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Family Matters

Isle of Palms – Thursday

by Bingle on Jun.15, 2007, under Family Matters

After breakfast, Tony and Anita escaped again, this time to tour the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown. Around lunch time, Tim and Tiffany headed off to the airport to start their journey home. Unfortunately, their flight out of Charleston was delayed quite a while and they ended up missing their connecting flight out of Charlotte. Overall their trip home took over 8 hours.

Karen and Ashley rode a couple of bikes they had found under the house down to the Isle of Palms city hall to take advantage of a free t-shirt offer we had found on the city’s web site. They rode down the beach about a mile and a half. They had a head wind the whole way there and the bikes have seen better days, so they were pretty worn out by the time they got there. Luckily, having a head wind on the way there meant that they had a tail wind the whole way back. While they were gone, Amber, Alyssa, and I played in the pool.

After lunch most folks either hit the beach or the pool (or both). Karen and I were headed to “Bird Island” with the girls when a local warned us that the tide was already coming in and we’d likely have rough time getting back if we went out there, so we decided to head down the beach instead. We saw several people kite boarding while out on our walk. One guy was pretty good at doing flips and such. While they made it look easy, I’m sure it takes a lot out of you.

Karen tried to take the girls out boogie-boarding again after dinner while the tide was coming in, but there must have been a storm out to sea or something because the tide was really high. Overall, folks saw a couple of palm trees, a lounge chair, and a cooler all being swept towards the inlet. Needless to say, Karen didn’t end up taking the girls boogie-boarding after all.

The evening hours saw some games of Cartegena, Rummy, and (to the bemusement of Tony and Anita) a rousing game of Pit – complete with bell, and folks working on their contributions to the memory books. The fresh air must have taken a toll on all of us, because we all made it an early evening and were in bed by midnight.

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Isle of Palms – Wednesday

by Bingle on Jun.13, 2007, under Family Matters

Shark!

When we went out for our morning boating and shell hunting at low tide, we found out that someone had spotted a shark in the shallows. Soon enough we had spotted it not far from where Tim and I were wading and where Karen and the girls were boating. It was a little shark, but we were careful to keep an eye on it to make sure it was going to leave us alone (which it did).

Several of us ended up out on the farthest sand bank, which we had nicknamed Bird Island. While out there, Alyssa found another intact and partially bleached sand dollar to add to our collection. We also found a couple of whelk shells we initally thought were empty. Turns out some hermit crabs had beaten us to the empty shells and had set up residence within. We also found 3 starfish in the tidal pools out on the sandbar.

Karen and Ashley rescued a pair of bikes from the storage area under the house and eventually had them working enough to ride around in circles out on the hard sand while the tide was coming in. They had just decided to take them back to the house when the wind started whipping up. We ended up having a quick storm roll through, complete with wind and rain.

We got a couple of games in before dinner, including Abalone, Blokus, and Cartegena.

After dinner we had a short talent show. Abbie Hatfield sang Baa-Baa Black Sheep and A-B-Cs, Amber Hatfield sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the Bingle girls sang Until That which is a song that Ashley wrote the words for and is set to the tune of I Just Can’t Wait To Be King, Chris and Mom sang something, Linda showed off her Artist’s Trading Cards and gave the group two memory books for all of us to contribute to, and Don closed the show with spoon hanging and a reading of his award winning short story “My Dad”.

– Rich

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Isle of Palms – Tuesday

by Bingle on Jun.13, 2007, under Family Matters

After breakfast, Mike, Tim, Karen, and I took the 5 girls out in the ocean in 3 inflatable boats that a couple of us had brought. Two of the boats had oars, so we tied the smallest non-oared boat to the largest oared boat and tried to row around in the shallows protected by the sand bars at low tied. Unforunately, the water level was such that the adults spent a large amount of the time just getting themselves ungrounded.

Also during low-tide, there was another massive shell hunt performed. Again, we came up with lots of the fan shaped shells and occupied whelks. Karen found some living creature of unknown origins, and I found my “find of the day”, an intact (yet deceased) sand dollar.

Tony and Anita took advantage of all of the free baby-sitting and took a side trip over to Fort Summter, while Don and Linda took a drive and went shopping.

Before dinner, we took the Bingle girls down to the ocean during high tide and let them try some boogie-boarding. I seemed a bit heavy for the boards and was pretty unsuccessful, so ended up jumping the breakers with Alyssa while Karen, Ashley, and Amber got fairly good at riding the waves into shore.

Mom and I were sitting outside after dinner when I spotted what I thought was a dolphin. Turned out it wasn’t a dolphin, it was three of them! I quickly went inside and announced my discovery and grabbed Linda’s binoculars and we spent the next 20 minutes scanning the waters with the binoculars and various cameras.

After dinner, we played a 12 person game of “Up and Down the River” and then an 11 person game of double-deck elimination “Up and Down the River”. The night ended with Tim, Mike, Chris, and I playing a quick game of Cartegena.

– Rich

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