Heidi visits Naples

I believe that I overestimated how much I enjoy my own company. By Wednesday afternoon the loneliness of being in the condo with just MacKenzie and putting in some serious hours working remotely had gotten the best of me. I decided to head down to the beach to do a little reading and soak in the fresh air. It was a nice change of scenery for sure!

A little reading on the beach

How cute is this dog soaking in the breeze?!

FaceTiming with Jackson!

 MacKenzie did a great job of keeping me company. We even got to "see" Jackson a few times during the week. I was SO ready for Heidi to get into town on Friday night, though. I worked on Friday then tidied up the condo before heading to the airport to grab H'ie. We naturally went for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory and just caught up on life. We rarely get to hang out just the two of us without a husband or her kiddos so it was like being in college again. Amazing. We were bummed because the weather was a bit cool for her visit, but we made the best of it. We sat at the beach in sweatshirts, we did a lot of shopping, we watched NetFlix, we cooked and we just enjoyed chatting the nights away. I highly recommend a girls' weekend for all of you lady readers!

Ahhh sunset

An "usie" with Heidi- HA!

Coffee with my girl H'ie

Views for days

An empty beach

Sweatshirt weather!

Shrimp nachos on the patio at The Dock

I took Heidi to all the normal Naples haunts including Tropical Smoothie (twice! She loved it!), The Dock (so good), and, of course, Badass Coffee. I was so sad to take her to the airport this morning, but I know her family will be happy to have her back. Thanks for making the time to come down to visit, H'ie. We miss you already!

Livin' in Naples

It has been so nice to be with MacKenzie again. She really is a lot of company, as odd as that seems! I spent the day Thursday catching up on work and then went back to the airport to get Amber.

Reunited. 

I saw this online and swore it was MacK

Adorable.

Amber wanted to grab dinner at a "local favorite" on Thursday night, but since she doesn't like seafood there was no such thing. We opted for Cheesecake Factory instead and neither of us had any complaints!

Friday was a perfect weather day so off to the beach we went! Amber didn't bring her sunhat so we stopped at CVS to get her one and she found she pants the just had to have, too. It was hilarious. She spent $50 on this outfit. I laughed so hard. She kept saying she wanted to fit in with the old people. She stood out instead. HA!

Amber's CVS finds: a sun hat and...pants?

We did a typical beach day of walking on the beach, lunch at Tropical Smoothie, an afternoon at the beach, showers and then back for sunset and walking around town. It was a lovely day! We ended up hitting Target later in the evening for some shopping and then grabbed a quick dinner. We were honestly in bed by 10 pm that night. It was kind of sad! HA!

Not a bad place to spend the day

I love sunset

Pleased.

The next day was pretty much a repeat. We went down to the Farmer's Market and ran into folks participating in Naples women's march. That really messed up traffic. Once we got parked we were able to buy fresh oranges and grab coffee before heading to the beach for another lovely walk.

We walked, we sunbathed, we hit a local hamburger place for a late lunch, we got cleaned up, watched sunset and then meandered around town again. It is pretty easy to fall into a routine down here. We grabbed a late dinner and then went to bed early again. You'd swear we weren't in our early 30s. :)

Sunday we, you guessed it, went for a walk on the beach then grabbed brunch at Skillet's, a local breakfast place that I love. It was a delicious meal and then we spent Amber's final hours in town at the beach for the windiest day we'd had. I'm pretty sure sand got into places I'll never discover. That evening MacKenzie and I ran Amber to the airport for her flight home and then got things around for a week of working remotely from here. My best friend Heidi flies in on Friday night for a visit and MacKenzie and I don't go home until February 7th. We didn't want Susie's place sitting empty during season when I can work from anywhere!

The most wonderful roomie

I miss Jackson terribly, but I get the impression that he is enjoying some extra sleep and the chance to make messes around the house without cleaning up immediately. :) He will be down for about a week in early February, too, so I just have to get through this workweek all by myself before the company starts rolling in. I love the ability to work from anywhere! I also love being able to sneak out for walks with MacKenzie to enjoy the sunshine and not have a jacket on! This has been by favorite winter ever mainly because I have not experienced winter yet! HA! :)

Makin' the rounds

Monday evening we made the stop we'd been waiting for: CHUY'S for dinner. It actually let us down. I think it was almost too much flavor after being gone for so long. Bummer.

Counting the minutes until I'm reunited with this girl

In good news, Chuy's is right by the Bates' place so we swung in there to hang out and catch up.

Cam eating dinner

Cameron is getting so big. He's pulling himself up and almost walking on his own! Josslyn helped me make brownies for the crew. She was very good at licking the spoon!

I love this photo!!

Josslyn is SOLD on Tim Tams

When it was bedtime there, we headed over to visit Heidi. Porkchop is in India for a missions trip so she was a single parent. It turns out our arrival woke up the kids (sorry, not sorry, I love seeing those little loves) so that was an adventure.

Heidi loves them, too!

Jocelin REALLY loved them

The next day it was back to work for the both of us. I worked in the morning then went to the knee specialist. When I got home we sorted through one month of mail. Holy cow that was a lot of stuff! Then we got on the road to see the Mauck family and deliver Case his 1st birthday present since we will not be home for his party. BOO!

Case opening his birthday present (early)

Liam was not impressed*
*I think he liked the Tim Tam and didn't like Case
getting a present- HA!

Case was OBSESSED with the Tim Tam!

Look at this happy, messy baby!

A new tractor! YAY! 

Jason was even up for the challenge of trying some of the Vegemite we brought home with us. He was not impressed.

From there we headed to Upland to get our delayed Christmas dinner cooked by Guy. We had chicken and noodles that tasted like they were from Heaven. We also had Ivanhoe's for dessert. Life is good! It was nice to catch up with my parents before leaving town again! One of the perks of being gone for over a month is everyone is happy to see you when you get back so they make time for you. I love it! 

We got home late Tuesday evening, I worked on Wednesday morning and early afternoon and then I caught a flight down to Naples to be reunited with MacKenzie. HOORAY! Susan left the condo on Thursday morning to head back to Fishers for a couple of days before heading to Jerusalem so the timing could not have worked out better. I got to catch up with her for an evening before it was back to just MacK and me. Thursday evening my bestie, Amber, flew down for a long weekend. More on that later! 

Last days in Auckland

We really wanted to be good and tired for our flights home so we decided to walk ALL over town. That's just what we did!

They kill rabbits here! The nerve!

We took an Uber out to the suburbs to a local park and then walked back into the city. We stopped in at places we'd read about and just kind of took in how real people of Auckland live. It was a good day! We covered over 10 miles.

Cows. In a city park. Interesting.

One Tree Hill

Views of the city from One Tree Hill

More views

Petefish.

Hiking amongst the sheep

They don't mind people at all

We climbed up to One Tree Hill and looked over to Mt. Eden which was the next stop on our list. We strolled through Cornwall Park (just a popular, large city park), took in a cricket match for a couple of minutes before I nearly died of boredom, and just kept walking towards the city again.

Cricket aka the worst "sport" ever

It was a warm day and parts of the walk felt like a death march. We climbed over 200 stairs to reach the top of Mt. Eden.

Another climb

"Let's go!!!" 

Luckily, the climb was worth it. This was one of the more awesome places I'd ever hiked to.

Looking back to One Tree Hill from Mt. Eden

A dormant volcano 

Views

An accurate photo of how we felt about hiking that day:
exhausted and jazzed, respectively

How cool is this look into a volcano's pit?!

It would be a great place to sled! 

We loved the skyline

Pointing out the tower...where our hotel was! UGH!

One final view before heading back to the city

We eventually had to call it a wash on walking back to the city as we were a little lost and grabbed a train. Whoops. Life is so much harder when your phone doesn't work to bail you out of situations like that! We saw plenty of the city, though, and were pleased to have a seat on the train for a few minutes! We spent most of the evening packing and just getting things ready for the long journey home.

On our final day we had to do some shopping to get MacKenzie's new sheepskin bed (successfully found one on sale!) and to get Tim Tams (a down under delicacy) for all of our friends to try. We got to the airport with plenty of time and spent through the last of our Auckland currency on a final frozen coke for Jackson (all the rage down here, much to Jackson's delight). While our flight to San Francisco was a mere 12 hours (cakewalk compared to 15 hours 40 minutes from Vancouver to Sydney) it was still a long haul. We just couldn't sleep on this flight due to the mid-afternoon departure time so we watched movies (Snowden was EXCELLENT, as was Equity) and just kind of hung out.

I'm the Oprah of Tim Tams! 

We finally made it San Francisco and took about an hour clearing immigration and customs. That was no problem since we had a 6+ hour layover. LAME! We got our first American food at an airport diner that I'm convinced tasted far better to us that it normally would have. We still had a couple of United Club passes so we checked in there to wait out our flight. I eventually took a nap in the lounge, but poor Jackson just couldn't sleep. I don't even remember the flight from San Francisco to Indy as I just slept right through it! We got to Indy, got our rental car and made it home by 10 p.m. on Sunday night. By that time we'd lived Sunday, January 15th for about 46 hours so it was very strange. Due to the International Dateline we just kept reliving Sunday! We were in Fishers so much earlier than we expected that we even stopped in at Kroger for food before going home. It was so nice to be back at our own grocery store! Everything was familiar and fairly priced! Hooray! After we made some quick food at home (which again tasted amazing) and unpacked our bags, the loads of laundry began and did not end for quite some time. I ended up sleeping for a solid 11 hours that night. Jackson actually worked on MLK Day and I just did some cleaning up of my inbox and housework. It was a nice surprise to have an extra day at home to catch up on things.

We had the trip of a lifetime and I feel so fortunate to have all of these rich experiences to look back on. We are truly blessed!