Parris Island Marine Band at the opening night of the Beaufort Water Festival

 
  




 


   

South Carolina Spring is back, and we hit the island for the beach and the final day of the week-long seafood festival!

(the girls and I had cheese pizza :D )

 




 
and as if the day weren't perfect enough....my sweet Fairy Girl give me this sweet little flower today:)

Scenes From Mother's Day Weekend 2012

Our Town Fest

Oatland Island Wildlife Center Harvest Fest

 

Trying to create fire, the old fashioned way! (good thing we live in the south now:)

Cooking, the old-fashioned way; and our family's preferred method:D

Some good ole-fashioned nut-crackin!  (ok, some things don't change:)

 Spinning

 

Home-made corn bread in the cabin

 Kids are shaking and making home-made butter--it was quite good:)

 My favorite festival find--big jolly santa gourd man--he's come to live with us now:D

 "Come and experience and old time southern tradition.  Back in the olddays country folk would gather together after the sugar cane harvest and
grind their cane to make syrup.  More often than not, it turned into a celebration with children playing games and food being served with music and dancing on the side!  Oatland tries to duplicate the sight, sounds and smells of those by-gone days.  The Savannah Folk Music Society will be playing their hearts out.  We'll be cookin' cane syrup, apple butter, corn bread and other foods."

 

Scenes from October Ohio

 

 

Scenes from Our Town Shrimp Fest (I may not eat shrimp, but I like craft fairs:)

 

The girls and I stopped by our two day town shrimp fest on Friday afternoon.  The crafters are there during the day, and that's the part of our town festivals that I personally enjoy.  This was a great time to go, as people were in work/school, so it wasn't yet crowded.  That night though, was a whole different story.  Major Dan (from Forrest Gump) came into town to give a concert with his  band for the festival.  This was his first time back since filming Forrest Gump here (the Vietnam scenes were filmed right on MY island and Hunting Island where we go to the beach all the time:).  It also worked out to go in the afternoon, as the girls got a chance to go onto the shrimp boat.  I'm sure the evening crowds would have prevented that.  Anyway, I told J, I wasn't interested in going to the concert (because I could see people lining up their chairs early afternoon, so I knew it would be a madhouse), but if he wanted to take the girls, he was more than welcome.  Thankfully, their girlfriends came over and played from across the street, so he went on his own and met a friend from work.  There was NO parking for miles.  He actually wound up parking across the bridge on our island, and walked over the long bridge to go over there--and then he couldn't even get into the concert.  That would NOT have been fun with the girls.  The good news is, he hit a Friday night car show on the way--so that made him happy.  The bad news is, I don't think he got any shrimp at the shrimp fest:(