Sunshine in the Sunshine State

My cousin Morgan came for a long weekend in Tallahassee.

She arrived on Thursday evening at around 10 and although we'd both had long, busy days and swore that we would go straight to bed, we talked for too many hours. 

On Friday morning, we got up late (we'd thought about sitting in on Carson's class, but that didn't happen because we were being lazy) and then walked around a little on campus. Morgan's pregnant self combined with the heat made it a short walk, and we sat outside the Chic-fil-A on campus to wait for Carson to get out of a meeting. We walked over to have lunch at the Pitaria near campus. After eating, we browsed a few thrift stores, looking for deals and good baby finds, and came back with a few things. 

Carson made us dinner that night, his "famous" (so he says, he's made them once) spaghetti and meatballs with garlic bread and vegetables. We were so full afterward and we sat down and watched a movie. We talked for just a little bit after it was over, definitely feeling the effects of staying up so late the night before. 

On Saturday morning, we went to the beach! You know it's weird, because just 13 months ago, Morgan visited me in Cleveland and we went to the beach and we walked on ice. Now here we are in March in Florida in the mid-80s with swimsuits and beach umbrellas and actual sunshine.

An interesting truth about Morgan and sunshine and me: basically every time we've gotten together in Florida, it's rained. When we were little and my family would visit hers? Rain. I remember being stuck in the penguin exhibit at Sea World for hours. We visited the springs and the same thing. Disney last year? Rained. When she came to visit me last summer? Rain. The forecast doesn't always indicate rain, but we've learned to expect it. All that to say... we were surprised to have a successful beach day... but it definitely did sprinkle Saturday night and then pour on Sunday evening.

Carson had forgotten that he can't deal with sun in his eyes, so he used the hat from Grandmama to shield himself. 

The beach wasn't deserted, but there were only a few other people out there. That's been our experience at the beaches here, and I think it has something to do with the fact that driving out to them can be a bit of a hassle. Works for us; we like quiet beaches!

Morgan is sad she forgot to bring her matching golf tournament hat. This thing restricted eyesight (like blinders on a horse) but was GREAT for when the sun was blazing down. 

Baby Colucci is finally showing himself! This was very exciting.  

Out of the three of us, Carson burned the worst and was very red. This is due entirely to the fact that he decided he didn't need sunscreen. Morgan burned a little too, and mostly on her feet (weird). I got a little sun on the back of my legs but it was faint and gone the next morning. Not too bad. 

We stopped in Apalachicola on the way back to explore the little stores they have there. It was busy with people in restaurants and stores and we had fun browsing. On the boardwalk there, we spotted these pelicans hanging out. 

We had a little "birthday party" for me that evening. We stopped by Dairy Queen to pick up an ice cream cake (my favorite... cake is much less interesting to me than ice cream in any form) and Carson chose an Oreo one. They sang to me and I opened a gift from Morgan. 

We watched the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes" that night. Morgan and I hadn't seen it before, and decided that we didn't like it very much. This surprised us, because I feel like I've heard so much about how great it is and how much people love it. We decided to stick it out and wished we hadn't. 

On Sunday, we went to church and then to lunch with some friends of Morgan's who moved here from Ocala. Afterward, Carson stayed behind to get some work done while Morgan and I went to get my hair cut and then did a little shopping. She found some fun maternity things (which she tried on in the store. Nice.)

We watched another movie on Sunday night and I made Pad Thai for dinner. 

On Monday morning, we woke up late again and then Morgan and I went to brunch at Uptown Cafe. We ordered the same thing, both with grits instead of hash browns, but I ordered a biscuit and she got toast.

Afterward, we went through the carwash. Her car had been parked under the trees in our driveway all weekend and the pollen was nuts, so she needed it. 

Here are our carwash faces. 

After the carwash, we went back to the apartment for a minute to say goodbye, and Morgan was off again! Once again, I'm so glad she lives close enough to come for a weekend! It's really great having family and friends nearby. 

Links on Loss

I think you probably know that the subject of pregnancy loss and infertility is one that is close to my heart. Even if I do end up having children one day, I know that I won't forget how I felt when I thought that maybe I wouldn't ever be a mother. I hope that my eyes will still fill with tears and that my heart will ache for people who can't have babies. Again, I have no idea if that's in my future, but whether it is or not, it's a topic that I think should be discussed more often, and I think is becoming less of a taboo topic. A year ago today, I had my third and most recent miscarriage. I don't have anything to say on that topic right now, but I thought that I'd share a few posts other people have written that have been a blessing to me in this season of hoping in the Lord.

I Could Have a Baby but She Could Not - I know it's really difficult for people who haven't experienced loss to understand it, and I don't judge them at all for it. I hope people don't feel guilt because they can have children while I still don't, and I appreciated this post.

My Miscarriage Changed Me - grief is a strange thing, and I was edified by the perspective this writer had. (great links on the bottom of this post)

The Heart Behind Multiple Miscarriages -

He Didn't Heal My Daughter, God is So Good

When Jesus is the Only Baby

Gospel People Say Goodbye

Why I'll Never Ask When You Plan to Have a Baby

God's grace has been so abundant in this season of life, and though I do think of the babies I've lost on a daily basis, He encourages me. I am often most encouraged through the words others have written, which draw me to the Lord and help me to process.

Nothing Special

I got a new phone, so Carson saw fit to leave me a message from my old one :)

For I think the second time (maybe the third, but I doubt it), I beat Carson in Scrabble.

Picked up supplies for my store and got asked if I was buying supplies for some sort of weird diet. 

Note to self: Always check Carson's pockets! We once had an incident with a purple crayon and some pillowcases. Thankfully nothing happened with this particular pen because if it had, it would have been all over the perpetrator's khakis and light colored dress shirts. Whew.

My brother turned 20! We FaceTimed him to wish him a happy birthday. 

There's no such thing as just blow-drying my hair and leaving the house. A customer recently told me "You have BIG hair with the emphasis on big like that. My hair was straightened and in a ponytail and not huge but I guess he meant that I have thick hair? Moral of the story: when in doubt, talk about the weather.

Tin Foil Curls

Carson was at a conference all weekend long recently, which meant that I had an entire weekend to myself and no car. The apartment was clean and laundry was done, which meant that I really didn't have anything to do. I hung out with my good friend Netflix for awhile while combing through my Pinterest boards, trying to delete things I really won't ever do. I came across a tutorial for curls that you can make using tin foil and a straightener. It sounded really goofy, but I thought, "Why not?

Right up front I'll tell you: I have way too much hair to do this effectively. I realized this as I was winding little strips of hair around my finger and making little packets out of foil to hold them in place and as my hair tried to free itself from its foil prison. 

Something else I should tell you: I gave up on this. 

I already curl my hair with a straightener and it works well and I don't waste foil doing it. I don't usually even have to use hairspray, so doing this wasn't really worth it for me, time-wise. For someone whose hair doesn't hold a curl very well? I bet this would be great. The curls I did get after a very halfhearted effort stuck around, so I would imagine that any time actually invested in this would get great results. 

I made a little video of the process just because, so here you go. 

 Here's the "after". You can tell that I actually pressed one side and didn't press as many packets on the other side. It doesn't look terrible in this picture, but I definitely looked bedraggled in person.

Atlanta/Lindsay's Birthday

When we planned our trip to Nashville, we noticed that there were two distinct routes. Birmingham was one way, so we went up through there, but it turned out that going through Atlanta was an alternate route. "IKEA!", I thought to myself. My birthday was going to be the day we traveled back so I requested that we go there. That turned into a plan for IKEA and then a tiny amount of sightseeing before going back to Tallahassee.

We left Nashville on Sunday and drove to Atlanta, about a 3.5 hour drive. It wasn't bad and there was lots to see. We stopped around Chattanooga for a snack that we decided would tide us over for a late dinner, and I spotted this building on top of a mountain. I remembered that my friend Catherine went to college at a school on a mountain in Chattanooga (click on that link for a pretty picture of it) and what do you know? The very same school. Isn't that the neatest location ever? I can't imagine the view!

We got to Marietta at about 6:30 and there was a little mistake with our hotel, so we scrambled and found a new one quickly. It was one of those shady motels with an outside door which I HATE but I guess it's one of those things we can look back on and say "Well, we didn't die!" to our children. 

We set off for IKEA at about 7 and 11 minutes later we were there! They close at 9 so we power-walked around the whole place and definitely could have spent a great deal longer there.

Exploring the room set-ups was so fun. We discovered that we are in agreement about just about everything kitchen related, and it was fun to plan our future kitchen for a house we may or may not ever build. We liked this one a lot: white backsplash and counters, double farmhouse sink, and gray cabinets. The ones with white cabinets caught our eye too. I'm guessing making these decisions for real is decidedly less fun, but this was great! Overall I was surprised at how much we agreed on colors and styles of things.

We got some fun stuff for our house and didn't totally break the bank. 

We thought these bunnies were so cute. We didn't buy this though.

YAY! Carson does the creep face in lots of pictures, if you hadn't noticed. 

It was dark when we left IKEA and headed for The Cheesecake Factory. We ran over something mysterious which gave us a flat tire, so we had a later dinner than planned while Carson put the spare on (don't worry, he got it patched first thing the next morning and it was not a big deal. Whew.)

No pictures from dinner because... there were already enough in this post and I didn't take any anyway. Our waitress was from Tallahassee though! It was an excellent birthday dinner.

My actual birthday was Monday. Carson left to get the tire patched before I woke up and so I got ready while I waited for his return. We had gotten a piece of cheesecake to go the night before (it's hard eating that much food AND dessert so late at night) so he sang and served that.

I encouraged him to grab wrapping paper and tape before we left, which he did, and then couldn't find the tape when it came time to wrap presents on birthday-eve, so he used duct tape. "Didn't I do a good job?" he asked. Well, it certainly was wrapped, so yes. 

I'd dressed for the warmer temperatures but didn't factor in things like wind, so I changed before we actually went into the city.

 We found a parking spot on the street behind the Georgia Aquarium and went walking around that area exploring. 

We decided to go to the World of Coca-Cola. It was a fun experience, and a very well set-up museum. I was surprised that it appealed to people of all age groups in a really engaging way.

Here's the vault where they keep the secret formula. 

They have a thing where you can mix things to make a "perfect formula" for Coke. Carson's, as you can see, was "somewhat refreshing". Mine was a dud.

Here's the vault where they keep the formula. It was a little adventure getting to it.

They have a little bottling assembly line so you can see how it's made. Really high tech and impressive. They give everybody one of these bottles at the end of the time there.

We went into a little hall with memorabilia. Here are some of the Olympic torches.

Olympic pins

Things they make in different countries. It was fun to see different or old versions of drinks.

Carson wanted to get a picture with the bear. I definitely did not, as I don't like people in costumes. Carson was convinced that the bear was all mechanical, so he asked people. As I expected, all of them insisted that it was instead a very well trained REAL bear. Sure.

We saw a 4-D movie, Carson's first. 

And last, we went in the tasting room.

 They have sodas from all over the world. Some of them were DISGUSTING.

Here's our little souvenir coke.

 For lunch, we went to The Varsity. It's an Atlanta place, and it was SO CROWDED.

You can see the 1996 Olympic torch from there.

See? Cuh-razy.

He wouldn't smile.

We left Atlanta right after that. We liked this statue on the way out. 

Oh and here's Georgia Tech; my uncle Mike went here. You can also see this building and the stadium from Varsity Burger.

Aaaaannnd then we went home. It was about 4.5 hours to Tallahassee, down back roads and through little places in Georgia.