Four adults. Seven children. One beach house.

Me and my friends Krissie, Amy and Mindy all went to Isle of Palms for a long weekend, with our five preschoolers and two toddlers.
And lots of fruity cocktails in the evenings.

The kids got along about 75 percent of the time. The rest of the time, the beach house shuddered with the sounds of "Maaaaaaaooommmmyyyyy! She took my toy! She won't share! He pushed me! He's spitting at me! She won't play with me! She won't leave me alone!"

And so forth.

Hence all the fruity cocktails in the evenings!

Onward to the pictures...

Let me introduce you to the preschoolers. From the left, we have Dakota, 3; Drew, almost 4; Payton (in the chair), 4; Hannah, 4; and Connor, 3.

And the toddlers, Noah and Lucas, both just barely 1.

One of the preschoolers' favorite inside games was to play "Happy Birthday". First, they'd all argue over whose birthday it was. Then, the lucky birthday boy or girl got to sit in the birthday seat while everyone showered him, or her, with "presents" (plastic shovels, usually) and "cake" (a squishy pink ball).

Then they'd sing. Loudly.

They loved the screen porch. So did we, because the walls were pretty thick, so when they were out there, we could barely hear them inside. On the second night, when they were all pretty much out of control, we just shoved them out on to the porch and shut the door behind them.

They then proceeded to play a rousing game of Spiderman (Drew) vs. Venom (Connor), with Payton as Mary Jane.

Yes, we did feed them. As you can see, we didn't lock them in cages and throw scraps to them, either.

Can you tell these kids were ready to hit the beach?

Hannah, Drew and Dakota splashing and playing in the surf

Drew liked to shoot Spiderman webs at the incoming tide...

Here are five of our troublemakers at the South Carolina Aquarium in Charleston.

Where they got to pet a sea urchin. And a snake.

I have a lot more pictures to share and will upload those tomorrow. But to close out this post, let me show you the last picture I took on our vacation...Drew and Dakota on the ride home...

I think that about says it all, don't you?