Every year, this trip makes me wish that we still lived in Lightsey Bridge where we were all within a 2 minute walk of each other, we all saw each other on a regular basis, and the only thing that got in the way of that were classes (not life, jobs, or other adult responsibilities…) ;-)

This was our 9th trip like this and somehow, each trip just gets better and better.  The conversations are sweeter (and funnier!), the husbands click more and more each year, the babies keep getting cuter, and I think we just treasure our time together more and more because we realize that the older we get, the more precious our short weekend together is.  Sure some of us see each other throughout the year and a few years ago we started taking a second trip in August… but that’s just an overnight trip and not everyone can always make that weekend.

But this beach weekend we do?  It’s like it’s not just written on our calendars in pen, but it’s etched in stone.  We’ve all made it such a priority that we’ve already put the deposit down for next year’s trip!  And I think that’s why it keeps happening.  We know how valuable this time is together and we don’t want to give it up.

I didn’t take quite as many pictures this year as I normally do (baby Catherine has made moving around a tad more difficult in the last week or so), but I still wanted to share a piece of our annual trip to Kiawah!

I needed at least one “toes in the sand” picture, but it’s hard to take with a baby in the way.
And please excuse my left big toe… I have no idea what I did to get that bruise under my toenail!

Gorgeous!

Walt was the only baby this year and while he did get LOTS of love and attention, it took him a while to warm up to my camera :-)

Some may find this odd, but when we started this annual trip, we would go to the mountains in Tennessee in December so naturally, we would have a gift exchange!  Well, even though we moved our trip to the beach in January, we wanted to keep this part of it going, so yes, we do a “Christmas gift” exchange in January.  But it’s so much fun!

We decided to take my 35 week baby bump pictures on the beach…

And then Ben let me take a few of him :-)

We went out to the Kiawah Island Golf Resort for lunch one day (dressed appropriately unlike last year when we were out riding bikes and happened upon the place but needed a break!) and took our group photo… as usual, it was with the self-timer on my camera, but we had plenty of people watching us from inside the restaurant!  I’m just glad that we’re such a good looking group that it only took us two times to get this shot!

SO pretty!

These next two CRACK me up…
In the first one, I was trying to get everyone to line up on the same plane so Ben could take the picture at f2.8 and we’d all be in focus.  But apparently Jill had another idea and was trying to explain it to us…??

Well, then I had to get out of my spot to assess the situation and figure out what would look best.

However, this is probably my favorite group photo of us to date (and that’s with knowing each other for 16 years!), so I would say it was worth it :-)

Love these girls… SO much!