Salt In My Hair Love In The Air

Where to begin? How about at the beginning? I mostly record these sorts of trip memories for my own benefit, and fully admit they feel a little bit like inviting someone in to watch my vacation slides. 

I mean honestly I would totally come view your vacation slides if invited so...come on in...

Hubs and I were invited to a wedding on July 4th. In Florida. Yes it was hot. It was also hot in South Carolina, but there we'd have been in our swim suits, not wedding clothes. 

We have a hard and fast rule that we are not away from the lake on the 4th of July, but we made an exception this year. The bride's parents are some of our oldest and dearest friends and we've known the bride since the day she was born. She and my daughter2 are the same age and spent their earliest years together in NJ, and then in a fun twist of geography, ended up graduating from high school together in the UK. 

Daughter2 wasn't able to attend the wedding, but we talked about her-ha! Hi Daughter2! 

Since we were trekking to Florida in July we decided to tack a couple of days on to the trip and have a little bit of beach time. The wedding was in Tampa, which is not the beach, so we opted to stay in St. Petersburg about a half hour away. 

We stayed in the Don Cesar Beach House Suites which are pink like the Don Cesar, but more apartment-like. We had a sitting room, kitchenette, bedroom and two bathrooms, plus a balcony overlooking the pool and out to the beach. 

You have all the benefits of the Don in terms of dining, the spa, the pools, etc. and are just a short walk down the beach to the main hotel. 

If you're not familiar with the Don she's a beauty. The Don Cesar is known as the pink hotel and is castle like in appearance. It was built in 1928 and has hosted many a celebrity, politician, and famous sort of guest for decades. 

It's beautiful inside and out and is a landmark in St. Pete. 

Our location had a great pool and fabulous beach so while we did have a couple of lunches at the main hotel, and I had my hair done there on wedding day, and we did do a lot  some shopping in their very lovely shops, we mostly just hung out at our location.  

There was a cabana boy who set up chairs and umbrellas every day, and the private beach wasn't crowded. The cabana boy actually worked at a club on our lake very recently which was a fun discovery, so we talked all things lake and Clemson sports with him. 

The trip began with the long drive down to Florida on Wednesday. We like a car trip and didn't want to be dealing with the airport nonsense on a holiday weekend. We started listening to our 40-hour book The Last Lion (Volume 1) and there's a prologue and an introduction and three hours in we finally got to chapter one. Whew! This is the life and times of Winston Churchill and really really good, but there are three volumes in the series, all equally as long, so it will be quite a while before I do an actual review. 

We stopped for breakfast/lunch in the little town of Bowman Georgia at a place called Bowman House which featured southern cooking. It was full of locals which we always take as a good sign. 

The drive took about nine hours with stops, but we had no hiccups which was nice. We'd dropped the dog off at the kennel that morning and put Waze on, which had us avoiding the interstate we'd normally jump on very close to the kennel. Thankfully we listened to Waze because we learned later the interstate was completely shut down both directions all day and overnight too due to a spill. 

See, this is why my recaps are so long. I feel the need to explain why we took route B instead of route A. Likewise I think this post will be a part B and part A. 

We got checked in to the hotel then walked out on the beach to see what we could see. Standing in front of the ocean never gets old. 

We went down to Passe Grille for dinner at a place called The Hurricane. Our plan was to eat fresh Grouper every single day and I think we almost managed that. Passe Grille is a little beach town at the southern end of St. Petersburg, and our hotel was less than five miles away. We shared some peel and eat shrimp too which is another favorite of mine. 

After dinner we watched the sun set. 

It's a whole thing on the Gulf y'all and it is not to be missed. When our girls were young we vacationed on the Gulf and we used to tell them the sun was going to bed and they thought we worked some kind of magic to make it drop into the sea just as we said good night. 

Thursday the plan was the beach. 

That's it. The whole plan. 

We spent most of the day on the beach, then moved up to the pool which was beside the beach and also very lovely. 

We did walk a few steps down the beach for lunch at the Don Cesar beside their pool which was also nice. I had the most delicious blackened mahi wrap with a pineapple salsa and hubs had the Grouper sandwich as predicted. 

This coco solstice was refreshing too-coconut rum, lime juice, coconut water and club soda. 

We relaxed by our pool and even played some ping pong before changing for dinner. We tried to go to this particular spot (The Wharf) the night before but there was zero parking so on Thursday we decided to try again and took an Uber. Ironically the Uber driver's wife went to my high school in NJ and we are here for all the small world connections. 

We had a seat on their dock and I had fried shrimp while hubs had...the Grouper. Afterwards we went back to the hotel and got in our car for a short drive to  Treasure Island. Hubs vacationed there as a boy and wanted to see if the pirate still stands. 

He does. Once that was confirmed it was back to the beach for yet another glorious sunset. 

Friday morning we decided to have a nice breakfast out and walked to a place called Azura Coastal Kitchen. 

It's located in the Hotel Zamora which has a very mediterranean feel and I loved the vibe. 

Our table overlooked the Intracoastal and we had a mimosa followed by a delicious meal. Avocado toast for me and lemon blueberry pancakes for the hubs. 

We walked back to our hotel and spent some time on the beach before changing for the drive in to Tampa. We had plans to meet up with friends before the welcome party hosted by the bride and groom. 

Traffic in Tampa is nuts. 

Carry on. 

I've 'known' Terri (Your Friend From Florida) since my early blog days and we decided to try for a meet up. The timing was tighter than we would have liked, but if there's anything blogging (and life) have taught me it's Carpe Diem. So we did. 

She lives about an hour away and said she'd drive in so we could meet at the welcome party venue, American Social, and have a chance to visit before we had to be at the party. American Social is a sports bar type of place and it was loud. With a capital L.  It was a happening place and there was some questionable attire, but we made the most of it.  A heated World Cup match was on all the TVs so there was a lot of cheering on top of the conversations happening all around, but fortunately we were given a booth which helped. 

Originally hubs was going to join us, but then a former long-time work colleague who lives in the Tampa area decided he'd like to catch up too, so he also drove in and met hubs at the same time. They hadn't seen one another in more than a decade, so they sat at the bar and Terri and I sat in a booth and chatted. She saw pictures of my grands that I don't share here but it was fun because she knows my daughters from the online world too. She used to follow both of my girls when they blogged and has kept up with them since their university days.

I will say that the bloggers I've met in person have all been exactly who they seem to be online and Terri was no exception. So sweet and genuine and it felt like talking to an old familiar friend. Which she is, and now in real life too. 

In yet another small world moment, as we were wrapping up we walked to the bar where hubs and our friend were sitting and it turns out our friend and Terri had all sorts of people in common. They had a nice little chat and now they're Facebook friends too. 

The internet is quite the connector don't you think? 

At this point the bride made her entrance with her whole big posse in tow, and lots of hugs and more noise happened as we greeted and congratulated and got ready to move out to the patio for the evening. Pretty sure the bride hugged Terri and possibly the groom did too. Weddings put everyone in a joyful mood, plus our friends are their friends and we love that. We said our goodbyes to Terri and joined the welcome party in full swing. 

Did I tell you it was hot? 

The patio at American Social overlooks the harbor and it was a covered space, which did provide shade but also seemed to hold in the heat. We had a grand time seeing all the bride's family including siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and some friends we also know, along with the groom and his family.  We've lived a lot of life with the bride's parents and they are some of our most favorite peeps in all the world. 

I think I'll save the wedding and beyond for Friday's post because I like detail and don't want to skimp in an effort to make this short. Less long? Whatever. Come back for Part 2 on Friday. 

Zing!

Well here we are. The end of April and the end of the alphabet. It's actually been a lot of fun thinking about some of the ordinary objects I keep and why I keep them.  

Day 26-Z is for Zenith 

I've had a long day and my brain isn't firing on all cylinders so keeping this short and sweet. The non-astronomical definition of the word zenith  is 'the highest point, peak, or maximum success'. I think we can say reaching the end of the alphabet is the highest point in the A-Z so works for me. 

In taking note of the mostly ordinary objects I've held on to through the years I've reached a conclusion. It's the memories the objects stir up, and not the objects themselves, that I've been holding all along. 

Zee end. 

And now back to your regularly scheduled hit or miss blog programming. 

X Is For Not A Xylophone

These last three letters might just send me over the edge. Let's get to it...

Day 24-X is for boXes 

Listen. This is totally fine. Three tough letters remain and one does what one must to meet the challenge deadline. 

My theme for this A-Z Blog Challenge has been The Things We Keep: Ordinary Objects from A-Z and when I think about the things I keep I think pictures. Ironically, there won't be pictures in this post today because I'm eXhausted, and getting this one written just under the wire. 

While I don't have nearly as many recent photos printed as I do old photos, I still have plenty of both. Some are in scrapbooks, some in frames, most though are in boxes. Now in my defense some of the boxes are actual photo boxes and they're organized with the pictures filed by year. Some are slightly disorganized boxes containing photo albums which I suppose are organized in a sense but still need to be dealt with, and some are shoeboxes filled with an 'I'll get to that later' sort of filing system. 

Hubs and I started cleaning out the attic this winter and it's in pretty good shape at the moment. But there are three large boxes filled with what I've just described and I'm determined to get to them before summer rolls around in roughly 55 days. 

Plenty of time, no? 

So tell me, do you own a real camera or do you take pictures strictly with your phone? Do you print those pictures regularly and if so, now what? Also, how do you organize the photos on your phone? 

I have a hard time letting go of pictures I've snapped. I have plenty that aren't great, yet they still mark a moment in time I want to remember. My mother-in-law used to have an end table whose drawer was filled with the most random assortment of photographs you ever did see, and you couldn't help but rifle through it every time you were there. 

I want a drawer like that. 

Weekend ReKap

I know I'm supposed to blog the letter K today, but my thoughts on the word I've chosen for that particular letter might run long, so I'm flipping the alphabet on it's head. 

Letter L today, letter K tomorrow. 

It's my blog and I'm the boss of me. 

You'll find my A to Z Blog Challenge entry for the letter L somewhere in this post. I can't say exactly where because it's a blog as you go kind of day.

Linking this post with Holly (Pink Lady) and Sarah (Sunshine and Books) for their regularly scheduled Hello Monday party. Here we go-

Friday morning I spent a few hours with my daughter1 at her house. The kids played quietly upstairs and I conned her into straightening my hair. My girls know how much I love for them to do this for me and she took her time and I think actually enjoyed it a little. We were able to chat about all manner of things while she worked and it was such a nice relaxed morning. Very spa like. 

Friday afternoon I played mah jong at a neighbor's house with about ten other women and that's always fun. I got home about five and hubs and I went for sushi which was delish. 

We came home and watched the Artemis coverage. I was almost hyperventilating waiting on those divers to get them out of that capsule. That felt more stressful than ten days in space to me. All that bobbing 🤢

Did you follow the space story last week? I thought it was exciting and I loved the astronauts boldly pointing to Jesus...'there are no atheists in foxholes and there are none on rockets either'. 

Saturday morning I was up early, got my car loaded, and was on the road by 7:15  to make the drive over the mountain to the Asheville area. I was meeting up with some bloggers for the day, only one of whom I'd met in person before. 

They were staying in a little air bnb and there was supposed to be five bloggers there, but Jenn ended up not feeling well Friday morning so she didn't make the trip. Boo. I met Marilyn in Chattanooga back in September and she mentioned they might come my direction this year. Once the location was decided she messaged asking if I'd like to drive over and join them on Saturday, which was an easy yes. 

Have you met any bloggers in person? I've met about a dozen now and all of these meet ups have been so nice. Everyone was exactly who they seemed to be on their blog and that's reassuring. This weekend it was Marilyn (Memphis Bridges), Joanne (Slices of Life), Maria (Memorable Moments and Modest Missives), and Tanya (The Other Side of the Road). 

All of these bloggers participate in the Wednesday Hodgepodge and it was so much fun to meet in real life. The day was full of talking, and really what more would you expect from a group of people who love words? 

I arrived about 8:30 with a quiche and a coffee cake and we all had breakfast together. The morning flew and it was almost 1 PM before we looked at the clock and decided we needed to get out of the house. We drove just a few minutes down the road, or rather up the road and around and around as the route to the overlook was winding and steep. 

Gotta take in the view when you're surrounded by the Blue Ridge.  

We snapped some pictures, then took a short walk on a path through the woods and then everyone was hot and needed ice cream. 

We went to a spot called Celtic Creamery and the ice cream was really good. The original Celtic Creamery is in Ireland but they have a few shops here in America too, all in North Carolina. After ice cream we walked down main street and wandered in to a couple of shops, including Mast General which is always a fun stop. 

We headed back to the house about 5 and I said my goodbyes and headed for home. Such a great day! 

Hubs had a busy day too, beginning with a sporting clay contest, lunch with friends, and then the grand boys baseball game. Pretty sure he managed a nap right after. I was home by 6:30 and we had an easy dinner of pizza and salad and called it an early night. 

Sunday morning we went to church, then took daughter1 and little miss out to brunch. My son-in-law and the boys went straight from church to the Clemson baseball game so they didn't join us. Hubs and I spent the afternoon watching The Masters which was exciting this year. Going in person one day is still on my bucket list, so maybe someday. 

And now for tomorrow's today's letter in the April A-Z Blog Challenge...

Day 11-L is for Lily of the Valley 

My theme for this year's challenge is The Things We Keep: An A-Z of Ordinary Objects, and today I'm stepping outside my house and into my yard with these-

Lily of the Valley 

These started life in hubs grandma's garden in Bellville Illinois more than 60 years ago. Hubs parents then took some from that house to their home in Kentucky, then later to their home in Tennessee and then to another home in Tennessee and then a few years later hubs brought some of those to our home in South Carolina. 

I love the history, the family connection and the sweetness of these tiny blooms. We'll divide ours at some point and give to our girls to grow in their gardens and hopefully keep the love blooming for generations to come. 

Just Write

 I don't normally blog on the weekends, but it's April so Saturday blogging it is...

Day 10-J is for Journals 

Did you keep a diary when you were a child? What about now? Do you journal? Have a blog? 

I use my blog as a form of journaling, although I think all bloggers would agree not everything in your life is meant to be shared in a public forum. Hard as it is to believe there are many things going on in my life and in my head that don't make it on to the blog. 

I do love this space though, and I love blogging. I love the connections I've made with people through my blog, the things I've learned, and the encouragement I've received. But I also have a journal. 

Actually I have a whole stack of journals dating back to my earliest days of motherhood. I grabbed three off the pile and snapped a photo but there's more where they came from.  

I don't write in a journal every day, and sometimes it's just a sentence or two, something I read that stayed with me, notes on a sermon or bible study I'm doing, maybe venting about something that I need to vent about but don't want to actually vent in person, and a lot of swirling thoughts and observations about life are all recorded on these pages. 

There's a quote (attributed I think to Flannery O'Connor)  that says something along the lines of, 'I don't know what I think until I read what I write', and that feels very true for me. Journaling helps me make sense of things that don't always make sense. I especially love reading back years later on what I've written, and seeing how something played out, or if I still feel the same way now as I did then. 

I keep my journals, but do I keep them forever? I can't imagine throwing one away, but do I want my girls reading them someday? I'm honestly not sure. Would I want to read my mother's journals? I'd definitely be curious, but there's something about the idea that feels like invading her privacy on a pretty grand scale too. 

So what say you? Would you pass them on to your children's children or burn them in the backyard firepit? 

Getting The Wrinkles Out

 We're officially one third of the way through the alphabet with today's letter. Carry on A-Zers...

Day 9-I is for Iron 

Do you have an iron? Do you use it? This might seem like a funny question because doesn't everyone iron? 

No. No they do not. 

Recently there was a question relating to ironing in my weekly Hodgepodge link up and I was surprised at how many people said they never iron, that they haven't ironed anything in years. They just use a wrinkle release or buy clothing made of fabric that doesn't require ironing and I was left scratching my head. 

My daughter2 informed me recently that she actually has two irons. She needed to iron something one day and couldn't find hers so thought maybe she'd gotten rid of it in a move (obviously she wasn't ironing often) so she was forced to buy another. Then she found the one she thought was gone and now has two. Not sure she irons enough to warrant having two irons, but we visit and we iron so we're glad she owns one. Not everybody does. 

She also told me when she got it out to iron something her children were mesmerized. Apparently they had never laid eyes on this particular appliance. 

My hubs would not last a week without an iron. He likes things crisp. Not nearly as much as he did when we were first married, or in all those years he wore a suit and tie to work, but even in retirement he still isn't one to wear a wrinkled shirt. My mother always loved telling the story of being at our house one time when hubs was still working, still wearing real shirts (none of that casual Friday nonsense) and she watched my husband take a freshly starched shirt out of the plastic bag the cleaners had put it in, and iron it just a little bit more. True story. 

So what does this have to do with my theme? Well obviously I own an iron and obviously it's something I'm going to keep, but also it's a tough letter and when I started thinking about what to choose this word came to mind. There's something satisfying about running a hot iron over a crease running down the front of a shirt and seeing it disappear. 

I remember my mama setting up her ironing board in our den. She'd put it as low as it would go and set a chair behind it and have a stack of clothes to iron beside her. She'd also have her spray starch and distilled water and she might watch a little tv while she ironed. I honestly don't remember my mother watching tv when I was growing up except when she was tackling this chore. 

Maybe she appreciated sitting down for an hour? 

My dad was in the Marine Corps and my mom ironed his uniforms to perfection. She ironed a lot of tablecloths too and took such care in doing the job. Ironing a tablecloth is tedious. I send my tablecloths to the cleaners, and it's rare for me to iron a huge stack of anything in a single sitting. We're an iron as you go household so if I'm planning to wear something that needs to be ironed I do it then. 

Thinking about my mama sitting behind her ironing board is a picture of homemaking I don't think we see a lot these days. I suppose when I picture my mama ironing I think of it as one of the very many ways she showed love to her family. 

And that's a memory worth keeping. 

Tugging At The Heartstrings

We're moving right along in the April A-Z blog challenge and I bet if you read here regularly you already know what my letter H post will be about...

Day 8-H is for Hedgehogs

Last year in the A-Z I learned a new word-familects. I wrote about it here (The A-Z Yadda Yadda Yadda), but in a nutshell the word familects means one family's way of speaking. It can be anything from expressions to nicknames to stories told. 

Today's word falls firmly under the heading of familects.

It started with a relatively small, wildly funny (to my family) incident and as these things sometimes do it's taken on a life of its own as the years fly by.

When we lived in the UK we had a pretty pond in our back garden patio. One day I stepped outside and noticed what I thought was a big leaf floating on the pond. I innocently stuck my hand in to grab it only to discover it was a hedgehog. 

Let the shrieking commence. 

My girls came running thinking something terrible had ocurred (it had! I grabbed a dead hedgehog I thought was a leaf!! with my bare hands!!)  and much hysterical laughter and hijinks ensued as they tried to recapture the hedgehog who was once again floating in the pond. I'd flung it away from me in a fast and furious manner and as luck would have it that little hedgehog landed right back in the pond. 

So anyway, here we are some twenty years later and my girls still cannot resist buying me things they see with hedgehogs on them or sending me hedgehog memes and I still cannot resist buying them things I see with hedgehogs, and they know every single Christmas there will for sure be some sort of hedgehog related gift in their stocking or under the tree. 

Case in point-

A maternity nightgown with a momma and baby hedgehog walking across the front. 

While the back and forth gifting is mostly a mother-daughter thing, every now and then hubs jumps in with something fun, like these sweet little kissing hedgehog salt and pepper shakers. 

We can't let it go. Nor do we want to. 

Now, here's where familects come in. Unless you're my daughter or my husband I don't want you to buy me hedgehog tchotchkes. Because those would just be tchotchkes. 

But a hedgehog gift or card or meme from one of my girls? Well that means something more. It means they remember the koi pond with the beautiful iris, and the house we all loved for so many reasons, but especially the garden where so very much grew, including, and most of all, us.  I like to think that when a hedgehog catches their eye, whether on a greeting card or a cookie tin or whatever it may be, they're carried back to that garden for a moment. 

Teenagers...sisters...a mother who loved them so much they knew they could laugh at her ridiculousness and that she'd laugh with them. We didn't have camera phones back then, so there's no photo of the happening. It's all just a memory now, but I hope the same wave of tender affection I feel for my daughters when I think about that day washes over them too.  

I hope they know their momma will love all the hedgehog stuff they wanna give her, not because she loves hedgehogs, but because she loves the memory of teenagers in the house, life in a British garden, and growing up girls.