Sullivan Island Trip

Highlights of the trip going down: Andres woke up at 4am, on the drive down, and started singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt”. He announced North Carolina so all could wake up. We drove down from Queens in New York City to Sullivan Island South Carolina, outside of Charleston. We stopped for breakfast, and made it in 13 hours.

The beach was really good for kids, not too wavy and it took a long time to get deep. We went to the beach most days, and the boys did very well there. There are beautiful para boards flying around, I counted 13 last night. Will and Bart have a kite that mimics the action, and William got a chance to fly it some. They dig holes, wreck castles others make, and splash about. There’s a little kind of inland lake that they swim in too. The tide goes up and we have to move our chairs. I think William sat staring out into the ocean for a while, while I read, and Andres and Diana played in the surf.

I particularly enjoyed teaching my cousins to meditate. We go up to the 3rd floor porch in the shade and do mindfulness of breathing and metta for 20 minutes, with the birds chirping, people running by.

We have the second floor of a house, with AC, internet connection, DVD player, 4 rooms and 2 bathrooms, a nice kitchen, dinning room and living room. There is a screened in porch and a high deck. Di gave us the king sized bed, so the boys can sleep between us. Wes was here, and left Saturday. Celeste and Katie left Monday. Bevery and Dennis arrived Monday, with beach bikes.

I brought down the DS that Diana gave me, and the adults are competing for the best brain age. William and Andres are playing Star Wars, Mario Brothers and drawing. We watched Wall-E last night. We’ve all been having interesting dreams, but Diana got the worst of it, when she woke up to Andres slapping her in a dream. They have been rough housing with Will and Bart.

We went to the Middleton Place, which is an old estate outside of Charleston, which was a central showcase for the Middleton family in the 17th and 18th Century. It was pretty awesome, but much was lost on the boys. We chatted with the blacksmith, who educated me. I didn’t know Charleston was the biggest ports in those days and that rice was the cash crop of those times. Thinking about it, we get Carolina brand rice. I thought the south was all about cotton, but that wasn’t until the cotton gin was invented and could produce the quantities that made it feasible. He also talked about how the Union soldiers burnt and looted much of the south, and that Lincoln was complicit with that—he quoted a general’s journal, not Sherman’s, but another general, I forget. So I also felt kind of guilty about living in the north. I asked if there was any kind of Marshall Plan after the Civil War and he said no. He said Mississippi was a wealthy state before the Civil War. I felt bad for the south and the devastation after the Civil War, even though I vaguely remember a weird documentary called Sherman’s March, which wasn’t much about that, but did reference the devastation.

Miscellaneous activity: I went for a bike ride to the edge of Sullivan Island nearest Charleston. Dennis did a knife show, of his artistry. Andres has gotten lots of mosquito bites, and William too.

We went to the the Low Country Children’s Museum in Charleston. I really liked it. The boys seemed to like it. There was a castle room, with costumes and a crown and throne where Andres really liked the dragon cape and hood. There’s a puppet show area.

They had an art area that was well stocked with markers, glue, scissors, and magazines, colored paper and glitter. They had a room where you roll golf balls through a bunch of cool things. They had a water room, where there was a stream and you could race boats, and rain, with all kinds of watery educational things. Then there was a fishing boat that you could fish off of. Then they had a fake grocery store. The boys had a lot of fun and then they wanted to go back after we had lunch at Juanita Greenberg’s, who’s motto is “Oye vey, ole”.

I woke up Thursday morning to the sound of water. Andres had his underwear off and was sprinkling himself. Diana thinks he was having a dream that he was going to the bathroom, and therefore took off his pajamas and underwear.

Thursday we went to the Aquarium. The boys went through it in a couple of hours. I took lots of photos on my phone camera that I sent to facebook. Andres liked the snakes and William liked the sharks. They played with the snakes and action figures at Momma Brown’s BBQ that night.

Friday morning I went with Di, Will and Bart to the beach to see the dogs. Dogs are allowed on Sullivan Beach till 10am. We tossed the Frisbee around. There are jelly fish and other detritus on the low tide beach. We went to the beach later, and had a jolly old time on our last full day at the beach. I particularly loved watching the parasail boarders, who zoomed back and forth across the area before the sandbar. I loved playing Frisbee with Will and Bart, diving for the Frisbee. A little girl was being swept away in the current, not out to see, but away from the sand bar, and Will and Bart saved her.

Will and Bart were very nice to the boys and William and Andres absolutely loved playing with them. Di was a wonderful and generous host.

The drive to Annapolis was better in that it was 4-5 hours shorter than hoofing it all the way to NYC. Also we went in daytime, which helped me keep awake. The boys really enjoyed hanging out with Gretchen, Georgia and Kalamazoo. We had a lovely dinner and then ice crème. Gretchen knows the sweets store guy, and he gave the boys some free chocolate. They gave them free cookies at breakfast, so people are very nice to the boys. They’re at the park now, I came home to shower and use some free Annapolis wifi. Anyway, I’ll post this. I assume we’ll get home OK tonight and back to school, work and whatnot tomorrow.