Lasts

We drove there and back 9.5 hours yesterday to go to Isle of Palms beach by Charleston. It was a whim of an idea I had Sunday night that Bill jumped on board with and helped me make happen, and it was awesome. Getting back at 10PM on a school night was maybe less awesome, but it was totally worth it.

See, Bill and his advisor are both pretty certain he will be able to finish his PhD in time to graduate next May. As all grad students know it's never certain until he has passed his dissertation defense, but it's a very good sign that both he and his advisor have the same goal and expectation and are working towards that.

That being the case it has suddenly hit me that we may only have nine months left here in South Carolina and we better enjoy as much as we can before we graduate and head off to who knows where, but most likely far away from here. I really love living here. We have such great friends and grad school has been about as good an experience as we could expect from it, and I will really miss this place when we leave. It's been almost four years and that's definitely the longest we've lived anywhere since we got married, so it has definitely grabbed me. It will be a sad day when we drive out, albeit also wonderful because college will finally be over and that makes me ecstatic.

Anyway, so we headed down to Charleston and had a lovely day at the beach. Chloe experienced the ocean for the first time and seemed okay with it. The other three had a fantastic day. They love the beach and playing in the waves and building dribble castles with dad and shoveling mountains of sand and going and playing more in the waves. It made me a tad nervous how far out they were comfortable going, but I was also really pleased that they got over their fear of the waves, especially Aaron, from when they were younger. The footing is pretty uncertain in the ocean and they figured out how to stay upright, which is great. We stayed close enough to grab them if they did happen to get knocked over, and all three had at least one wave completely wash over them at one point during the day, but they were okay and came back for more.

The best part for me was when we pulled them around in the shallows on the boogie board. Aaron especially had this look of pure ecstasy on his face that made me so happy. I was surprised he wanted to do it, but after seeing Bill pull Spencer and Genevieve around, he hopped on and asked me to take him for a ride.

It was a good day. It may be the last beach day before we move. We shall see. Check that one off the list though. 

Oh, and Bill and Aaron were certainly there but I only took pics while I was hanging out with sleeping Chloe and when she woke up, and they didn't come over then, so we'll just pretend we have pics of them.