Shrimp or Swim?

Saturday, we made what has been almost an annual trek up to Amelia Island for the Shrimp Festival. Since we're now seasoned veterans, we only strolled the quaint streets of Fernandina Beach for an hour or so. Every year, the festival becomes more and more popular which equates to more and more people. So, we enjoyed our seafood lunch, checked out the Kid Zone, and then made a mad dash for Amelia Island Plantation. While I would have preferred to waste away the afternoon on Fernandina's beautiful beaches, Jaxon seems to have a love-hate relationship with all beaches. Not a good thing considering we live at the beach. Grandfather must be brainwashing Jax and passing on the belief that sand is evil! Actually, Jax has always struggled to accept that sand is not dirt. The boy does not like dirt, and therefore sand falls under a questionable category. On Saturday, Jax was in hate mode.Thankfully, the resort has a lovely lagoon pool overlooking the ocean. That was sort of a compromise. The boys never seem to tire of swimming. They really are little fish. Jaxon even shocked me recently when I realized he can swim the distance of our pool and back, and he can swim to the bottom of the deep end to retrieve the dive sticks. Somehow, I was unaware of this.Baylor, on the other hand, still needs to use his floaties. So you can imagine how shocked we were about a week ago when after a day of swimming, Baylor promptly climbed out of the pool and removed his floaties only to jump in without them. Of course, he sunk like a rock. I'm not sure what he was thinking. I guess he figured he had perfected his stroke. Obviously not!Ice cream at the resort village completed our ideal day. Seriously, life really doesn't get much better than shrimp, swimming, and ice cream. Ha!

Reunion at Reunion

Our weekend stay at the Reunion Resort truly was a reunion of sorts. In addition to spending the weekend with John & Mia, our mutual friends Anne & Francis were also able join us for dinner on Saturday night. Anh, John, and Francis became friends during medical school and haven't been able to get together since our wedding in 2oo3! I'd say the reunion was long overdue. Thankfully, Anh & I have seen both couples independently a couple of times in between, but not as often as we'd like. Aunt Kelly decided to throw herself into the mix by flying in for week too. The more the merrier! We proved that there is truth in that statement.

A Different Perspective

Last weekend, we decided to play tourist with our out-of-town friends, Francis and Anne.It was pretty hot and humid. So, we thought it would be fun to spend the afternoon either at the beach or at least near the water. After thumbing through the tourist magazines, we came up with the idea to take a bay cruise. It was fun to see the city from a different perspective!

The Historic Waterfront

The Castillo

The Mission Grounds

Vilano Beach Bridge

Some Cool Dude

The Lighthouse

Orlando

Orlando was fun, but it's good to be home! We actually had a nice relaxing visit. We stayed with our good friends, Francis and Anne, who moved into their new house last month, and we got VIP treatment. Anne made us what seemed like a 7-course dinner! It was so nice to be able to have all of the conveniences of home, especially with the boys. The only disappointment was that we couldn't enjoy their pool. It was just too cold which is shocking when you consider that it's April and Orlando. What the heck?!

Yesterday, Anne made the trip back with us, and we returned the hospitality. We took both of our guests, Anne and Uncle Al, out on the town in the historic district. We had dinner and did a little bit of bar hopping before calling it an early evening. We had big plans to stay out late, but our old age got the better of us. Even Uncle Al, the youngster, was yawning by 10pm. So sad! I blame the lack of excitement downtown though. I thought there would be more mid-week action considering that it's spring break. Nope!

Back on the topic of Orlando, our visit did have an unexpected side effect. Seeing Anne and Francis' house actually got us sort of excited about our own search. Anh and I have been somewhat dreading the search. Understandable, I assume, given our past luck and experiences with the Florida real estate market. We've decided next weekend we will finally venture out to see some the houses that we found on the internet over the past few months. The good news is that we have a decent sized list of about 15 homes to look at, and some have even recently dropped their listing price which means the owners are probably willing to deal. So, we are cautiously optimistic.

If we find any houses that are real contenders, I plan to share details and pictures, but don't expect anything as grand as last time. We've dialed back our budget considerably. Given the uncertainty of the economy, we just aren't as eager to plop down such a huge down payment. I think the only person disappointed by our decision was our realtor, but she's just thrilled to have a client willing to buy in these uncertain times. Little does she know, we're still REALLY gun shy and far from committed to the idea of purchasing.

We'll wade cautiously into the pool though and see what happens!