We love Edisto Island. Located in South Carolina, about an hour south of Charleston and about an hour north of Hilton Head, it’s our family’s little slice of heaven. It’s not popular, many people ride bikes to get places, and the beaches are not crowded…and that’s why we like it! The island prides itself on its unspoiled natural beauty everywhere you turn and the way it has made “time stand still” with its many 1950s-60s beach cottages still standing.

While packing for our family  trip this past May, Priya brought up the fact that this is the first time we have vacationed solo, just our family, in quite a long time. I still haven’t gone back in my head to figure out exactly how long it’s been since we’ve traveled with just the six of us for company, but she was right; we usually bring parents, Uncle Jason, friends, or we’re visiting folks at our destination’s end. Not this time. This round it was just us, and I found myself giddy with anticipation.

We were thrilled to break from our school year and hit the road! Staying in a small A-frame cottage two blocks from the beach we explored salt marshes, wandered dirt paths with live oaks overhead, cooked coastal dinners, rode bikes until our bums hurt, and made it our tradition to spend every evening together watching the sun fall into the ocean. Dusk meant color flooding everything in sight, and we found this to be the ideal time of day for treasure hunting.

We traveled to nearby Charleston and Fort Sumter for a day tour and then returned to our sweet island where we dreamed about owning a beach shack. The time away from the every day was incredibly good for our soul….so was the seemingly sketchy southern barbeque place we dared to try!

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I have to begin this post with a flashback–six years ago, standing on the same Live Oak covered road. I had dreamed of going back since, and we’re still scratching our heads as to why it took so long for us to visit once more. I think life just took over for a few years as we struggled to stay afloat, but we’ve made the decision that we will be back very soon and often.

Here we were six years ago soon after we became a pack of six–back when the babies were still babies….

And here they were this year at the island entry:

When vacationing near water our tradition is to head right for the beach…

Vacationing with older kids, we find ourselves in a new phase of life. No naps or early bedtimes.  Those dreams of “chilling” while they rest, or sitting on the porch while reading a book just really aren’t feasible right now. Since we don’t really do TV, our kids wanted to GO and EXPLORE from the moment we woke up until they crashed in the evening. They are serious outdoor lovers with a heart set on adventure seeking, which we also love, but we do cherish those moments of relaxation.  Brett and I are realizing we have to shift our view of “time away from it all,” while they’re this age. We’re okay with that. :)

My little history nerds in the making….

A favorite memory of mine from this trip was Brett and I packing up our coffee and sneaking out to watch the sun rise over one of our favorite places, Botany Bay Plantation. We were running to get to the beach on time, and had three other photographers right behind us!

The colors were unreal. For you photography nerds out there….we underexposed these shots, and the only adjusts to these were exposure and fill light.  No color adjustments necessary.

Caught ‘gramming. ;)