My 30th Birthday - Isle of Palms

My 30th birthday was this past Thursday, on June 17. To celebrate, we took a trip to Isle of Palms which is the beach right outside of Charleston, SC. Steve and I have had 2 different trips planned to Charleston before (complete with hotel reservations) - one for Valentines Day in 2003 and another for our 5th wedding anniversary in 2007. We had to cancel both of those trips because of last-minute changed circumstances, and so Charleston has always been on my list of places I really want to go to. So we finally did it! It was such a great trip and wonderful time for the three of us. Not to mention that a 4-day weekend is always a treat!

We stayed in a condo that was just across the parking lot from the beach, and had the pool in between. The view from the deck



Ella explaining to me that it was time to go "swim in my pool"



We managed to hold her off about 10 minutes to somewhat unpack and get settled, then down to the pool we went!





We had a really fun dinner out, here's a pic of Ella in her chair - she's such a big girl now, no more high chairs in restaurants and we're lucky if we can contain her in a booster seat!



We stopped for ice cream for dessert on the walk home - Ella really enjoyed hers but then she dropped a bunch of her ice cream on the ground. She was such a good sport - she said "I dropped my ice cream and Mommy cleaned it up. All gone."



After we put Ella down for the night, Steve and I watched a movie. It was a really great day, the perfect way to turn 30.

We stayed for the weekend and spent lots of time on the beach. It was the most comfortable Ella has been on the beach or in the water. She loved it and we spent hours at a time on the beach. The water was perfect - it was very warm and the waves were so calm.

Many beach pics -























More to come from the rest of the trip!