A Month and a Day

Wow! I can't believe I've been gone for over a month.... Well, not really GONE that whole time, but basically on summer vacation. Since we last talked, I've celebrated my 25th birthday, gone on vacation with Jeremiah to the beach for a week, been to Atlanta for my cousin's wedding, had another doctor's check-up, and taken a "Ladies' Retreat" to Dothan with a group of my neighborhood friends. AND, I didn't take one picture the whole time :( I carried my camera everywhere, I just never seem to make myself actually snap any pictures.

Pace is doing great! She is now a little parakeet who repeats EVERYTHING we say. I have a lot more to say about her, but I think I'll give her her own post next time. The baby girl in my belly is becoming more active daily, and doing well as far as the doctor and I can tell. She still doesn't have a name, which is a constant source of concern for me. I just keep waiting for some name to hit me that blows me away because it is so perfect. Jeremiah has not managed to offer one name to the name pot, but he has laughingly discarded every one that I have come up with :)

Our beach trip was relaxation at it's peak! The weather was perfect: blue skies, clear aqua water, white sand, and a constant cool breeze. I could have layed on the beach all day every day and never broken a sweat. However, Jeremiah and I have finally learned to start our vacations with a dissertation about what each of our expectations are for the week. His ideal schedule definitely does not include playing beached whale all day long, so we try to reach a compromise for each other. I took a run every day down 30A with him and he did some beach-side wallering with me in exchange. Every night we went to a different fabulous restaurant and even saw a movie at the theatre one night. We missed our little girl a LOT (especially every time we saw another child go tottering by), but she was in Dothan with her Moogie and Papa having a blast. So, we just reveled in our freedom.

One morning we had a picnic breakfast on the beach. This was something I planned the week before we left, as I was doing cardio on the elliptical and dreaming of all the food I wished I was eating instead of burning off. Buttermilk biscuits, swathed with homemade honey-mustard, with a plump but spicy Conechuh sausage wedged inside. Fruit salad, made with blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and cool green grapes. Finally, cheese grits, cooked with milk and sharp cheddar cheese. Can't you just see the big pregnant woman burning her calories on the elliptical with a thought cloud constantly drifting above her head of just how she plans to put all these (and much more) right back on. Well, I dreamed it, I packed our sweet picnic basket into the car (despite Jeremiah's protestations of whether that was REALLY necessary), and that morning at the beach when we woke up and didn't really feel like cooking breakfast, and packing a basket, and carting it to the beach I pushed through anyway.

After burning a batch of sausage (that should have set every smoke detector off within a 10mi radius), figuring out how to pack a picnic when we have no Tupperware, plastic bags, tin foil, or saran wrap, and giving up on the grits all together, we finally settled onto our blanket on the cool deserted beach, with our coffee in our hands. Sometimes, romance can be a pain in the butt to create. However, I think that one day when it becomes much harder to spend any time alone together at the beach, we will be able to look back at that little picnic and be so thankful that we made it happen.

While we were there we did a lot of dreaming. I have written about that in other blogs, but dreaming is one of our favorite hobbies when we have quiet alone time together. Where we would build our dream beach house. The vacations we would one day have with all four of our children running everywhere. The ways we would make the million dollars we would need in order to fulfill these dreams.... I love to dream big.

The last day of our beach trip Jeremiah went to Dothan to play in a golf tournament with his dad. So, Mom came down to spend the day wallering with me. She loves the beach (as hard as it is to imagine) even more than I do, and it was the first day since her chemo treatment that she felt good for the whole day. We ended the last night with Dad and Jeremiah joining us for dinner at Captain Andersons. It was the perfect end to a relaxing week.