July was a damn good month. I got home from a little over 3 weeks on tour at the end of June ready to soak up some quality time at home with the fellas. After a few nice recovery days (it feels like it takes that long to recalibrate to being in one place…unpacking, doing laundry, restocking all of my grocery necessities, catching up on precious sleep…) Javi and I took a week-long trip to Hilton Head with a group of our best friends and their kiddos. The Winkler family was kind enough to invite all of us to crash their family vacation and it was a miracle that all three of the DLG family schedules lined up to make this rare event happen.

Dani, Gretchen and I (that’d be the DLG) hadn’t been on a vacation together since we rented a house boat in 2011, and we hadn’t been to the beach together since spring break 2004! Somehow Humming House wasn’t on tour, Javier, Dani and Dani’s husband Chris all had enough vacation time, and we were all able to get together with toddlers and babies in Hilton Head for one incredible week.

Every day we’d wake up and Javier and I would have a lovely leisurely breakfast watching the amazing show that is getting toddlers and babies ready for the beach (wow – I call this a vacation, which it was for us, but our parent-friends were hard at work). Two hours after the getting-going process began, we’d all saunter down one block to the beach and set up our canopy for the day. Thanks to Danielle’s pinterest-planning and Gretchen’s preparedness for an entire day of uninterrupted beach time, we had *everything* we could ever want for the beach under our canopy. There was a separate camping tent set up for toddler naps complete with a battery-powered fan, one cooler for adults and one for the children, a baby pool under the canopy shade, a million beach toys, and bocce ball, frisbee and football for the restless. Javi and I got to be the cool aunt and uncle, making dribble castles so the kids could stomp all over them, showing Leighton and Everett how to “play” bocce ball, taking them into the water, and then giving them back to the parents when they’d had enough of us. Being the cool aunt and uncle is the best.

 

Every night after dinner we’d all go back down to the beach to let the kids play in the tide pools while we played bocce ball and took photos of and in the sunset. Leighton couldn’t stay away from the water, so every night she’d wind up swimming around in her dresses because who needs a swimsuit anyway. We had several perfect evenings of cool(er) temps and gorgeous pastel sunsets. Once the kids were down for bed the six of us would go back out onto the beach and make our best go of crabbing…the subtle art of catching lightning-fast crabs and putting them in a bucket until it gets old and you let them go. I swear I have never seen anything as hilarious as watching our three 30-year-old husbands running and screaming like children all over the beach trying to simultaneously evade and catch these creatures. My face phantom-hurts just thinking about how hard we laughed at the whole process! If you go to Hilton Head, I highly recommend giving this a try…it’s way more exciting than catching Pokemon.

I’m sad the week is over, and I have no earthly idea when we’ll be able to get all of our families together for another vacation. Hopefully soon, but until then these photos will have to hold us over!