Christmas Vacation

As a little reward for Duncan finishing his first semester of seminary and to serve as a break for the crazy holiday schedule at work for me, we decided to use up the last of my vacation days on a little get-away to Florida for the weekend. One of my Dad's best friends, Tod, let us come stay at his beach house at Shell Point Beach, in the panhandle.

We were sad to leave Moki... but we left her in good hands. She still climbed onto Duncan's travel bag as a protest.


We started our journey at about 6:30. The six hour trip required a Starbucks stop. It was getting to a point of desperation when we finally found one; it always seems like Starbucks is some sweet miracle during our travels.


The sunrise on the way down (I think we were in Macon) was beautiful! It was actually the best sunrise we saw the whole time!

Once we crossed over the state line, we stopped to meet up with Tod at his residence; the neighborhood had a particularly fabulous name...


We also got to meet Tod's three cats, the oldest of which is Casper, who is 15.

Tod was nice enough to take us out to lunch at a local place that sits on the water and had real seafood and funny birds that wait until you have vacated the table to eat your scraps!

When we got to the beach house, we realized that we were pretty lucky to be staying here. We were literally steps from the water and the beach was practically deserted, even though it was 75 degrees out! Here are a couple of shots of how gorgeous it was:

(we took a nap here)


(the house itself with Humphrey parked underneath!)

Our days and nights were filled with DishTV (we don't have cable, we watched hours of crime shows and MTV cribs), laying around on the beach, going for walks, and scrabble. You can see how good my hand was:

The following photos show exactly what Duncan does on walks on the beach. I'd like to point out that in the second one, that seagull totally knew what Duncan was up to. Every time Duncan took a step closer, the bird took two...

The only reminder that it is Christmastime. Thank you, neighbors!

We decided to go out and find some Mexican food on Saturday for lunch. Crawfordville does not have too much to offer the average tourist, but they do have Mexican... loaded down with guacamole. This could be exciting, but it wasn't. But it was still nice to go out, albeit too much non-homemade guac.

(on the way home we saw this sign... how seasonally appropriate!)

Later that afternoon when we decided to patrol the beach for shells, I noticed something in Duncan's hair. After I laughed for about 10 minutes because I thought it was bird poop, Duncan asked me to try to get it out. I refused to use my hands, so he handed me a stick. Upon further inspection, we concluded it was not bird poop, but instead soap. You'll have to ask him how he got soap so strategically placed on the top of his head...


(Ok, so here is what my wife failed to mention: after laughing for her 10 minutes, she begins to continue our walk, as if my hair had no poop in it. As if it were lint or something, and not feces from a dirty seagull. It's like having a baby poop its pants, laughing at it, and then simply putting it in the stroller for a walk. Yuk. Thanks for the help, Whitney :-)

And as for the soap turd? I had washed my hands with a bar of soap that was rather soft, so some residue remained behind on my hand, on my ring or something, and when I ran my wet hand through my hair to flatten down a mocking cowlick, it deposited itself so appropriately on top of my head.

Seriously... not poop...)

On our walk...

Saturday night, we decided to light up the fire pit. It was very sweet to sit out next to water, beside the fire. We had a special treat as someone just down the beach set off some fireworks. Somehow, Duncan was so wise that he knew to pack sparklers, so we joined in the fun. (By the way, the day had also started with a special treat as we saw a dolphin on our first walk that day!)

(Duncan, being male, thought it was a good idea to put a sparkler in the wine bottle...
you be the judge)

This is the view from the living room/kitchen. It's a little hard to see, but that's all water out there. It was amazing!

One last view:

We decided to go ahead and start the trek back home. We missed Moki and thought we'd miss Monday traffic as well as giving us an extra day at home to prepare for Christmas.

So that was our vacation! It was fabulously relaxing and rejuvenating. We are so very thankful to Tod and Fran for opening up their home to us.

Lastly, Moki definitely missed us while we were gone. She was pretty excited to see us and is still hanging out with us as we type the blog.

So, here is a cute picture of Moki to close: