play with Uncle Ben. He carefully packed them all up and put them by the door about 2 days before we left. (And then he also piled every single thing in his bed beside the door too! He was going to make sure we didn't leave him behind!) Uncle Ben didn't disappoint...he built a great track and gave me a list of pieces I needed to buy so that the track would be even better!

One of my favorite things about Kiawah is that we always have lots of nature sightings. We saw dolphins almost every day when we were at the beach and they were pretty close to us a few times!

We saw this bird a few different days on our bike ride to the park.

We saw lots of deer. There was one that we saw often in the back yard and then we saw some other ones around the island!

in the dunes

in front of a house while we were riding by on our bikes

Generally the golfers see some alligators while they're playing golf but this year we got to the last day and hadn't had any deer sightings! Emmie and I took a bike ride to the tower and then decided we'd head back to the area we stayed a few years ago because we had often seen a gator in the pond over there. Well as soon as we left the tower we saw a gator in a nearby pond! 

 Emmie still wanted to go to the other part of the island to see if we saw the gator over there. I'm so glad we did because we found one! It was swimming under a bridge as we went by so we were able to get a close up look at it!

And that's all for Kiawah Island 2018!