Charleston SC Family Gathering - First Night & Mom's B-Day

So, we had a gathering of the immediate Brown family to celebrate Mom's upcoming 80th birthday, Jenny''s 50th and Mary's 58th.

Here is a photo of me and the Obama's in DC on the trip down...

We checked into the DoubleTree Suites on Church Street, right downtown which served us very well.

The night we arrived, the city was on fire with revelers of the annual Cooper River Bridge Run. The streets were packed and the crowds were highly lubricated after running or watching the 10K.

I think they said that about 45K people were directly involved in the race (running or supporting) and maybe about 80K total when you counted in the partiers that came to watch.

We had great food at the The Library Restaurant the first night and I would recommend the Short Ribs.

Day 1

Team Brown headed out to Patriots Point across the Cooper River Bridge  (longest cable-stayed bridge in the western hemisphere).  Unfortunately, we spaced our camera and will have to rely on on the web links if people want to see pictures.

We had a great time touring Fort Sumter, which was involved with the first shots fired in the civil war.  Pretty cool history review and glad we went.

Then we hit the  the USS Yorktown Carrier for a tour and this was very cool.  Dad was able to recount stories of being on the USS Boxer which was of a similar class carrier during the Korean War.  I think dad had fun relaying the stories of daily life on the ship (he was on it for 2 years of duty) and we got a kick out of them for sure.

After the tours, we headed over to Sullivan Island where we were going to hit Poe's Tavern (Our friend Katy's recommendation). When we arrived, we determined it was too crowded for our group of ten and we ended up across the street at the Home Team BBQ. Hit the spot for a hungry crew as it was about 3pm already.

We had happy hour in Mom & Dad's room and at this point we unveiled Mom's Birthday Photo Book.  The book was a sibling group effort with me as publisher via the Kodak Photo Book website.  Kudos to Susan as well for her editorial input.

You can click on the Photo or Link to check it out here (there are additional photos past the 80 in the published version)....

Family Photo Book 2010

It was lots of fun reviewing the great memories with Mom!

Cover Girl...

Good Stuff...

Reid needed a beer...

Then we were off to Bocci's for Dinner and good food for traditional Italian fare.

Plenty of wine was flowing and we ponied up for a game of 500 after dinner before we hit the sack.