Officially : Chicago Children’s Photographer

Officially I will be back in the office tomorrow but I’d first love to share a snippet of our FABULOUS time in Isle of Palms, South Carolina (not very far from beautiful historic Charleston!).

We spent a few days in the Smoky Mountains.  Here’s a quick shot of my youngest hanging out on the deck of our cabin with the most incredible views of the Smokies:

This was the view we woke up to and went to bed to the two full days we stayed here:

There was also a hot tub on the lower deck where I spent a great deal of time!

The Smokies were unbelievable, we didn’t expect what we got from the area.  We ended up driving about 40 minutes away and went tubing on the Little Pigeon River.  It was an unbelievable experience to just be lazy river travelling…something I’ve always wanted to do.  One of my vacation highlights for sure.

If you ever are in that area I highly recommend the river tubing experience, the website is here: River Rat  We loved every minute of it.  The tubes are high quality, the people are nice and the shop is super well run!

We also hit the Smoky Mountains National Park for a few hours the same day.  I have images on my other camera, we hiked up to Laurel Falls, a nice calm (ahem) 1.25 mile trek UP a mountain to get to.  It was BEAUTIFUL!!  I’ll have to post those later.  We didn’t spend nearly as much time as I’d like exploring the park but I assure you what I saw was incredible!  The girls had their National Park Passports stamped (we started that tradition back in 2007 when we did our Yellowstone trip!) and we were able to experience just a bit of what the Smoky Mountains offers.  I was encouraged by some locals to go to Cade’s Cove to see the Black Bears gather in the morning so that is a definite must do for the future!

We left the Smokies on Saturday a.m. and drove to South Carolina where we checked into our condo.  We had the most amazing view of the beach on Isle of Palms.  We were lucky enough to have a private rooftop deck that we could use at our leisure to experience the salty winds coming off the Atlantic.  It was truly amazing.

We stayed in Isle of Palms for the full week, only leaving the resort for necessities and a day trip to historic Charleston (which, btw, I am in LOVE with!).  It was the perfect vacation for an overtired clan such as ourselves:

 

Duane & I as seen by my oldest (wonder where she gets those mad camera skills from?) 🙂

My oldest on the beach on our last evening

 

My youngest on the last night there

 

The girls hamming it up in Charleston

 

All of us at the fabulous STELLA NOVA , it’s hard taking self portraits of the fam 🙂

 

My oldest hamming it up

 

Waiting in line to get into…

 

One of my Charleston dream homes on King Street. 

Carriage house.  PRETTY.

And finally: some more of the beach.  My two lovelies:

and the beach on its’ own:

Thanks for stopping in.  Back down to business later in the week!