Edisto Escape in Style

My Mom's group at church is awesome. LOVE THEM! I am so very grateful that God led me to that church and has blessed my life with these authentic, fun, supportive women.

Sue, the Mom's group organizer, is a big believer in taking time to renew the spirit and organizes an annual weekend retreat for the Moms to get away and spend the weekend doing whatever it is that helps them return to their normal life refreshed and happy.  She rents a big house on the beach in Edisto and spends the entire weekend doing what she loves, scrap booking, without interruption from her 3 kids or family. I was thrilled to accept the invite when she offered since it sounded great to me.... except for the scrap booking part. As the weekend drew nearer and different people heard I was going they all made me a little nervous since they described Sue and her friends as "die hard" and "serious" about their scrap booking.

In the end there were 13 of us. 8 scrap bookers, 2 sewers, 1 working on a family tree and then Missy and I. Here was the house...GORGEOUS!!

It was beautifully decorated and amazing... until the crazy scrap bookers arrived and took over the living room with craft tables and more paper than I have ever seen in my entire life. The second floor, which had (past tense) an adorable sitting room was turned into the sewing factory sweat shop. Absolute crafting insanity!!! But SO much fun!!!

Missy's face says it ALL in this photo...we were a tad bit overwhelmed the first night since neither of us partake in scrap booking. (She did get bitten by the bug though!! Proof is in the photo!)

Here we are being goofy on the third day when the weather was warm enough to go outside and enjoy the deck.

I am a happy girl any time I am free to wander a beach and Edisto is my favorite beach in SC. I had my bike so I wandered the island collecting miscellaneous stuff like palm fronds and drift wood and shells... all the things that I can get crafty with. The house had a fabulous area where I was free to be creative.

I will admit that I did organize all of the boys photos into albums and I finally put photos in their baby books, so the weekend was actually productive. Can't wait till the next Edisto Girls weekend!!!

Oh, here's a random bit of info.. I loved this bathroom in the house...that's the Key West light house in the middle of the shower curtain. My hubby and I had our first "date" at the top of that light house and 2 summers later we got married at the top of that light house.

Play-doh and a Picnic

On a rainy, rainy day I finally put my OCD tendencies aside and allowed the boys to break out the play-doh set...but only after the area was completely secure with all surfaces covered with butcher paper. (I put my tendencies aside, I didn't disregard them completely!!)

I am ashamed to say that this is the FIRST time I have ever played play-doh in our own house and not at a friends house or at church. Spud received the cool Cookie Monster alphabet play set for his birthday almost a year ago and this was our first time playing with it. Definitely not the last time!

Luckily the next day was not rainy so we were able to meet Daddy for lunch and some scavenging on the Savannah River. I have a small drift wood obsession and Andrew mentioned that there is tons of it along the river...he was not exaggerating!

Unfortunately though there was also TONS of garbage and plastic bottles and plastic lids and plastic everything. It was almost depressing, nature defiled is such an unnecessary way. It is my goal to collect a bag of plastic and take it to the recycling center every time I visit from now on. DiSgUsTiNg!

We still managed to have a lovely lunch together just down river from downtown Savannah and River Street.

Parting shot of The Jeep, which is still in need of its own blog entry, and "Daddy's tug boat," with the big M for Mercer.



Wisdom

The Mercer boys are great boys. Funny, intelligent, creative, active and thoughtful. Some days, though, all of those qualities combine to create rambunctious, argumentative, obnoxious little beasts that find pleasure in instigating each other and driving me to behave in ways I am not proud of (*insert an image of a screaming banshee here*)

Today was one of those days :o/  

Luckily I have just finished an awesome book and I was able to return to a few heavily highlighted and ear marked pages to put my day into perspective. The book is Growing Grateful Kids by Susie Larson.



This is what stood out for me today:
Page 95
If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. (James 1:5)
    "We need wisdom because every child is different; there is no one-size-fits-all parenting manual. What works for one child may wreck another. And just because we know our child better than anyone else, doesn't mean we know how to parent him or her better than anyone else. We need insight and direction, and we need to be humble enough to ask for it."

Page 97
"Without wisdom, we will not only parent by reaction to our circumstances, we will also parent through the filter of our own hang-ups...Unless we earnestly press the Lord for wisdom for our broken areas, we will parent in reaction to our fears and insecurities rather than in response to the guidance of the Holy Spirit within us."

And one of the things I like best about this book is the author ends each chapter with a prayer. This prayer ends the chapter "ask for wisdom" and it is one I find I repeat often.

Precious Lord,
Your Word calls me to ask for wisdom, and so I aks: Please, Lord, fill me to overflowing with insights from above; grant me a perspective that can only come from You. Help me to stay in step with You in such a way that Your voice is easy for my to recognize. Heal me from the effects of my past; give me a strong sense of Your heart for my children, and help me to raise them up to be everything You intend them to be. Amen.

Crabby Sunset

We really do live in an AWE-mazing place. One of the ladies in my bible study class is the owner of the Bluffton Oyster Factory and invited us to see the big boats come in with all of the crabs in the evening. She has seen us loitering there in the past, since it is a boat launch and park, so she knows how much the boys enjoy the area. It was exciting to see bushels and bushels of crabs being loaded into refrigerated trucks headed to Atlanta GA and Washington DC. Our local waters are feeding people in far away places..so cool!

Andrew would always make fun of me and my need to photograph the Jupiter lighthouse every time we went out on the boat...even though we lived right next to it I did not want to ever take it for granted!  I feel the same way about the Oyster Factory and the May River... I cannot NOT take a photo of the May river, especially at sunset! Here are a few of my latest photos from that evening :o)

Beach Boys

We have been escaping to the beach on the weekends that Daddy is at work, which is nothing new except that now WE HAVE NEW FRIENDS to play with!! Through Mom's group at church we met two boys the same age that have an awesome fun mom to chat with YAY! I think this is just the beginning of an entire album of photos....

The "crew" checking out the worksite

Watching a CG Dauphin Helicopter flying over.