I do have to say, I was really bad at taking pictures during their trip... luckily I think they got quite a few so hopefully they'll share some with me. Although I did see a couple of pictures they took of Jace and I at the beach and I made a mental note to never again where a flowy shirt to the beach on a windy day... could start some rumors of baby #2 on the way with those, yikes!
Last Tuesday Tate left for a Florida business trip a few hours before I picked up my mom and youngest brother Alex who is 11. We ran into an accident on the way home from the airport so by the time we got to our place it was dinner time so they just got settled and spent some time fawning over Jace while I made shredded chicken tacos. I think they really enjoyed just sitting around our house playing with Jace since they hadn't seen him in over three months. Jace was really excited to see them, and seemed to recognize both of them pretty quickly, especially Alex who he thinks is super hilarious and is always chasing around.
Wednesday morning headed down to Charleston to walk around a bit. We walked along the Battery for a while admiring all the old Charleston style homes. We also walked along a small part of King Street and had lunch at Bubba Slye's sandwich shop. My mom and brother really wanted to learn a bit about Charleston history so we decided to take a horse drawn carriage tour around town. These tours are really popular and there are many different companies who do them but my mom had heard good things about Old South Carriage Company so we went with them. The tours are completely random and you don't know which route you got until you're already boarded. The city has to send each carriage on different routes to make sure there aren't too many horses walking around the same part of town at once I guess.
We ended up getting what is probably the most interesting route, the one that takes you past Rainbow Row (colorful row style homes built in colonial times), the Battery (antebellum era houses, built after Revolutionary War but before Civil War), and past old churches, dungeons, cobblestone roads, and cemetarys dating back to the 1600s. Our tour guide was alot of fun and it ended up being a great way to learn about the city while having fun and enjoying the weather. I was a little worried about Jace fussing and ruining other people's tours, but he ended up falling asleep on my lap and slept for over an hour while we toured, what a blessing! That night I made Tilapia at home for dinner and we baked some cookies for dessert and to give to the neighbor for helping install our door. Alex was pretty excited about baking cookies since I guess he's only done it once before... unlike Jace who at this point is like: "Really mom? Cookies again? I think you've had enough..."
The next morning we decided we would stay around our area and do something that would be fun for Jace so we headed to downtown Summerville and walked around looking at the little shops and then took Jace to Doty Park to play for a bit. We wanted to make sure Jace got a nap that day since it was skipped the day before (unless you count the carriage ride) so I colored my moms hair while he napped. After that we had an early dinner at home and headed back to downtown Summerville for the Third Thursday festival that goes on here year round. The third Thursday of every month, they have live music and art vendors and food vendors lining the streets of historic Summerville from 5-8pm so we wanted to check it out. It was nice to go to because I found out alot more about the shops in our area... including an art studio that I really liked that had some great paintings for reasonable prices. I really liked one of the artists and his paintings of downtown Charleston and after chatting with him a bit I decided to go home and find a place to put one of his pieces, and then come back and make a decision. My mom found a different artist whos paintings she liked and ended up buying two of her pieces so she could take a piece of Charleston home with her.
Friday I got a text to wake me up that my longtime friend Ashley had her first baby, an adorable girl named McCall. I was so emotional when I saw the pictures she sent me. She's the first of my "pre-Jace" friends to have a baby, and it brought me back to those first moments as a parent and what a crazy ride this motherhood thing really is. I'm so happy for her and her husband!
The good news doesn't end there... later that day I got a call from my best friend Alli to tell me that she and her boyfriend of over 10 years had gotten engaged. Ahhh... I think I speak for everyone when I say "It's about time!"... just kidding ;) They're planning to get married Summer 2012 and she asked me to be co-maid of honor with her sister and asked Jace to be her ring bearer. So excited!!
That day, my mom, brother, Jace and I were planning on touring Boone Hall Plantation but last minute decided to go to the beach since it was going to be close to 90 degrees. We headed to Isle of Palms for the day and even though the coast is a bit colder this early in the year, it was still nice beach weather. Jace liked playing in the sand and running around ankle deep in the water. We ate lunch at Coconut Joe's overlooking the ocean, and of course I had to have a Carolina Burger there just like when Mandi visited last month. We spent the majority of the day there and got home right before Tate got home from his business trip. We decided to grill for dinner so Tate and I ran out and grabbed some freshly caught shrimp from the Coastal Produce market by our house and also picked up some chicken drummies and corn on the cob. We had a great big southern meal that night and it was delicious.
Saturday my mom and Alex wanted to do some more touring of downtown Charleston, but I was worried about how Jace would handle it so we all headed down there together and then went our seperate ways for a couple of hours. My mom and Alex toured the Nathaniel Russel House and the Exchange house and Provost Dungeon. It sounds like all of that was really interesting! Tate, Jace and I walked around downtown a bit and ended up spending quite a bit of time on Market Street going through the blocks of unique outdoor vendors. We saw alot of stuff we considered buying, but only ended up buying some spices and red beans and rice from one place.
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| This is how excited Jace was about Market Street vendors selling spices... |
After my mom and Alex were done we picked them up and drove over to Red's Ice House on Shem Creek. We'd heard great things about this place so we were eager to try it out. One of our neighbors told us they have freshly caught seafood and that dolphins swim past your table while you eat. I thought he way lying... but it turns out he wasn't. As soon as we got there we saw two dolphins go jumping by. Crazy! I'd never seen dolphins in the wild before, and it was pretty cool to watch while we relaxed. Jace enjoyed watching all of the dogs that were dining on the porch with their owners while he had a kids meal, complete with a HUGE cup of whole milk. He's still drinking mostly soy but I'm trying to do a gradual transition and was very pleased to see he had no reaction even with a huge 16 oz cup of it. He also loved stealing ice cubes and the lemon out of my water glass. It was his first lemon experience and he LOVED it. He tried to eat the entire lemon, rind and all, and didn't even make a sour face.
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| Shem Creek, just missed the dolphins in this pic... |
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| Waiting on the rooftop for our table |
On Sunday we made a big breakfast and headed over to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens which is right on the border of Summerville and Charleston along the Ashley River. It's one of the oldest (maybe the oldest?) garden in America and has alot of history with it. I had seen pictures and gotten recommendations to go there, but didn't really "get it" and why I had to pay $15 just to get in. But once I was there it all made sense. Never in my life have I seen such a beautiful place. The plantation has a huge natural garden filled with all sorts of trees and flowers I've never seen and you can spend a good chunk of time just walking through it reading about the history of each spot. Alex and my mom went on a train ride around the whole plantation to sight see while T, J and I walked through the gardens. We remembered to take a couple of pictures but they don't do the place any justice at all.
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| Squinty smiles... |
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| The British Attack of 1780 |
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| Ashley River |
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| Watch out for aligators! |
At one spot there was a sign showing where the British attacked in 1780, which was pretty interesting. As things change all around us the one thing that is the same is Magnolia gardens which have looked pretty much the same for hundreds of years. The plantation is still owned by the Drayton family who originally built on the land, and the man in charge of the grounds is the grandson of one of the men who planted several of the trees and took care of the garden during the Civil War (when he was a slave on the property). There were a few slave houses remaining on one part of the property, but they weren't really true examples of slave housing since they were lived in by employees long after the Civil War and were probably fixed up a bit during that time.
There was also a petting zoo that housed all the animals that would be found on the plantation such as: deer, ducks, chickens, boars, horses, goats, peacocks, parrots, turtles, snakes, etc. Jace really enjoyed chasing after the peacocks feathers and trying to get close to the disgusting pig. My favorite were the mini ponies galloping through the field, so cute!
My mom surprised Tate and I by buying us a southern cookbook out of the giftshop (yum!) and buying Jace an adorable board book called "Goodnight Charleston" which I've been wanting for him for quite a while. One of the places featured in it is Magnolia Gardens... along with other places we've been. The book in written by the Good Night Our World series, they have several other books from around the country, click here if you want to check if there is one for a place your kids have lived or traveled to. That night we grilled some jerk chicken and steaks and baked some delicious beer bread.
Monday morning we headed back to the art gallery to buy the painting I'd wanted. I'm really glad I ended up getting the one I did. It's a painting of a bed and breakfast on the corner of Meeting Street and East Battery that I've always noticed when driving by and now I have this part of our lives to take with me wherever the future leads us. There are no Charleston style homes other than in Charleston so having some artwork to represent this area means alot to me. Speaking of Charleston artwork, I also developed a picture I took at Magnolia Gardens and it's already matted and framed on our photo collage wall in the living room.
We ate lunch outside a little cafe called the Eclectic Chef, across from the gallery. The food was really good! Jace spent most of lunch begging grandma for the mandarin oranges in her salad though... to which she happily obliged. She's alot nicer about sharing her food than I am I guess. :)
That night we decided we better go out to dinner for our last night so we went to Gilligan's Seafood and Raw Bar, which is one of our favorite places for seafood nearby. We tried she-crab soup which is really popular here and all I can say is "eh". Other than that we ate a variety or foods such as: oysters, shrimp, mahi-mahi sandwich, blt salads, hush puppies, crab stuffed salmon... etc. The extra fun surprise was that kids eat free on Mondays which we weren't aware of... I love surprises like that.
There were plenty of other places I'm sure my mom and Alex would have loved to see while they were here, but you can only do so much in one trip without getting tuckered out. I'm sure they'll be back at some point to try out the things we didn't make it to like the Aiken-Rhett House, Boone Hall Plantation, Folly Beach, and Cypress Gardens. Oh, and they didn't try Chick-fil-a... that's reason enough to come back!
** Sorry if this post is all over the place or has several typos... I was tired to begin with, but then Jace woke up crying and needed to be put back to sleep 4 times during me writing this. Poor thing, I think he's cutting a particularly painful tooth tonight.
1 comment:
Sounds like a fun time!! This made me even more excited for my visit!! :)
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