Summer Vacation 2010: Hilton Head - Day 7

8/26/2010 - The End
After finally having a night of sleep without Darren's snoring, we all slept in to prepare for our last day in Hilton Head.  I guess "slept in" is relative... for me/us, we got up about 9am and Rebecca hooked us up with some yummy pancakes.  We debated on whether we should hit the beach or the pool and decided the pool was more fun for Isaac.  No qualms here... I'd gotten enough of a workout getting to the beach other days.  As you may have already read, the pool was much more accessible and much easier.  We figured if we had time, we would hit the beach that evening for an after-dinner stroll and kiss it good-bye.

How you doin'?

Water buddies all week long.

So it was a quiet morning at the pool, then the usual lunch and naps.  Since we didn't get much shopping time in the night before, we headed back to the outlets. We sat through one last torrential down-pour in the parking lot before attempting to unload kids and stroller.  After hitting a few of our targeted shops, we landed in a Crocs store that smelled like a Goodyear factory.  How anyone could stand to work 8 hours or more amongst that horrendous odor is beyond me.  I had a headache after 5 minutes and felt the need to get my 4-month-old-unable-to-express-her-opinion daughter out of there.  I wouldn't have been surprised to see her unbuckle herself and learn to crawl out of sheer life-saving necessity.

Me and my Ella.

After the outlets we scored some Chic-fil-a for dinner and rushed back to squeeze in both that last walk on the beach I mentioned earlier, as well as a final evening swim for Isaac.  We capped the evening with some ice cream and watched a little of The Barnyard before Isaac crashed.  Rebecca soon followed and I stayed up packing, then blogging, and packing some more with SportsCenter providing some atmosphere -- significant because Albert Pujols hit the 400th homerun of his career that night.  Nice work, Albert!
I hit the sack around 1:00am.  Vacation was over.  I think we all had fun.

p.s. - I was just kidding about Darren snoring.  I never heard him once at night.  Kaitlin will testify otherwise.  :-)

Today's Good Read: John 16:31-33

The End.

Summer Vacation 2010: Hilton Head - Day 6

8/25/2010: I Think We're Alone Now
Well, at this point, typing this is fairly anti-climactic, but I started this report, and so I'm going to finish it.  Wednesday morning the Potters packed up and headed back to Roanoke.  Before they did, we had a quick photo shoot at a nearby resort gazebo, since we didn't have any pictures of us all together thus far.  After striking our poses, the Potters were off.
Us McMahons grieved momentarily for our loss.  For the Potters were a good people... to have along on vacation: Darren, always a good conversationalist, full of fun stories, a loving brother-in-law and uncle; Melanie, my beautiful sister-in-law, always incredibly cheerful and honest, kind enough to laugh at most if not all of my jokes; and their wonderful twin daughters Kristen and Kaitlin, servants at heart, care-takers of their cousins, 10-year-olds extraordinaire.  Ah yes, good peeps.  Rebecca, Isaac, Ella and I dwelled on this for at least 4 minutes before heading over to the pool.

A wink and a smile.

When it got too deep, Isaac just hitched a ride.

I'm kidding, the truth is that there probably wasn't a single time over the next two days that we returned to our unit from the pool or beach or wherever that Isaac didn't ask, "Are the girls here?  Are the girls back yet?"  Safe to say the Potters were missed dearly.

Back Row (left to right): Darren, Melanie
Front Row (left to right): Kristen, Kaitlin

That evening we returned to a restaurant we visited two years ago called Hudson's.  It's a great low-country restaurant with very good food and a view, if you're ever in the area.  After eating we hit the Tanger Outlets for a little shopping -- Isaac and Rebecca got some new kicks.  The shoe-shopping provided us a huge laugh as I noted on Facebook that day... after finding and eventually settling on a pair of Lightning McQueen (Cars movie) shoes that light up when you walk/run, I noticed Isaac eye-balling some Toy Story-themed shoes.  I quickly interjected his thoughts and said, "Isaac, those are just ugly."  From his rather calm, yet matter-of-fact tone, he seemed quite offended that I would say this about anything bearing the graven images of his beloved Toy Story friends.  His response... "Well I think you two are ugly."  I guess he figured Rebecca felt the same way about the shoes that I did.  Well, she did, and we laughed.

Today's Good Read: Exodus 20:4-6

Just plain ugly.