Our First Family Vacation

The day before Easter we hit the road and headed to the Carolinas to see some family and enjoy spring break. We left at o'dark thirty, as the Edwards family likes to say.

Logan did great in the car. Rob stayed in the back seat to keep him company (thanks Daddy!). I took this picture at the North Carolina welcome center. He had a wicked alfalfa.

We stayed at my sister Laura's house. She also had a baby last year. Emma was born a couple months after Logan on Christmas Eve.

On Easter Sunday we went to my brother Jason's house for brunch. His little girl Stella is in the background eating her breakfast.
She recently turned 1.

After eating a most scrumptious meal (Jay is the best cook) we got back in the car and made tracks for South Carolina. Rob's Aunt and Uncle own a home on Seabrook Island, just south of Charleston, and they graciously allowed us to stay there. It was pretty sweet. We met up with Rob's brother Dave and his wife Rachel and their little man, Chaucer, whom Logan took a liking to.

If they had a cuteness contest it would be hard to decide the winner.

Besides relaxing at the house and playing the Wii, we also took in some of the sites we didn't see the last time we were here for New Years 2007. This is Fort Moultrie located at the opening of the Charleston Harbor. It saved the city in 1776 from being occupied by the British. Across the water from this site you can see Fort Sumter.

It was really windy and threatening rain but it held off. Unfortunately Logan was more intent on chewing his carrier than on looking at Mommy for a picture. We didn't realize his teeth were starting to come in. They made an appearance a couple days later.

This is Boone Hall Plantation. Even though the home is open to the public for touring a family still owns it so the upstairs is off limits and there wasn't as much to see as the website promised. It was good to get a little history lesson anyways.

The worst thing though was that the tour guide was from South Jersey - no drawling southern accent to add to the effect!

The miniseries North & South was filmed here. The boat scene from The Notebook (sigh!) was also filmed on the creek behind the house. Above is us in front of the marshy part of the creek. Below is Dave and Rachel in front of a super old tree that was back there too.
I forget how many hundreds of years it is.

Here is the avenue of the oaks leading up to the plantation house. They believe that when filmmakers were scouting sites for Gone with the Wind that they based the avenue leading up to Twelve Oaks on this road here.

Spanish moss drips from all the old trees down here. It lends an eerie, old quality to the area. As does slave cabins still standing where they were originally built.

On the car ride back to the house we stopped at Starbucks for a quick break while Dave watched Logan in the car and had some fun. Here's a video of Pharaoh Edwards.

On our second to last day in Seabrook we had a nice partly sunny day so we hit the beach - Logan's first time there.

Chaucer had a good time too, playing in the water, digging in the sand...

We started heading back North after our beach day and after a 2 day drive, we made it back in time for my little sister Kelly's wedding reception in NJ. She had a photographer there so hopefully I'll be able to get copies and post some photos. The next day we met up with family that was in town and went to Longwood Gardens (we tried the Philly zoo first but it was a madhouse - couldn't even make it to a parking lot). Here is Kelly and Rob with my niece Ava.

Tried to get a shot with my niece Gabby too but by then Logan had discovered grass and wasn't interested in anything else.

There were some really beautiful cherry blossom trees we all enjoyed too. When the wind blew the little white petals would fly in the air - looked like something that could be in a movie.


And that sums up our very first family vacation!