Fishing and Golfing and Surf, Oh My

In case anyone was wondering about my absence, we took a Spring Break trip to Florida, back to Anna Maria Island, where Mr. T grew up. We rented a condo about 50 yards from the beach. The first two days we were there were rather chilly and extremely windy. Since going to the beach was out of the question, the boys went golfing:


Reports say that all the boys played well and had fun.

The next day, the boys and I braved the chill and went to the beach while Mr. T did some work, had a conference call, the usual.


I huddled in my beach chair while the boys played in the water, completely oblivious to the cold and wind.

Interestingly, the Kindle works wonderfully, even out in bright sun, but there's a trick to using it at the beach. If you hit the next page button while the screen is in full sun, the new page will look all wonky. However, if you just hold the Kindle so that the the screen is shaded, the new page comes out perfectly:


It's especially easy to do if you have a cover for the Kindle, because you can use that to shade the screen. (The book I was reading is The 19th Wife, about polygamy in the Mormon tradition in its original incarnation and as it exists today in the Mormon offshoot communities. It was very good.)

After his work was done, Mr. T joined us at the beach with a borrowed skim board, and tried to teach the boys how to use it. Sr. Jr. tried , but fell and scraped up his knee. Jr. Jr. tried too, and Mr. T got these great action shots:




Ever since last year's vacation, the boys have been begging Mr. T to take them fishing again. Last year, they fished off a pier. This year, Mr. T booked a fishing afternoon with an old friend of his, so the boys actually got to go out on a boat into the bay to do some *real* fishing. Again, boy heaven. Fish were caught. Here's Jr. Jr., already indulging in the fisherman's "this big" hand gestures:


Since I wasn't there, I'm just going to post the adorable pictures and let your imaginations fill in the details:








While the boys were fishing, I had a little time to work on my Angee sock. Before we left, I had already turned the heel, and in the course of the week, I managed to finish the first sock and start the second. I don't have pictures of the finished sock yet, but you can see the pattern very well in these pictures:



The reason I got dragged on this trip, instead of having a nice Mommy vacation like I did last year, is that last week was Mr. T's and my 15th anniversary :) We dropped the kids off at my MILs and went off to spend the day and night together, sans children. While my MIL fed the children every sort of sweet she could be talked into and took them to Steak and Shake for dinner, Mr. T and I went down to St. Armand's Circle to wander about and do a little shopping. Afterward, we went to dinner at the Beach Bistro, a beautiful little restaurant on Anna Maria. The restaurant looks out over the Gulf, so dinner is accompanied by beautiful sunset views, and occasionally, playful porpoises. The food is amazing, too, good enough to rival any of the best restaurants here in DC.

Here are some of our views from dinner, as the sun set:




And here we are, after dinner on the beach:


I put this in for Sharon, who wonders why I never show my face :) Actually, I HATE seeing pictures of myself. I hope it's just that I'm completely unphotogenic and not that I'm hideously ugly, but I usually gag whenever I see a photo of myself. But here you go --


We spent one final day at the beach, then went to dinner at my MILs, where the boys cracked open a coconut,


and chased little lizards:


We've all been well fed, and some of the more stubborn members of the family got a little sunburned. Here's a portrait of the goofball family: