Charleston, SC

We love a good tag-a-long trip with Aaron!  This time it was to Charleston, SC!  He was there for a software meeting.  We left early Sunday morning, and somewhere around 2:20, he let us stop for lunch at The Varsity in Atlanta :)  When our children were younger, and yes I realize 6 and 3 years old is still quite young, I use to refer to us as world travelers because the girls did so well in the car!  Well...Berkley has kinda thrown a kink into that lovely thing we had going and likes to pull the "I need to go pottttyyyyy!!!!!" or "I need to go potty sooooo bad!!!!" or "Mommy, my tummy hurts...baddddddd!!!" and then shortly thereafter the tears begin to fall and then comes the wailing!  Upon her request we stop for a bathroom break {multiple times} to which she {repeatedly} walks into the stop location, wherever it may be, ever so slowly, eyeing candy and food items that she will request upon her exit, spotting toys that she will be putting on her Christmas and birthday lists, then proceeding to play hopscotch on the tile floor...you know...not in a hurry WHATSOEVER to get to the bathroom that she was just in tears about 3 minutes prior!  Sigh...  I'm tellin' ya, she doesn't know how thankful she should be that she wasn't the firstborn! HA!  I was so rigid back then, sorry Kenadie :(  

After being in the car for about 6 hrs, you know this lunch was bound to have some tears in it!  If you don't put the ketchup STRAIGHT down the middle of a certain 3 year old's hot dog, you know, like NOT touching the bun at all, she'll  be SURE to let you know via heartbroken tears that she just simply cannot eat her hot dog!!!  Say what?!?  Thankful she's made happy by merely wiping the excess ketchup off the bun because she knows better than to think she's going to get a brand new hot dog!  

When we travel with Aaron, our schedule usually goes as follows: sleep in, {just till 8 or so :)}, eat breakfast in room, do baths/hair washing, maybe play a game or two, and be ready to meet Aaron for lunch around 11:30, spend his lunch break with him and then do some form of an afternoon activity while he goes back to his meeting.  The "activity" is usually a walked-to destination that Aaron gets us to, and then we navigate ourselves back with my handy-dandy iPhone.  I mean really...what did we do before iPhones?!?  I would love to meet the lady who navigated herself and small children around unfamiliar cities without one!!!  I couldn't do it!!!  Or maybe I could...keep reading :)

Today's afternoon activity, the aquarium!

 Her true, genuine smile, people.  And it's my favorite!  Maybe my favorite pic from the whole trip...even if there is a member from the lizard family in it!  Side note: I am OVERLY afraid of lizards and it can kinda make things bad on my family... :)

 Peace out, gecko!

Pretty sure I had not seen a Bald Eagle before...  We had to send Aaron a pic, you know, it IS his favorite animal :) SMTTT!

 Cheesy photo ops...count us in! :)

 That eye though...  I don't think Mr. Sea Turtle wanted me to take his picture!

Ahhh...you could walk right out and enjoy this view!

 And then right back in again for story-time with Berkley :)

I read it first, then she retold it!  Her version was WAY better than mine :)

Her favorite was the touch tank!  I sure loved seeing her interact and ask clever questions to the worker at this station!  Makes this homeschooling Mama happy to see her take charge of finding out things she wants to know :)  Not that she's ever had a problem with talking to anyone though, lol!  

 So, that part about navigating around cities we aren't familiar with comes up here!   My phone is kinda driving me bonkers {hint hint, Aaron} and when it got down to 25% left on my charge, I quit using it so that I would be able to get us back to our hotel with it.  We got done at the aquarium, and I had just texted Aaron to let him know we were headed back to the room.  As soon as he responded, it immediately went dead.  I saw his response come through as it was dying and it was much longer than a simple "ok!"  

Remember that part about Aaron getting us to the aquarium???  Yeah, well that's code for Lindsey wasn't really paying attention and was doing a little sight-seeing/picture-taking/photo-editing on the walk over!  Anxiety set in, but I knew I had no other choice than to TOTALLY rely on my 6 year old to get us back!!!  I made sure to not let her feel the pressure, ha!  I just kept politely and un-anxiety-ish-ly saying things like "Oh, that's pretty!  Do you remember seeing that on our way to the aquarium?" or "Oooo, that looks familiar, doesn't it girls!"  SAD, I know!  I learned  my lesson!  From now on, I WILL do better with taking in the directions because I'M SURE my phone will continue to fail me :)  Aaron, hint hint :)

The good news is, we made it back to the Francis Marion...

 passed a familiar cookie shop along the way...

 and decided we had totally earned a cookie and some rest!!!

We had not been back in the room 2 minutes and Aaron was forcefully coming in the door hoping to lay eyes on us :)  And he did :)  Because remember, it was probably 45 minutes prior that I had texted him that we were headed back to the room and I would let him know when we arrived.  It should have only taken us about 20 minutes but we got distracted by the cookie shop AND Berkley was ever so tired so I pretty much had to carry her back the entire way!  Whew!  Owning up to the fact that I am not Super Woman and WILL also ALWAYS take the stroller with us!!!  One would think I had those kinds of things figured out by now!  ALWAYS take your stroller when you have a 3 1/2 year old who is going to have exerted all of her energy at the aquarium and be too tired to walk back!

Rested and ready to go again!

 On our merry way to go for a horse-pulled wagon ride/tour of downtown Charleston!

 Except when we got there, we were two minutes late! Ouch!!!  Parent fail kinda mixed with concierge fail :(

So, we tried to collect ourselves and get happy by purchasing some random flavored Moon Pies, lol!  Those flavors being: the "all new" Salted Caramel, Vanilla, and Banana!

The next day was uneventful!  Thank goodness :)  We only had a half mile walk to the children's museum AND we put Berkley in her stroller!  My phone was fully charged and I didn't let it get anywhere close to 25% :)  The children's museum was a much easier hike, so believe it or not, I got us there all by myself :)  We didn't have to be dropped off by dear old Dad this time :)

 Probably one of our favorite museums thus far!

 This little girl was in heaven in the art room that she could totally have her way in!

 It was very much ALL pretend and role-play based, which my two LOVED!  We've been to some where they just have fun things for you to "do", not so much set up for boundless pretending.  Those are nice too, but Geeze Louise can my girls get into some major imaginative play!!!  Ha!!!  This was definitely the place for us!

We had fun playing here for at least 4 hours, and it was not a very large museum!  We headed back for a quick yogurt stop...

 and you guessed it, classical ballet dancing while waiting for Daddy to get out of his meeting :)

We headed back home the next day.  Fun long weekend spent in a city we had not experienced before :)  We enjoyed ourselves, but as usual, this girl {yours truly} was glad to return to her 'germ free' house and not sleeping on a bed and using showers/sinks/counter spaces and the likes thereof that thousands of others have also used!!!  Agh!!!  It's getting bad, y'all!!!  I get a little worse with each trip we go on!  About to spend a portion of my weekend google'ing all the ways to cut down on germs in hotel rooms!!!  And who knows...I may even need to blog about my findings :)

Happy Weekend!!!