Fun on the Water with the Estills!

This weekend was one of the reasons I love living in this city! We're surrounded by H2O and people just love comin' to visit in the summer! Hanna and John offered to come down for the weekend and bring their boat. If you know me then you know how much I LOVE being on a boat and I gladly said COME ON DOWN! I love having them around without a boat, but that is just icing on the cake!

We were on the water by 10:00am and packin' "heat". Hanna and I had the following items in tow:

• chicken fingers
• chicken salad sandwhiches
• Capri Suns
• BEER
• Water
• Brownies
• "Dog Food" (this choc/peanut butter/chex goodness!)
• grapes
• pringles
• honey mustard pretzels
• sunscreen
• towels
• life jackets
• more sunscreen
  

My child takes after his mama and loved every minute of the day. He was such a trooper! We were planning on taking him back to land for an afternoon nap, but he was enjoying it so much we just kept him out there with us. He fell asleep in my lap and then was transferred to the floor on a towl at around 2:30 and slept like a ROCK until 4:30ish. And that is when we all began to fear for our lives. Well, not so much everyone else, but this mama was some kinda scared!

You see, we had driven about an hour and a half from where we started. We cruised out to Johns Island, Kiawah River, and finally to Folly Beach. We had been hanging out for a while on a beach which was really a bird sanctuary near Folly when DNR rolled up. We all 4 got a warning ticket for being somewhere we weren't supposed to be (Bird Sanct.). That goodness we got warnings, b/c each ticket was worth $475. Whew!

Now, that's not what had me so "spun up". It was the freakin' storm of the century that we could see in the not so distance and were driving straight towards it! We knew we'd be getting into some rain on the way back, but had no idea how bad it would get. Henry was up by this point and the bolts of lightning were coming down and the "funder" was booming. The rain was spittin' so hard it felt like needles. I had Henry in the floorboard of the boat all covered up and was trying to be cool as to not alarm him. I kept looking at Hanna going "i'm scared" and she was beginning to laugh histerically like she tends to do in crisis situations. Kinda of a problem we both have. Anyway, Hanna was by John trying to help him see and Brad was too.

They decided at this point to get to the nearest dock and just run for cover. Well, we veered off the channel and the motor started dragging. And I was near tears. Hanna's still laughing! Go figure! We dredged through and made it to about the ricketiest dock you've ever seen. We run up under the tin, yes TIN, roof and just wait it out. Did I mention that there was some sort of power voltage box on this dock? Oh yea, we're just sitting ducks at this point. We were there about 20 minutes in the downpour when we finally saw some blue skies up ahead. The rain began to taper off and we pumped the boat of all the rain water and headed back to some dry land. It was 5:30 by now. And my sweet baby boy didn't make one peep the entire day! He thought the FUNDER was cool and kept saying "we takin' a shower mama" during the downpour. Amazing!

I never let on to him that I was afraid b/c I knew he would be afraid and Brad would have beat my arse! I would have been just fine had Henry not been there! But he was and I was in "Mama Bear" mode. A BIG thank you to John for getting us all home safe and sound yesterday. You are a great Captain!

So while it's great to live in a place with so much water, you also have to be prepared for a nasty thunderboomer to pop up at any second in the summer months. I hope I never have to experience that again in all my days!

We were all "SPENT" last night! We ordered pizza and a movie and were all in bed by 10:00! Such a fun weekend with 2 of our favorite people ever! Henry is pretty much obsessed with his Aunt Hanna and Uncle John and I think they "kinda" like him too!

This is my favorite pic of the day! He literally did not move a muscle for a solid hour and a half.

Thank you Hanna and John for such a fun weekend!