Seminoles > Buckeyes

I've said it before, and I'm going to keep saying it: having friends and family visit? One of my favorite things. We've been fortunate to have lots of people stop by over weekends since we've moved to Florida, and I'm thinking that has something to do with the weather, the fact that it's Florida, and the fact that it's generally not THAT far away from where I grew up. 

In other cases, it's fortunate because it happens to be a place people were going anyway, like when Zack and Erica stopped by a few weeks ago on their way to Destin. That happened again most recently when Claire visited. Even though she's from Cleveland, she has a cousin who graduated from Florida State this year, which is still such a small world thing, but very convenient for the Bays. She came a day and a half early to spend time with Carson and I and I'm not complaining. Pretty nice for us. We've told her that she needs to be a good cousin and come at least twice a year. 

I met Claire at the airport with a chalkboard sign. We'd intended to do this for Deanna too, but her flight came earlier than scheduled and we weren't there yet. I left nice and early for Claire's flight... which was delayed, so I had to sit around with this huge sign in the airport. 

Our first stop was Hobby Lobby because Claire was my craft buddy in Cleveland and we needed to reprise that (we made skirts here and mugs here). After that, we stopped by Florida State to get Carson, and ended up walking the whole campus. Here, Carson is showing off his favorite spot in the Classics library. 

The whole campus smelled amazing. There's honeysuckle everywhere in Tallahassee which makes my eyes itch, but smells marvelous. We had Carson take a picture of us in front of it (I had to crop his finger out). 

This was the day before graduation, so there was a line formed at the Westcott Fountain of seniors taking pictures in caps and gowns, dressed to the nines and often holding bottles of champagne. In the weeks leading up to graduation, we'd seen a few people taking pictures here and there but I'm pretty sure almost every graduating senior got a full on photo shoot this weekend. Every time we came by here over the weekend, this line was there, often much longer than it was in this picture. The campus usually boasts students in athletic clothing, but this weekend, they were photo-ready, all over the place. Funnily enough, we walked past one girl taking pictures (not an obnoxious photo shoot like some of them were) and Claire realized it was her cousin! 

For dinner that night we went to Moe's. Because of all the people in town over the weekend, something on our side of town was key, and that was it. And it was good. 

We worked on our project: a pretty simple canvas. We have a Pinterest board with ideas for things we can make together, but were apparently super ambitious when we pinned to it, because there was a lot of furniture construction. So we stuck with a much simpler, easier to carry on a plane project.

The next morning, we went to the beach! We stopped at the World's Smallest Police Station on the way. I recently read about this online and it was on the side of the road we traveled to the beach, so it was an easy destination. 

Nobody really got burned at the beach, despite the sun being hot and the humidity quite low. It was a beautiful day, and after laying out in the sunshine, we took a walk down the sand.

Carson threw a starfish at us. 

This was pretty gross in a souvenir shop. 

Claire had to go be with her family on Friday night and Saturday, so Carson and I just hung out. We watched Netflix on Friday night (nothing new) but decided to seize the day on Saturday. For the first time since we've been here, we had a picnic in a new-to-us park that's super close to our house and as you can see, quite unpopulated. It was such a lovely weekend and I'm really glad we didn't stay inside. After this, we went grocery shopping and then came home and watched three movies in a row. 

Claire rejoined us on Sunday morning before church. After the service, we walked around in Cascades Park, enjoying yet another gorgeous, low-humidity day. 

We made a Starbucks Frappy Hour stop on the way to the airport and said our goodbyes to Claire. We wish the weekend could have been longer! Can't wait for next time!