I had grand plans of thoroughly documenting this summer. The fun trips, the lazy days at home, the parties with friends…everything. It didn’t happen. That makes me sad because this has been a really great summer. Lots of the things that Collin and I planned have happened. Some things that we planned didn’t happen. And, of course, things happened that we didn’t plan. But it was a fun summer and just so I don’t completely forget it, I’m going to use this post as a photo dump.
James Island. June. Highlights: We camped through our first tropical storm. We fell in love with James Island all over again. We visited the Angel Oak for the first time {WOW!}. We learned not to ever ask Lilah Drew to spit something out {she will…all over everyone near her}. Sweet Caroline turned four. FOUR. Unbelievable. We reaffirmed that we really like camping with family.
We spent many afternoons and evenings right here in this pool. We call it our country club. I think we’ll have shirts and visors made. 😉 We are VERY thankful for times in this backyard with these people!
Jesus performed a MIRACLE in this guy’s life this summer. Just yesterday I sat and listened to April describe all that has happened, and I am BLOWN AWAY. There needs to be a giant blog post detailing all of it and shouting praises and Thank Yous to the LORD because of what has happened. HE is SO Good! {And that post will come…}
Cousin Beach Week 2013!! LOVE LOVE LOVE. Favorite week of the year, hands down. Gosh, I love these babies and I love living with them for a week.
Here’s a slideshow of more from the beach week:
Collin and I went away this summer WITHOUT the children. One of my very favorite things about this career that the Lord has blessed us with is that we get to travel a lot with work. I love to travel and combining work with travel just makes me all kinds of crazy happy. We joke around all of the time that we are going to sell the house, pack up the Airstream, and photograph our way across the country. Obviously we won’t do that. We love our clients here in Florence too much. But really? All four of us would love it. Maybe in retirement. =) Anyway, all of that to say that we do travel a fair amount, but when we are traveling we are always working. We love meeting up with clients for sessions in unique locations, and since we started camping we have been blessed to be able to do that more and more. But you know what? We haven’t had a non-working vacation since 2007. I was floored when I looked back at the schedule and realized that! And I’m not complaining at all, but a few weeks ago Collin and I decided that we needed to get away. Just the two of us and NO sessions. We settled on a beach that I’ve been wanting to visit for the past few years, Tybee Island. One of the things I love about Tybee is all of the cute little cottages. Seriously, if you aren’t familiar with the place, look them up {search Mermaid Cottages}. By far the cutest little beach town I have ever seen. We thought about staying in one of those cottages but then realized that we could carry our own cute little cottage down there and the entire trip would only cost $175. Yep, the Airstream won out. And I do love our little cottage so much. We rode bikes everywhere, ate some of the best seafood I’ve had in a long time, read books, napped, sat on beaches, watched sunsets on deserted beaches…and entertained NO children. It was amazing. I loved it. And I never want to take my children there. It’s our place. We also decided that a non-working, no kids vacation will be something that we make a priority every year.
This week we will have our last official summertime camping trip. We’re going to a brand new place and meeting up with old friends that we haven’t seen in way too long for what we pray will be a fun, beautiful session! And then junk gets REAL here in the studio because FALL is coming. And Fall in a photography studio is insanity. Really fun insanity. We’re looking forward to all of it!
Love this post! Awesome summer memories! 🙂