Saying Goodbye to Florida

I'm playing catch-up and sharing some of our highlights from our last few weeks in Florida.

Seaside, Florida - The film location for the movie 'The Truman Show'

We went with some friends to see the little town where The Truman Show was filmed. It is a little VERY organized beach town 30 minutes or so from us. I can see why they chose if for the movie. We saw the Truman house and the square where Truman went to work and got his paper and magazines. We also drove over the bridge (Which isn't actually cut off) where Truman and his friend would fish/drink... It was a lot of fun and the beach was beautiful there. We had fun meandering - then later that week Dan and I watched the movie and had fun knowing we'd been there.

Christmas

Dan and I had planned to spend Christmas Eve with some friends at church with their family tradition of a pinata and a round of Dirty Santa gift exchange (The name sounds funny, but it is basically like a white elephant only the gift are actually good and something worth scheming over. But Dan came home from work that afternoon feeling a little under the weather so we stayed home and carried on his own family tradition of Pizza and root beer. We watched some movies, baked cookies, and played some games, played Christmas music, and read some Christmas stories and the Nativity story together. Just a wonderful relaxing and memorable Christmas Eve.

The next morning we slept in then went out and opened gifts and stockings and ate sticky rolls. I got Dan a nice jacket, that turned out to be too big so we'll have to figure that out, and some movies. Dan did too much for me (as always) but the highlight was that he got my wedding ring fixed. Over a year ago I lost one of the small diamonds in the wedding band and I hadn't worn it for the last 5 months because a few of the other diamonds were coming loose. Dan had my ring sautered, cleaned and shined, resized, had the center diamond more secured and and a new diamond placed. Now it looks more beautiful than ever! I am so spoiled.

Dan felt better so we spent Christmas Day with another couple from Church. We spent the day talking, eating, holding their new baby boy, and Dan and Aaron played his new hunting game on Wii. We had a great time.

The next morning we joined to same couple on their boat to a spring about 1 hour north. It was amazing. Supposidely the water is totally clear, there had been some rain and flooding so it wasn't totally clear, but we enjoyed boating through the cypress trees. There is something eerie about those trees - especially in the winter when they don't have leaves. Dan and Aaron decided to get on their wet suits and try and dive down to the spring. I was a little paranoid that snakes or alligators were going to follow them, so I kept a sharp eye out at the tree lines - but they were fine! I guess they are scared of humans or something and don't usually leave the tree areas...I prefer to be paranoid and safe rather than sorry...Nevertheless, we had fun!

New Years Eve

The highlight of our new years was meeting up with some friends at a wharf village nearby for a fireworks show. We took it easy the rest of the night and got some things together for our move and watched a movie and celebrated with sparkling grape juice.