Christmas Vacation

I haven't blogged much lately due to being gone for a week after Christmas. My family had a great Christmas which consisted of visiting lots of family and Marissa opening lots of presents and of course, celebrating the birth of our Savior.

The Saturday after Christmas we left for a family vacation. In the last four years all of our vacations have been company promotions. While I am truly grateful for the opportunity, company events mean that I either have to leave my daughter with her grandparents or take one of them with us so Tim and I can go to dinners and misc. functions. This trip was our first totally non-Farmers related trip. 7 days of just the 4 of us. We left Saturday morning and arrived in Atlanta in the evening. This was the first time we didn't drive straight through but my doctor advised me to stop often since I am pregnant so we stopped halfway. The next day we left early to head to Venice, Fl which is where we were staying since Tim's Grandpa lives there. The drive should have taken about 9 hours but we hit really bad traffic and didn't arrive to Grandpa's house till after it was too late to get a glimpse of the beach. So we went to bed eager to wake up and set out for my favorite beach, Siesta Key which is about 20 miles from Granpa's house. Grandpa only lives about 2 miles away from Venice beach but Siesta Key is my favorite and worth the 20 minute drive. Monday-Thursday we spent four days doing nothing but walking the beach, swimming in the ocean (yes, in December) and site seeing Florida. We also got a chance to see Grandpa and go to dinner with him. Overall the trip was great. Probably the best vacation I have ever had. It is so hard to come back to cold St. Louis (which apparently wasn't that cold while we were gone).

Here are a few of my favorite pics. I took mostly pics of the beach because I don't really like my overall appearance at this stage in my pregnancy:) Of course I took lots of Marissa pics too.

Siesta Key Beach and a sailboat out in the ocean. I really like this pic and I am thinking about inlarging it and hanging it in my family room.

my 2 favorite people. This is at the end of Siesta Key beach where you can look out and see Long Boat Key.

A picture of Long Boat Key from Siesta Key.

Long Boat Key Beach

See the Dolphin in the distance. This is actually not very far off the shore. I am going to try to zoom in and edit the photo.