MIA

So I was in Miami for work last week...

Between Two Posts

So between the last two blog posts, I was able to escape the cold, dreariness of Oklahoma in favor of the sunny, balminess of Florida.

One day, after the work was complete, we had a little time to explore so we went to the Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine.

The moats were empty...

July Recap - Part 2 (Speakeasy and Boca)

We also got some good eats while on vacation. Whether it was home with my mom, or at my brother-in-law's new restaurant, or at a cool speakeasy in Tampa. We were a bit spoiled.

I made shrimp and grits at my mom's house because someone put a bug in my ear about it...

Shrimp and Grits (and Nolita Pinot Grigio which was just eh)

July Recap - Part 1 (Getting Down)

Getting There

Framily Time

September was a wild ride! For a while I thought I might not blog about it because I am still fairly exhausted, but here goes:

We tailgated at the first home game. It was fun to get out for a change of pace. I usually prefer to stay home while my town transforms into a sea of crimson and cream but a friend of mine was in town and we had to go to her winning tailgate.

Life at My Mom's House

Looking back at the pictures from our vacation, it seems like it was years ago.  <Sigh!> I miss being able to sleep in while someone else dealt with my circus, my monkeys.

Life inside my mom's house centered around a new puppy. Someone dumped this cute little doggie and my sister's big dogs thought he was a toy for them. They worked night and day trying to extract his little squeaker!

Recharge & Go

After the long/late visit with family on Independence Day, it was really hard to get going the next morning as planned. I got up early to let the dog out, but then I got back into bed, and wanted to stay there all day. We had to shoehorn ourselves out of my mom's house and our stuff into our car (which was difficult as our stuff had expanded and we had the 3rd kid riding back with us) and get on the road already. Just a few hours late. But we had one more important stop to make before home.

We weathered another massive rainstorm on the way to see the Best Neighbors Ever! It was just like the deluge of rain we received when we neared my mom's place at the beginning of this trip. So things were a little damp when we got there and our friends were in the middle of a kitchen renovation, but it was great to be with them again.

Celebrating Independence - Riverview Style

I know it's taking me a long time to blog about our vacation but we have been submerged back into (under?) our home/work/kid life again.  So, anyway, back to recapping...

Memory Lane Exploration

So the place where I spent my childhood exploring woods, creeks and ponds with my Nanny (the name I dubbed my granny when I came on the scene) is not so much a paradise these days.

Everything is overgrown and it appears to have been parceled out - might even be a trailer park now. Sad to see our old homestead end up like that.

After my grandparents sold the place, a circus used to winter here. That was pretty cool to imagine elephants and lions living there where we used to ride bikes or hunt for turtles.

The trees hid the old pond...

We had tiki tables all around the pond and a lodge where the family would gather for special occasions.

Alligator Ole!

On the way back from the Keys, Scott and I were discussing the lack of alligator sightings during our stops in the Everglades/Alligator Alley and at my mom’s place. In the 20 years that we have been driving down to Florida together, we have never seen an alligator outside of Busch Gardens….and that guy was too stuffed to jump. Like us most days after dinner.

So Scott did some research while I was driving and set up a canoeing adventure for the family at Canoe Escape on the Hillsborough River. The guide promised that we’d see between 10 and 50 (!!!!) alligators during our 2-3 hour canoe trip. Yipes! When Scott asked if they’d had any alligator attacks, he said only one in over twenty years, and the bite wounds received were defensive bites.

Later on from my mom's house I did a little more research and found this article right away and I had some real apprehension about the whole adventure that evening.

When I was a child (I had a fever, my hands felt just like, 2 balloons) I was in small boat in our alligator-infested pond with my 2 brothers.  When my brothers spotted a baby alligator swimming across the pond, they both jumped overboard to retrieve the baby gator.  I was left alone without a paddle (go ahead and laugh because I was definitely up some sort of creek), shrieking.  From what I have remembered for almost 40 years now is that my grandfather (PawPaw) jumped into the pond and rescued me.  This past week I learned that my memory was faulty. My mom told me that my PawPaw didn’t know how to swim (what?!). And my brother told me that HE jumped in to bring me back to shore. Whatever happened, I was scarred for life…

At any rate, I felt the need to somewhat get over this irrational fear of gators. And the canoeing sounded like fun for the family. Cost was minimal at $100 for 4 rowers on the shortest route (Trip 1) that takes 2-4 hours depending on how fast one rows.

Not sure how to feel about this yet. I told them that red angers the gators like it does bulls.

Northbound - Bloodline Route

So the whole point of going to the Keys was to visit places we'd seen while indulging ourselves on Bloodline... We had researched it a bit - locations to see - and we ordered them by exit route for us. We didn't get to all of the places we listed (like Alabama Jacks's where Danny had the fish sandwich) because it was too far off of our route and we had lunch reservations at Marker 88 Restaurant.

Marker 88 was not on the original agenda, but when I was googling "mile marker 8" to see why that was significant to me and Scott on the way down to Florida, Marker 88 came up as a highly recommended restaurant, so we decided to check it out for lunch on the way back to Riverview.

Key West Evening

So when we finally made it to Key West, we set up our tent and chairs, and took in the ocean breeze.

Primitive camping with no electricity for the fan we brought to keep cool and bug-free...

At least we had a bit of shade...

“We’re not bad people, but we did a bad thing.”

During our two weeks in Florida, we finagled a couple of days to get away for a kid-free adventure. This past spring we got hooked on Bloodline so we researched some of the places that the Rayburns frequent.

Going to the Chapel

At my niece's wedding rehearsal and the actual wedding it was hard to hold back the tears. Mostly because I knew my brother was going to shed a few tears giving away his beautiful daughter. It was only a few short years ago that my brother and his wife were helping us rehearse for and participate in our wedding.... well, almost 19...

Rehearsing

As Per Usual

The first morning of my visit, I am usually up early exploring my mom's place. I miss silly things like the moss!



And not so silly things, like the fruit that she effortlessly grows in her yard...

We Made It

We were up at the butt crack of dawn trying to eat breakfast, walk the dog, repack our stuff and get on down the road. Let's just say that my little family of 5 is not as efficient as we could be. Luckily we didn't have anything pressing scheduled for Tuesday. We breezed from Louisiana through Alabama to Florida in no time at all.

Catching Up, Part 2

On the way to Lola's house we stopped by the new Trader Joe's in Gainesville and stocked up on wine and chocolate and other goodies.

We had only been at Lola's for a few minutes before the kids started harvesting citrus from her trees.



It was balmy and warm and nice. Love South Florida this time of year!

Under the Massive Mistletoe

I actually miss the Spanish Moss

It is so beautiful and peaceful here at my mom's....

Kumquats - we brought back a ton of these!

Fishing off Lola's pier

Emi testing out her driving skills with Lola's golf cart (and I'm in a tank top in JANUARY!!!)

We didn't do much besides eat, sleep and be merry at my mom's place. We did get to IKEA to get some wire baskets for the Little Ones' closet (and lunch) but that was the only outing...

For New Year's we made (and ate) a lot of food and karaoked with a couple of my mom's friends. It was a very laid back way to ring in the new year. Poor Emi was coughing her head off and was miserable.

David took this picture...

Dancing with Lola

The next day we needed to head back home so we packed up Beulah and said good bye to Lola and headed down the road.

Stuffing his pockets with kalamansi

Loaded up with kalamansi

Me and My Mom

About 10 minutes after we left my mom's place, my mom called me and in a stage whisper asked "Hey Nolita, where's your dog?" Whoopsie!

So we turned around to retrieve our sweet little Gracie girl who had no idea that we had left her behind. She was sleeping in front of the refrigerator...

And then we were on on way again...

Catching Up, Part 1

I haven't had a real chance to update on what's been going on so I thought I should start with our road trip to Florida. (which seems like so long ago now!)

It was really wonderful to get away from the snow and sleet (14 degrees!) of Oklahoma to warmer temps and friends and family in Florida.

We loaded up the car and planned to head out Christmas night, but it was so blizzardy out that we decided to wait until the light of morning just to be on the safe side.

The first 3 hours on the road between Norman and the Dallas-metro area were treacherous to say the least. Snow and ice and deserted cars on the side of the highway. It was slower going as we drove into different counties and the highways were in differing states of slickness. Outside of Dallas it was smoother sailing for us. We took sweet little Gracie with us and she rotated between my lap, Scott's lap and Emi's pillow.

Where's Daddy?

We would drive for a few hours and then stop for bio breaks and meals. We really wanted to drive straight through to Gainesville, but Google had us take a "shortcut" in Mississippi that forced us to we call "Uncle" in Daphne, AL.

On the chilly morning of the 27th, we filled our bellies with hotel breakfast and headed South.  We arrived at our friends' home mid-afternoon and hung out with them just like we used to when we were neighbors. We were so heartbroken when they left 3 years ago so it was so good to spend time with them again. It was chilly (in Florida?!) so we had a fire going and we caught up on life.

That night after we went to bed it rained and stormed and it would have been really enjoyable but we had a crazy fur ball wigging out in our room. The next morning we ate porridge and sultana for breakfast and I had quite possibly the best cup of coffee I've ever had!

After a relaxing morning, Scott and I broke away (leaving the nippers with our friends) and checked out a local mall. I got a couple of pairs of skinny jeans (the hot pink ones took me back to 1985). Later we snacked and played games...

Hanging Out

...and talked about the possibility of us becoming neighbors again. If we moved in with my mom, we'd only be a hop and a skip away!

Aubri loving on Ruth

Scott loving on a cup of coffee...just LOOK at that beautiful mug!

The next morning after breakfast we went exploring the woods around the house. It took me back to when I was a child exploring the woods with my grandmother.





When we got back it was time to head further south to my mom's place. We knew we would see our friends again (on the way home) so it was only bye for now.

Us with the Best Neighbors Ever

(Continued in the next post or two).

Augmented Reality

Earlier this week a "social concierge" coerced us into having a photo taken with Michio Kaku.

* grainy photo ganked from the IBM Innovate Facebook page.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Michio, he's the co-founder of string theory. Click below to see him speak (as we saw him this morning).

Watch live streaming video from ibmrational at livestream.com



Gorgeous painting of Koi in the gallery at the Swan and Dolphin



My office type area away from home...



Jaguar Land Rover guy speaking about latest infotainment advances in the new Jags 




My understated phone case - it doesn't scream Mickey...

A couple of weeks ago Scott's best friend Brian gave me an OtterBox commuter case for my BlackBerry. I was happy to have a tough case as my white leather case was rather beat up. That night after I figured out how to put together my new case, I tossed my worn case in the trash. Later I found out that the case was not quite built for my model so I was in search of a new case. Scott ordered me another OtterBox but I canceled that order when I thought maybe I could find that elusive giraffe print case (I didn't). During a break I was looking for souveneirs when I came across my new phone case. (I also got a neoprene case from IBM so I'm good on the cell phone cases for now...)

I've been enjoying the training/sessions/friends/vendors/events but I am ready to be back with my family again... I am missing them so much!

Predictable Trajectory

I saw this on the way to my workshop yesterday (yes, on a Sunday, but I'm not complaining).

Actually, when I got outside the pilot had written "LOV" and I watched him write the "E". 

Love is in the air (see?) 

David would have flipped his ever-loving lid over this as he is always watching the skies for birds and planes. Amazing!