I still have a blog?

So I came across my blog the other day, and realized I have completely neglected it. You know what the horrible part of it is? I didn't really care. I said to myself, "eh, oh well." But then I started reading some of my posts. Even though there are only a few, I started reading. And as I did I started to recall those particular memories. What it did was it brought me back in time, allowed me to relive those moments, those events, feelings, and emotions that are now locked in the past. It brought me joy to think back at those times. And it is only a year later! Think about how important it will be 5, 10, 40 years down the road! It truly made me feel terrible now that I look back on the last year, and how much I have experienced that I have not taken the time to write it down.

So here it goes, my attempt to get back into it. Now, I am not expecting to spend the rest of my day off trying to catch up on the last year's worth of events, but instead I am going to focus on one thing that was very special for Carrie and me that happened recently, and that is: our memorial weekend get away to the Florida Keys!

We decided to take a three day trip down to the Keys since we both had never been there and we had the weekend off. One of the fine perks of living in Florida is that when you get a weekend off there are SO many places that are a short road trip away that make for a glorious vacation. So, Friday we left very early in the morning, drove to Florida City which is "the gateway to the Keys" and we checked in to our limited budget hotel (Woot!). Carrie is freaked out by any hotel that you access your room from the outside rather than the inside (didn't know that), so she was not a fan of this place. BUT there were no termites, cockroaches, mice, rats, or other critters so I thought that was pretty good for such a cheap, creepy place. AND it was only a short drive from the Keys.

So on Friday night we went to Key West and went on our "sunset champagne / snorkel cruise". In other words, they take you out on a catamaran to go snorkeling during sunset and give you free beer and champagne. And for 40 bucks a person, I am not complaining. It was really nice, we had an absolute blast, saw lots of tropical fish and coral reef. We even saw Barracuda and I saw a shark. The champagne and sunset on the way back wasn't bad either.

Saturday was frustrating early on, seems we weren't the only ones wanting to spend the day on the beach in the Florida Keys on Memorial day weekend. We did not make it very far before we hit a traffic jam from hades. We decided to stay on Key Largo and hit up a very uncomfortable beach. We made it work, and our tail-bones loved the fact that we laid on a "man made beach" in other words, rocks and pavement bordering the ocean. We decided we had had enough and drove back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We went to dinner overlooking the ocean during sunset. Nothing could have beat it. A beautiful sunset, a gorgeous restaurant, delicious food, and a stunning date. We left the restaurant and raided the Hampton Inn's beach down the road to watch the remainder of the sunset. I brought along my Ukulele and played some music as we watched the sunset, feeling a warm breeze, smelling the ocean smells, sitting on a rock with our feet hanging over the edge, can someone say perfect? I love those moments that you find yourself in from time to time, those moments where you lose thought of all the stresses of life, the things that worry you, the things that annoy you, the things you dread doing, and you just sit back and appreciate beauty in its truest form. It's almost as if God sort of raises your ability to appreciate those times more so than other times.

Sunday we decided to come home, but not before first stopping at Hollywood beach, which is juts north of Miami. That finally fulfilled the one thing that was lacking to make our weekend a perfect one, a beach with white, soft sand, overlooking crystal light blue water with swaying palm trees overhead. Carrie and I RAN into the ocean, dove into water, and played in the waves like we were little kids, doing back flips into the swells, laughing and enjoying life. After walking down the boardwalk and getting one last ice cream fix, we decided to head back home.

So that was it! Not so bad, although it takes me quite a while to write these. I think that is why I don't update more, it is intimidating to start a post that you know will take you a good hour to write when there almost always seems to be something better to do. But, of course, those things that we would rather do don't seem as important now, because, like Donald Miller talks about in his book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years", if you go through life and can't remember what it is you did, then it is almost as if they never really happened! Thats all for now, hopefully more to come soon.

Peace out.