Come Monday...

We're back from Destin and feel totally refreshed and grateful for some quality beach time with my family. I honestly didn't know if I'd be able to go or not until late afternoon Wednesday thanks to the swine flu at work, but I made it, and I tried really hard to only check the news and my work e-mail twice the whole time. :)

It took just a couple of hours once we got down there on Thursday afternoon to get vacation head and let my worries float away. I can't tell you how much we needed this little get-away, and it was very special to have another trip down there with Granny and Pap. This trip has been in the "works" for a year now, and this time I wasn't going to let a hurricane OR the swine flu keep me from going!

After settling in our condo and spending a few hours on the beach, Derek and I geared up for dinner and found this great little seafood restaurant right on the water. It was so good, and the live music from A.J.'s next door (and the bottle of wine) just made it that much better. We had a few drinks on our balcony after dinner and then called it a night.

Friday we slept in (have I mentioned I really think we need to buy a king-sized bed for our house so we can feel like we're on vacation all the time?) and rented a pontoon boat with my family to take out on the bay that afternoon. The weather couldn't have been better and the water was beautiful, as always. Friday night we went to dinner with the whole family at Harbor Dock for some delicious, fresh seafood and then headed back to the condo fat and happy.

We decided we wanted to get out and about on Saturday, so Derek and I headed to Grayton Beach to just piddle around at the Zoo Gallery and stop by the Red Bar for a beer. We hit the fantastic outlet mall in Sandestin on our way back. Needless to say, a few hours later we had definitely done our part to support the local economy. :)

We spent a few hours on the beach when we got back and then got ready to boil some shrimp down at the condo pavilion. I forgot to mention that when we weren't sipping a nice, tropical drink on the balcony of our condo, we were downstairs in my family's condo either bowling on the Wii (yes, Mom and Dad brought theirs) or playing poker or Dixie Dice, a Grey/Turner family tradition that's caught on well with the Bices.

Once we got everything ready for the shrimp boil, we headed downstairs to the pavillion. There was a 70th birthday party going on down there, and they had a great little two-man band playing some beach music. It was perfect. By the end of the night, we had made some new friends, and the birthday girl even got Granny out on the dance floor... absolutely priceless.


We had a wonderful time, and while I'm glad to be back home now, I really, really dread checking my e-mail and voicemail tomorrow morning. It's definitely back to reality now, but at least with a fabulous vacation memory in the back of my mind... :)