Merry Christmas, Everyone!
Hope you all had a lovely holiday and are getting geared up for New Year's! I'm just going to dive in here and start bombarding you with our vacation pictures. I'm thinking I'm gonna still have two more blog posts to go to get caught up!
We went to Anna Maria Island, which is a small island near Sarasota, with a very laid-back, old Florida vibe. No big condos or resorts here - it is mostly older houses. We rented a cute little beach house - very small inside but an ideal location, as you'll see. The weather was perfect and summery - temps in the 80s every day.
So here's the view off our back deck.
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| Literally just steps from the beach. |
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| Heated saltwater pool. |
Inside, here's a peek at our galley kitchen (and galley living and dining room).
And a ladder up to a loft area that is only usuable if you are under 3 feet tall.
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| I immediately cracked my head against the ceiling up here. |
The beaches down here were wide and beautiful, with that powder-sugar sand that nearby Siesta Key is famous for. (And as you can see, not very crowded.)
We'd take some chairs down to the beach most evenings to watch the sunset.
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| Our house was a duplex, so we had the right side. |
Do we have more sunset pics? Yes, WE DO. But let's take a break and check out the moon.
I also think we went to three nature preserves on the island, so here are some pics from those walks.
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| Look at the trees growing out of this fallen tree |
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| Lots of fishies |
I've heard many people saying how weird it must be, having Christmas in Florida with no snow, but Floridians are pretty fanatical about making up for it. I will do another post with the Christmas lights at the Selby Botanical Gardens, but here's a taste of some of the other lights we saw all over the island.
One day, Glenn spent hours putting together an amazing sand castle...someone destroyed it literally minutes after we came in from the beach. People are terrible. At least we got some pics first.
We went over to the Anna Maria City Pier a couple times...the first night was windy, at dusk, and fog was rolling in...
But here it is on a clearer day...look how turquoise the water is!
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| I love this. |
And look - an unexpected guest!
Ok - that wraps up tonight's blog...but it does not wrap up our vacation. There are still more pics to come.
Wait! We typically try to take a family selfie every year at the holidays, which is inevitably a disaster. Here is this year's attempt.
Happy Holidays!
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| (My one friend said it looks like Eddie took this picture!) |
Later gators! Love, us
