Naples!

We woke up at 3:00 this morning to catch a flight out of the frozen tundra that is Indiana and get to FLORIDA! WOOT! 

Our flight was pretty uneventful and pretty much on schedule so that was superb. Susie picked us up and we were off to see Aunt Kathy and little Heidi puppy! She's such a good girl. She cried and screamed in her little puppy voice when I got there. We petted her and took her for a walk. It is always so nice to see the little girl. She's happy and healthy.

Heidi puppy!!!

We grabbed lunch at Sonny's (corn nuggets- yum!) and then headed to Naples where we'll be until Wednesday. I took a little nap out by our pool. The sun just felt so good. I'd missed that sun for weeks now. I finally moved inside to nap with Jackson and was shocked when the bed broke while I was sleeping. We took it apart to see what happened and a box spring accidentally fell on Jackson's head. HARD! It was a nightmare. Poor baby had an instant goose egg. He was a champ about the fact that the box spring falling on him was likely my fault. Oops. :(

Icing his head and being annoyed with me :/

We called it a day on naps and headed to the beach for the rest of the afternoon and to see the sunset.

The view from the pier 

 We love the pier on Naples Beach. It feels like it is a mile long and the views are just unbeatable.

A pup playing in the water

We left the pier and watched the sunset from the beach. We enjoyed people watching, too.

GORGEOUS! 

Toes in the sand! :)

The trio! 

The birds and the boat make this a favorite 

Once the sun goes down the beach empties. We headed for 3rd street to do a little shopping. I've wanted these awesome beach chairs since we were in Hawaii in November. We found them here and bought two. We'll leave them for Susie to enjoy for the winter, of course, but we are excited to enjoy them for the next few days!

New beach chairs 

We were so excited that we set them up in the living room this evening. Silly. :) Since our naps were not successful it will be an early night for us. Here's hoping the bed holds up! Eek!

Tomorrow's only duties include a run, a rollerblading session, a trip to the beach and an even cheering on the SEAHAWKS and Pete Carroll! Ahh...vacation. Love it!

January...

It is January in Indiana. My Mom complained that I hardly posted this month. I just stared at her. Nothing happens in January in Indiana other than a lot of complaining about the cold and occasional snow storm.

MacK isn't much of a worker...

Jackson works from home now when he has "office days" so he hired MacKenzie as his secretary. She isn't a very motivated employee.

Cake for my boss!

My boss turned 50 this month so I had this cake made for her. Accountants are notorious party people (NOT!) so I had to make sure she felt special on her big day.

MacK scared of Mommy yelling during the SEAHAWKS
win over the PACKERS

My Seahawks are headed back to the Super Bowl after a wild, wild win over the Packers. MacKenzie HATES watching Seahawks games with me. :(

Waiting for shots at the vet :(

Speaking of MacKenzie, she had to get her shots and Jackson made ME take her. Mean! She was a champ, though. She has a lot of fans in that office.

Shots don't halt the desire to play BALL

They told me her shots would make her tired. They lied.

Liam rockin' his Christmas gift :) Chirp! Chirp!

I had to include a photo of Mr. Liam Mauck reppin' the Ball State Cardinals! Adorable! We hope to get some snuggles in with him again soon.

CeCe and MacK

Grace had a volleyball tournament in Indianapolis so they came to "our" place to spend the night. We had dinner out (Chuy's -yum!) and spent an evening shopping. Grace trying to buy things with her mom's money entertained me quite a bit. 

So many ball players...

Action shot!

We just have to make it through this week of snow and ice before we head to Naples for 5 days on Saturday. I think we can, I think we can...

3 years...

I cannot believe it has been three years since my Grams passed away. I miss her daily and would give anything to get to visit with her again. She was a crazy, crazy lady, but we loved her for it.

SnOw bored

Shovelin' the driveway

"Take me inside!! BRR!"

World's prettiest puppy

Movies & Snuggles

We've been just kind of hanging out since returning from St. Maarten. We got to stop in and see Ms. Josslyn Bates. She is just the cutest! She gets bigger every single time we see her! I love it! She gives snuggles and kisses now. Adorable!

Walkin' around

Friends!

We tried out a remodeled movie theatre near us to see "The Gambler." The movie was horrid, but the theatre was incredible. We loved it! The tickets were only $10 each so it was really not any pricer than any other place in town.

Loungin'

Feet up! Woot!

MacKenzie enjoyed having us home on New Year's Day. We played a ton of ball with her, but it was a little too chilly to play outside much. This poor puppy gets bored with being inside so much! 

Play ball?

Sadly Jackson got sick Friday night into Saturday so we had to miss family Christmas in Evansville. MacKenzie really stepped up and snuggled him back to health. She's a good little girl!

Nurse MacK

Here's to a happy 2015!

Beachin'

We spent another day at the beach just soaking in the sun!

Lovely day

A few waves rolling in

Jackson playing in the waves

The sea was raging a bit more so I didn't go out in the waves. Darwinism won't take me if I can help it! :) We spent the majority of the day soaking in the last bits of sun before heading home the next day.

A final sunset from our balcony

We grabbed dinner out a Pineapple Pete's, a local institution. It was pretty good for island food! ;) The rest of the evening we took it pretty easy. Well, except for having a cockroach crawl out of our luggage as we started to pack it. That caused me to scream and run. SO GROSS. Island problems!

We hiked around on Sunday morning hoping to get some exercise in before spending the day traveling. I kept trying to memorize how it felt to be warm. We got to the airport far earlier than we needed to because we had heard it was necessary. Nope. We ended up just hanging out at the airport which was no big deal. We weren't seated together on the flight from SXM to CLT (Charlotte, NC). I was bummed at first but then I started chatting with the older gentleman next to me. He was from Boston and was a crane operator. What!?! So cool! His name was Terrill and though he was 65 years young we found plenty to talk about during our four hour flight. We chatted, laughed, watched a movie together, did a crossword puzzle, you name it! Jackson said he kept hearing me cackle while wearing his noise canceling headphones. Whoops! The baggage claim in Charlotte was broken so we couldn't get our checked baggage soon enough to catch our connection. Ugh! This meant we got to grab REAL FOOD (Ok, fine, not REAL, but non-island food) at the airport's food court. I was dying for Chinese food so I got that and Jackson had BBQ. Our stomachs were almost instantly upset. Ahh! We were not ready to eat like that again. We really had not been consuming much while we were away. It is crazy how quickly your body adjusts.

We finally landed around midnight on Sunday evening/Monday morning. I took the morning off of work to grab some sleep and get laundry done. Jackson spent the day catching up on emails and I did the same at my office. It was a little rude to be back, but we'll survive. It was a good trip, but it was good to be home! 

Sun, surf, snorkel and OIL?!?!

We woke up to another sunny day in St. Maarten. It was Boxing Day which is a holiday we cannot completely understand. It appears to be a day off the day after Christmas to spend your money you got as gifts. Seriously. It is odd. 

Anyway, Jackson braved the hills and went for a run. I stayed at the condo and relaxed. I know. That is so unlike me. Perhaps island time is finally catching up with me. We decided to go back to Long Bay Beach since it was so nice the day before and we were not disappointed.

Spend the day here? OK! :)

My cute date

Ahhh...you can almost hear the ocean in this photo

I wanted to do a bit of snorkeling so we geared up and headed out.

Fishy, fishy

Pretty fish!

There was not much to see snorkeling at this spot so I didn't stay out long. It was really deep and rocky which to me means sharks and/or drowning. Jackson stayed out for about an hour and did not see any sharks and managed to stay afloat. Show off.

We got hungry and decided to head to Philipsburg for lunch. We grabbed lunch there and then decided to do one of their bucket of beverages, umbrella and two chairs for $20 deals. We convinced them to let us change the bucket of beers to bottled water and were in business!

Jackson loved the island basketball court

Lazy afternoon in Philipsburg

Ahh...it had been a nice day thus far. We'd managed to get a good parking spot near the beach and hopped back to our car to catch the sunset from our balcony. That's when disaster struck. We were driving up the side of a very steep hill and Jackson hit the gas to try to get up to speed. Just then our car made this awful bang sound and started smoking. Oil was everywhere! We slid all around on our own oil and ended up on the side of the road just short of the guardrail. It was pretty scary! We sat there for a second shocked. Then the man driving behind us stopped to make sure we were OK and to let us use his cellphone to call for help. The rental car place said they'd come shortly. Great. Shortly on island time.  Our new friend (the driver behind us) said he'd never seen anything like it and was glad Jackson was able to steer away from the non-guardrailed part of the road. Our car was still smoking and we were now stuck on the side of a very busy, steep road in a country where no one hurries unless they're driving. Excellent. We got out of the car and climbed below the guardrail so that if some crazy driver hit our disabled car they wouldn't hurt us. We had just been swimming and the sun was now going down. I started to get very cold. It was only 27 degrees Celsius. (FINE- that is 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit!) My swimsuit wasn't drying as fast as I would have liked and I was cold. My blood must have thinned or something. I don't know. Luckily we had laundry in the car that we tried to do earlier in the day and the place was closed for the "holiday" so I threw on a dirty sweatshirt and all was well again on the side of the road. About a half hour later the folks from the rental car place 13 minutes away by car finally arrived. I've never been so happy to see someone.

Well this is just GREAT

They brought us a new car and stayed to get our old unit towed. They were aghast at the damaged engine and amount of oil everywhere. They had not seen anything like it either. They were shocked we were able to not roll off the ride of the hill and told us we were lucky. Gee, thanks. We went to the rental place to sign a statement about what happened and were told that we had to pay for the gas we'd used in the disabled car at the outrageous rate you pay if you don't get gas before returning the vehicle. We tried to reason that we would have filled up the vehicle before returning it had it not blown up on the side of a hill. They were unreasonable and French. Ugh. We just paid what we had to so that we could go home. They didn't even apologize to us for giving us a crappy car that could have very easily been a deathtrap. Jerks. We made it back home in our new car without incident.

All of this excitement made us very tired so we came home and went to bed at like 8. Whew. What a day! Here's hoping today is less "exciting."