In the end the trip took more like 10 hours once we waded through the standard traffic between DC and Richmond, stopped for dinner (at CiCi's pizza of course), and dealt with a tire blow out somewhere in no-where North Carolina (we drove to three car shops before we found one open on a Saturday).
It was fun to celebrate the 4th of July with family. We pretty much spent the day at the beach, put the kids to bed, then returned to the beach to watch fireworks (we snuck Liz out later, but she was too afraid so it was back to bed for her). From where we were located we could see two distant shows at either end of the beach, but more spectacular than those were the fireworks exploding over our heads and all along the beach thanks to other beachgoers. A few days later a bunch of the dads bought their own stash of fireworks but never really got around to lighting them off. Since five of the seven famlies had to fly to the vacation, Andrew and I inherited a lot of those fireworks.
Mike & Dave grew out some awesome amounts of facial hair before our trip (I think it may have been a competition). They shaved before family pictures (shaved in stages that is, check out David's reverse Hitler below).
The kids loved the beach and the pool when they were outside, but as soon as they came indoors all they wanted were iPads (Rob and Mom both brought theirs). Of course the Dads enjoyed iPads as well (when they could get them away from the children).
Ellie's favorite thing to do was climb the stairs. We were in a three story condo and had neglected to bring baby gates (huge mistake). At least a dozen times a day we were removing her from the stairs, sometimes not catching up to her until she was at the top floor.
When we planned the trip (I was the planner this year), Andrew asked me to put in a guy day and girl day. Our girl day the was very predictable, but very fun. We went shopping at the outlets, got pedicures, and went out to lunch. The guys planned to go deep sea fishing. The night before their scheduled trip (and our last day there) their tour guide cancelled the trip, citing expected inclement weather. They scrambled and found a new tour guide. Everything seemed fine the next morning, they took their motion sickness pills and drove around in the boat for awhile before their trip was cancelled yet again. We felt bad that the trip didn't work out, especially since they had to work so hard to get their money back. Also, the motion sickness pills really hit Drew hard. He slept pretty much the whole time in the car and the boat. 
On our last evening we celebrated Codi's birthday. She's scaredh of snakes (her husband owns dozens) so as a joke she ended with a snake on her cake. 
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