Night And Day!

This was our weekend two weeks ago...

A new fall of snow...

A Sunday afternoon...

New snowshoes!

The trifecta of happiness!

Until last weekend hit and I discovered a new trifecta!

And it all revolved around Florida in January!

It wasn't balmy or beach weather, but as happy as snow makes me -

no snow maybe makes me a little happier!

Sean and I went down to visit his family in Jacksonville.  His mom lives right by the beach so a quick morning jaunt and we were on the waterfront to watch the sun rise.  

Do you realize how early the sun rises?

Crazy sun!....

Watching the sun rise over the water!

And so we begin the happy, sappy "couple" pictures... Overall a good picture, but I must admit that I'm quite appalled at the shar pei thing I've got going on with my neck :(  I remember my cousin, Shelley retaking selfies of Lisa her and me because she had shar pei neck.  I now empathize!

That afternoon, we took his mom down to St Augustine for lunch at this really nice restaurant inside a really nice hotel downtown.  Mrs Gartland is an artist (very good if I say so myself) and she's very big into the arts.  She wrote an art column for the local newspaper for a number of years.  St Augustine apparently has a lot of artists and so she likes to go to the art galleries while she's down that way.  The place where we ate actually had a really nice art gallery in the hotel so we meandered around there for a while after lunch and enjoyed some really great art work.  I especially like it because it was a Christian guy - I know this because he had, under his signature on all his art, John 3:18 or 3:28 or some scripture verse.  Anyways - he had a lot of really really cool paintings and I know Mrs Gartland was really impressed with his work.  Oh - as an aside, this artist actually used to work for Disney and he did artwork on the movies Little Mermaid and Adventurers and a bunch of other big name Disney films.  It was an interesting switch to see him make.

On Sunday, Sean took me around Jacksonville where he grew up - I loved seeing this... :)  The beach that he grew up on and right down the street was his house.  I never thought people like him existed :)  People ACTUALLY grow up on beaches in Florida and don't just go on vacation there!  Crazy!

Sunday afternoon, we met up with the rest of his family for lunch.  I've made the determination - all Gartlands are VERY nice! :)

Bad picture, but you get the idea.... Sunday night we went to see The Lights Of St Augustine.  From December until the end of January, they have this white light display all over the town on the water front.  It was really beautiful!

Monday we left, but not before we had a little more beach time!  Well - on-the-beach time!  Although Sean did have to take a jump into the water and I sheep-like followed him - but only up to my knees, and then the sheep-syndrome wore off and I gathered my wits and got the heck out of that cold ocean!

And now back to snowy reality! :(

But I've just got to book my trip back to FL for a conference I have in May... I'll just keep happy beaches in my mind's eye until then!