I Miss Them... and Florida, Day 6

I'd like to continue writing about my and A's trip to Florida, looking back at pictures just makes me smile... but first I need to get something out.

I miss them.

First this one.

Yes, we take pictures while we try on clothes.  We can't buy everything and she just looks so cute in all of it!

And this one.

Could there be anything sweeter?

And I miss this one.

My little black kitten doing his favorite thing... playing with his brother... only weeks ago.

Today it has been one week since I lost my Boo.  Just looking at this picture makes me sob and long to hold and snuggle him again.  So soft and sweet.

Until now I hadn't even dared to count up how long it had been since I saw my precious DBKs... but my last glimpse of A's little face was June 27... making it nearly six weeks ago.  Since we had just come home from Florida, it has been even longer since I've seen my boy... June 12... 8 weeks.  That is too long to spend without my precious ones.

And I miss them.  And I don't even have a soft black kitty to cuddle in their absence.  Times are hard.



All I can do some days is try to return to the happy memories... look at A's smiling face in our Florida pictures and know that no matter how hard they may try, no one can ever take those memories from her.  That's why I'm continuing now with Day 6.  I had meant to blog as we did things, to keep up with family and friends at home... but we were just having too much fun, and then everything fell apart so it took much longer than I ever intended... but at long last here it is.

On Day 5, Sunday, we had gone on a day trip to St. Augustine, the oldest city in the U.S.  As we were driving back to the condo, the sun was setting and we could just see it over the intercostal waterway every once in a while as we drove.  I told A that two years ago when I'd been in North Carolina with a friend, we got up very early to watch the sunrise on the ocean and it was beautiful... and within moments it was determined that we would be doing that very same thing in the morning.  I tried to get us both to bed at a decent hour (no more staying up until midnight for A like on Saturday night) so we'd be ready to wake up, but when my alarm went off, I still did NOT want to get up.  But there was this excited little girl sleeping in the bed next to me who most certainly wasn't going back to sleep, so up we got.  Pajamas still on, we headed down to the beach... and this is what our eyes were treated to:

Only God could create something this beautiful.

For a few moments, we sat on a towel we brought and just watched the sun get higher in the sky.  Then we walked along in the surf as we watched and A looked for seashells.  My fabulous cousin who is the best host/tour guide ever advised us that early morning was the best time to look.  She actually found a few pretty cool ones!  Then we tried our hand at taking our pictures WITH the sunrise.

I actually succeeded at getting a fairly decent picture of my pajama-ed little imp...

Both of us, however, was a little trickier.

Apparently, I can't hold my phone far enough from myself to get us, the ocean, AND the sun in the shot.  Nevertheless, A is looking precious as always!  Me... eh, I'm not really awake yet.

Then, we came upon something a little... okay, a lot... less beautiful than the sunrise or some seashells that had washed up overnight...

Dinner, anyone?

Then it was back to the condo to catch up on the missed sleep.  A, being an early riser and not a fan of naps, stayed up and watched the Disney channel - hey, it's vacation, I'm not gonna force the kid to take a nap even if we were up at 5 am.  I, however, slept until lunchtime, at which point we geared up to go  back to the beach and put some sand castle supplies we'd picked up the night before to use.

My sand castle.  The moat was an epic failure.  Sand is extremely absorbent.  Perhaps they should make Bounty out of sand...

We also had a blast posing with our sand castles.  And A is pretty handy with a camera phone!

I, however, have beach hair.  Niiiiice.

And then there's my future model, no beach hair at all.

One last interesting thing we saw on the beach before we headed up to enjoy the pool...

I think Squirt was in there.  Duuuuuude.

And now for a bit of gratuitous cuteness.  I taught A how to do a front and back flip in the pool, and she had what I think may be an illegal amount of fun showing off her new skills...

That face?  Worth every tear, every penny.

Then we posed for a couple of cute pictures together...

Well... okay, they started out cute.  You just can't be too serious with this girl around.

It was after dinnertime when we finally headed inside... spent the whole day at the beach and loved every minute.  But as we all know, good times come with a price... and I sure paid it.  That afternoon as we were lathering up with sunscreen, I said to A "Just get the top part of my back, the bottom part doesn't really burn anyways" (even though I literally bathed her in the stuff).  Yeah... famous last words.

This did not feel good.

Fortunately, I had the forethought the day before to pick up some of this...

Before bed that night we took just a few more pictures of the amazing place we stayed... we were truly blessed to have family generous enough to let us use this space for what I can only say was the most amazing vacation either one of us have ever had.

From our balcony, the view down the beach

The pool, bird's eye view from our balcony

While taking these pictures we noticed that an immense sand castle tragedy was occurring...

All those tiny sand crab lives........ Oh, wait, those things live in the water.

We were undeterred and tried for a shot of ourselves with the ocean in the background, which actually didn't come out half bad.

And with that we called it a day.  We stayed up late again, planning another somewhat relaxing day for Tuesday, and it was absolute bliss.  A perfect day.  I can't wait to put all these photos in a scrapbook for her.  Sweet girl, I had the time of my life with you.

And so ends another chapter in our Florida adventure.  Ellfant and I are waiting for you, babe.