Vacation!

I finally got around to getting all our vacation pictures on the computer. I won't bore you with all of them, just the high-lights.

We left around 6:30pm on Monday night and drove straight through the night and Tuesday until we got just south of Atlanta where we stayed for the night. Driving crazy hours like this used to be no big deal, but I have a feeling that we're getting too old for those kind of shenanigans. After spending the night in Atlanta, we awoke bright eyed and bushy tailed Wednesday morning and drove the rest of the way home.

Along the way we stopped in Gainesville, FL. Go Gators! You may think we were stopping to see old college friends, or take a quick peek at the campus, but no. Travis wanted to stop for lunch at Mi Apa Cafe, home to some of the best Cuban food ever! We got our food to go and ate it at the rest stop so Maya could stretch her legs.
For New Years Eve, Mom and Dad took us on a dinner cruise on the Intercoastal Waterway. This was so much fun! I couldn't take advantage of the open bar, but I did enjoy my chocolate cake dessert!
Here we are waiting to get on the boat, which is behind us. It had 3 levels, the very top being all open with tables to hang out at. We ate dinner on the first level. We were even provided with New Year's hats!
After dinner we spent the rest of the evening on the top deck viewing small homes like this:
The rest of our days were spent at the pool, or shopping, or at the beach. And of course we had to go to world famous "Boston's on the Beach". If you go, you have to get the fish dip!
I'm not sure what was going on in this picture, but I look excited about something!
The view from Boston's patio, where we enjoyed 2 fish dips, and a plethora of other seafood dishes. Yum yum!

After lots of hugs and tears, and setting my parents up with Skype so we can video talk with them, we left earlier than intended. Our original plan was to leave very early Wednesday morning and drive straight through to St. Louis. After our previous 24 hrs in the car plus another day driving, I nixed this idea. So we left on Tuesday and drove to Atlanta, staying in the same hotel as when we drove down. Wednesday was an easy drive to St. Louis then.

I have to say this: even though we spent 2 years in St. Louis, 2 days is just not enough time to fit everything in! We had a great time even though the weather wasn't so hot while we were there. My sister in law took us to the art museum, which we actually had never been to before. It was really cool! They had a huge Waterlilies by Monet, and mummies! Travis took pictures of some of the Oceanic art but they turned out pretty dark. So the only pictures we have of our time in St. Louis is of us outside the museum.
We left Saturday morning and drove all day, getting home around 10:30 that night. We were greeted by this:
This was after Travis shoveled out our driveway, front porch and sidewalk. Then a few days later, we got another 4 or 5 inches. He is not a happy camper with Mother Nature this week. Hopefully next year we'll have a snow blower, or better yet - a 4 wheeler with a snow plow!

And just for fun, here's my 13 weeks picture:
Here's hoping for an early spring!