Florida and Savannah

The day after Christmas, Matt and I flew down to Florida where we celebrated my granddad's 80th birthday. We had a wonderful family dinner at The Addison in Boca Raton, followed by a larger party the next day at my granddad's girlfriend's son's house. Did you follow that?! :)

I don't have any photos of the first dinner party...as you may have read here, that day was a little hectic and I ended up leaving my camera in the car. However, my mom took lots of photos so I will hopefully get those from her soon.

The next day, we went down to look at the beach on the way to Miami for the second party. The weather was BEAUTIFUL and I seriously considered becoming a Snowbird...but can you do that when you're not retired? Hmmm...

Family photo

Matt and me...and ocean.

Granddad at the party, cutting his birthday cake
Todd (my granddad's girlfriend's son) is really into animals, and has a standard poodle, an African parrot, and several neat iguanas/chameleons. The house he and his wife recently moved into was already equipped with a special room, completely with waterfall. Also, it rains in there. Very hard to describe, but we all went a little crazy in there. Here is Todd with my cousin Alexa, and one of the neat iguanas.
Todd with some sort of three-horned thingy. Really neat looking!
And I made friends with the parrot, Chester. I have never been a bird person, but this one was super cool. He was really interested in me...possibly because I was wearing bright colors? Not sure. Whatever the reason, Todd said that he is usually pretty antisocial and never takes to new people. However, he became my new BFF and frequently tried to kiss my cheek. He stayed on my shoulder for quite some time...and it was fun! Until he started eating my sweater. Then he went back into the special room.

Self portrait. I held the camera out and said "Smile, Chester!" and somehow he peered around my head for the photo. Hilarious.
Poodle love. The poodle's name is Forrester. I like that.
Here's the special animal room. How weird is that? Really neat, though.
Cousins...these are my first cousins Hanna and Alexa. With me, of course, in the middle.
Aaaaaaand...then we left Florida and went to Savannah. It was NOT warm there...not sure what happened there. Savannah weather FAIL! But it was beautiful, as always, and dressed up for Christmas. I could live here.
Matt and me at Forsyth Park, in front of the fountain. Love.
Orleans Square
Matt checking out some old graves at Bonaventure Cemetery


And that's it! I didn't take any photos in Nashville...but we were only there for one night. We naturally went to Pancake Pantry (yummmmmmmmmmy), which made me very happy!

All in all, a very fun trip, although there was way too much time in the car and not enough warm weather. But, what can you do. We rang in 2010 with bbq, and then we went to see Up in the Air - very good movie! And today...it's back to work. Vacation time flies by, doesn't it?