Home for the Holidays

Hall and I are back from going home for the holidays. We had a great time traveling all over the Southeast to visit each set of parents for Christmas. Hall got quite a substantial vacation this year and we had fun for two weeks driving. We started out by visiting Hall's mom and step dad in Gadsden. We mainly hung out around the house and visited with them and Hall's sister, Julia. We also made a stop by Cooter Brown's rib shack. I have had ribs from many different places and Cooter Brown's in Jacksonville, AL has the best ribs I have ever eaten in my life. They are always phenomenal. Before our wedding my Uncle and Aunt and three cousins stopped by there with my Dad and brother to eat. They are from Tampa and when they came up this year for Thanksgiving requested to drive the hour and a half to eat those ribs again. They are that good.

We also went to church with Hall's parents and got to visit with a lot of people we had not seen in a while. We love going to services there, it's the church we got married in.

After Gadsden we drove down to Birmingham for a day to see my parents and drop Frank off for the next leg of the trip. It was great because my brother made it into town the night before we left so we got to visit with him for a little bit. I hadn't seen him in a few months and really enjoyed visiting with him.

The next morning we were off for Saint Simons Island to see Hall's Dad and step mom. They bought a house there about two years ago and we've only been able to visit once before so it was great to get to go again. Hall's grandfather, Mont, came down for Christmas as well and I know we loved getting to spend so much time with him. We did lots of stuff on the island, got to see the lighthouse, walk in the village and go to a few shops. We ran their dog, Gretta, out on the beach at Jekyll Island and walked onto Fort Frederica.

I should mention Hall and I rented a car for this trip. I had just gotten my car serviced and rather than put 3,000 miles (yup...40 hours in the car) on my car, we decided to rent one instead. We ended up with a Chevy Cobalt, and I can't imagine people drive that car on a daily basis, a lot of people must be walking around with bad backs. The seats were so uncomfortable! Hall said probably a million times on the trip that they must be made out of concrete. Haha. Anyway the cars trunk space was tiny and I had zero extra room for my camera. So no pictures until we got to SSI and Hall opened up his Christmas present from me, a new camera. Sorry about that! (And with all my griping, the car did it's purpose, got us from point A to B to C and had great gas mileage 33 mpg average on our trip, so I should not be complaining)

The pictures below are from our trip to Fort Frederica on Christmas day. The park was closed, but we walked in on a path and had the whole place to ourselves. It was really neat, and so pretty.

I had to show off my new boots. Yay Hall! He did good!

Great picture Charlotte took of the two of us


This was a Christmas miracle. The dolphin was SSSOOOO close to us. We had a great time watching it. You could see it's eye watching us on the surface, that's how close we were to it.



After leaving SSI, we drove back to Birmingham and witnessed another Christmas miracle...snow in Savannah. We drove back the day after Christmas and got pounded by snow on our trip back , but it made for a very pretty drive :)

After picking a very excited Frank back up from my parents who were so kind to take our little bundle of non-stop energy for five days we started our drive back to Va Beach with one more stop at Hall's uncles lake House on Hartwell Lake in Georgia. It's a great stop, on the way and makes the next days drive only 8 hours instead of 12. We had a great time visiting with John and Geddings. Geddings is a phenomenal cook and fed us very well and we played a new card game for me called Canasta. Let's just say John and I kicked Geddings and Hall's butts. The next day we were back in Virginia around seven and glad to be back at home. I hope everyone had an equally great and festive holiday this year!