Baby Kaden

Press pause on the Florida pictures for a few days. My newest nephew, baby Kaden, is here!

There's not much else in the world I love more than when my sister Tiff has babies. They are the most scrumptious treat you can imagine. With Kaden, her fourth and final, I was free as a bird to spend lots of time with him and Tiff. No more glares and evil eyes from nurses like when I arrived at 1:00 in the morning from college to see her firstborn, Garrett.

This time I arrived at a normal hour, bearing Baby Gap and Cheesecake Factory cheesecake.

{Because sisters know.}

{Baby Kaden}

Tiff, thank you for sharing Kaden's first week with me! In addition to the joy of meeting him, this week felt like textbook definition of "sisters" to me. I believe the definition goes as follows:

A.) Be there for each other to celebrate the great joys and landmarks of life together.
B.) Fall madly in love with each others' babies and snuggle them endlessly.
C.) Laugh and cry together in the same sitting.
D.) Eat plenty of ice cream together, multiple times a day if necessary.

In this blog, I've talked some about trying to find and enjoy the small blessings in each day, even in the midst of a difficult season of life. It wasn't too hard to find them this week.

Before closing out this post, I thought you might enjoy seeing Kaden's brothers and sister welcoming him home.

{Garrett}

{Lilly}

{Connor}

"Babies are such a nice way to start people." -Don Herrold
I completely agree.

The Beach at Pelican Bay

My very favorite quote is by E.B. White and says,

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

Here you'll see pictures of 10 days of simply enjoying the world, particularly on the beach at Pelican Bay. It's these beach days, getaways, and times of rejuvenation that fuel my body, mind, and spirit to arise in the morning seeking to improve the world on the ordinary everyday.

One of the ways I enjoy the world best is with sun, sand, and salt water. And enjoy we did! Deeply, happily, and thankfully. Here are a collection of photos of our days at the beach.

{Mangrove walk or tram ride to the beach}
(Can you already see why I love it here?)

{Most days we took the tram, but this day we walked}
{Breathtaking arrival at the beach}

{The ultimate R&R}

Happy days! More to come.

Here Comes the Sun

Last time Neal and I drove to Florida, 2 years ago, I kept randomly singing the line, "Here comes the sun!" with great spirit...but not much more. I couldn't come up with any more lyrics, but the line I did know seemed fitting on the drive to the sunshine state. This time, the night before the road trip, I hopped on I-Tunes to hopefully find the full version of the fragment I had been singing. Turns out, it was an old Beatles song.

Along with the Beatles came the theme song for this year's trip, Jo Dee Messina's "Heads Carolina, Tails California."

Baby, what do you say we just get lost....We can pack up tomorrow, tonight let's flip a coin. Heads Carolina, tails California, somewhere greener, somewhere warmer. Up in the mountains, down by the ocean. Where? It don't matter, as long as we're goin' somewhere together. I've got a quarter, heads Carolina, tails California!Such a fun song, get it for your next big road trip!

Our trip started out with a leisurely breakfast in the Commons, where we sat and sipped orange juice and coffee and felt free as birds.

{We hit Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, Atlanta, and never stopped talking the whole way, I don't think.}

{Beautiful driving scenery through TN & GA}

{A brief detour to check out Lookout Mountain, GA}

{On day two of the drive, we listened to this audio book the whole way through. It was fascinating! Totally recommend.}

{Driver}

{Pinch hitter}

{Welcome to FL}

{First sighting of our Naples destination, hooray!}

I can easily say, "I love me a good road trip with Neal," and we both couldn't help but scheme up other road trips for the future during our long ride of conversation and chattering away about life together and places we'd like to go. But I don't know if I could ever love a road trip more than to Naples, FL. Our happy place!

Summer Vacation

As you may have noticed, my blog hasn't shown any vital signs for several weeks now. Over lunch with my friend Ilene yesterday, I remarked as we parted, "My blog is dead and I need to go resurrect it!" But that wasn't really true I guess. It's not dead, it's just been on summer vacation!

Or rather, I, have been on summer vacation. A very, very good place to be.

I'm home now with so many pictures to sort through, a load of laundry to be washed, books to be returned to the library, suitcases to be stashed... you know what that picture looks like. On top of the re-settling in duties, Neal is making a major push on his final grad school classes this week, leaving me not much time with the computer. So, pictures of me and Neal's happy place to come, but slowly.

We had a fabulous vacation and road trip, a total of 2 blessed weeks, with lots of talking, processing, resting, soaking up the sun, reading, eating yummy food, Home & Garden channel, beach walks, sunsets, seeing the country via road trip, and just partying like we love to. Free from work, responsibilities, life, people, even free from internet, and then Neal all to myself, you know, pretty much heaven. I had some of my usual ups and downs physically, but it was mild, and I was able to greatly enjoy our vacation. Pelican Bay is my very favorite place to be with Neal! So thankful for that time and place to spend a couple weeks before what I call "Suicide Month" begins: August in Residence Life.

Many more pictures of our vacation to come! Thanks for being patient with me!