Hilton Head Island 2010

We just returned from a week long trip to Hilton Head Island (HHI). It was a long 12 hours there. We drove straight thru the night on the way there and by the 9th hour I was so so uncomfortable and had to jump in the back seat to lay down next to Stella. Stella did great on the way down! Because we left in the middle of the night Stella slept most of the way down there. When she finally did wake up she watched a few movies on her portable dvd player.

Of course we stayed in the Palmetto Dunes plantation and we stayed at Windsor Place II. Our condo was incredible! It was a 3 bedroom, 3 full bath, ocean front condo and had just undergone over 100k in renovations as you will see from the pictures. According to the real estate magazines that we picked up around the island condos in this exact same complex were selling between 1.4-1.8 MILLION DOLLARS. I would sure like to own one of these condos one day!

This is the family room- we watched a lot of Fox News and some soccer in here everyday.

Here is the gourmet kitchen...we made breakfast and lunch in here everyday.

This was the Langley Family bedroom and private bath.

Here is Teta & Gido's bedroom and bath.
Here is where the McGowan Family stayed (sorry no pics of their bathroom).
Once we arrived in HHI all Stella wanted to do is be in the pool and go to the ocean. Our condo had 2 pools (see below). The kiddie pool is the one with the mushroom and the big pool was the heated pool. Of course there was a hot tub too but since I am pregnant I was not permitted to even go in! :-(

We went to the pool and beach everyday. It was just a 1 minute walk from the pool over the dunes. Todd and Stella boggie boarded a few times but Stella got tuckered out easily from riding all of the waves out and then going back in. She loved jumping the waves and floating in the ocean. We had a lot of fun looking for shells and digging in the sand and on this day we even caught quite a stash of sand dollars. Stella had fun feeling them on the bottom of the ocean and pointing them out to Todd and I so that we could dive down to get them of course. Thankfully there was a bottle of bleach at the condo so we could bleach them. Stella and Sophie enjoyed the pool so much! It was like pulling teeth to get them out of the pool everyday. Stella and Sophie's swimming skills improved dramatically the week we were in HHI. Stella can now do a handstand, front and back flips. They both enjoyed the pool so much and will have a blast this summer at our neighborhood pool. Of course, my favorite part of most evenings was going to Frozen Moo's. It was an ice cream store in Coligony Plaza that had 92 flavors of ice cream. Stella's favorite flavors were superman and red, white and blue. Both flavors were actually vanilla but colored with food coloring to make the kids think that they were getting something cool. As you can see, Stella enjoyed her ice cream very much!

Some of my favorite childhood memories are from HHI. I can only hope that each summer Stella can make her own childhood memories from HHI. I hope that each summer we can make it a new Langley family vacation tradition.