Florida

As promised, I wanted to share more of our pictures from our quick but fun trip down to Florida. Florida has such great memories for me, and it makes me a little sad that we no longer have any immediate family living there to go visit. As a child, I still remember the way it felt to load up in the car at 6 when my Dad got home from work and sit through the long ride to my Grandmother’s house in Tavares. I’d always falls asleep at some point and wake up to that thick, wet, humid air. When we’d finally get there, we’d shuffle through the wet grass and get met with lots of warm hugs and then go back to sleep until morning.

My great-grandparents owned a tiny little house just steps from the church they attended which was built in 1885. They raised their kids attending that church, and it’s the same church that my grandmother was baptized at, married at, and attended up until she moved up here to Georgia a few months ago. We held her funeral there and it was neat being back in that building one last time. We tried to take a few family pictures on the steps to remember it too.

I don’t know at what point Ford took his shoes off, but we haven’t been able to find one of them since. These are all of the great-grandchildren who were able to come to the funeral and are exactly half of my parents grandkids!

I don’t know how we ended up with the blondies on the left (at least they were as kids) and the dark haired kids on the right, but it’s been years since all 6 of us kids have been together all at once. This summer we have our first real “family reunion” planned. 14 adults and 26 kids, wish us luck!

This wooden park is just around the corner and it was my favorite place to play as a kid. It’s right along a lake (in a fence, because #alligators) and is covered with Southern Oaks dripping in Spanish Moss. It’s dreamy. Every time we went to Tavares, I always made sure we took the kids to play on it because I loved it so much as a kid. It had so cool nooks and areas that felt like hidden passage ways. The boys loved getting to explore it with their cousins

In the past few years, the little town my Grandmother lived in has added walking paths and restaurants along the lake side and it makes for a really nice place to stay on a trip. We stayed at a hotel right on the lake and loved watching the seaplanes take off and land all day. There’s also a train that goes to Mount Dora everyday.

I hope we’ll have some excuse to go back to Tavares someday, or else we’ll just go for the fun of it! I found myself checking the local schools outline just wondering what it’d be like to live somewhere so much warmer than up here (and yes, I realize that “up here” in Georgia isn’t that cold for some of you, but for a Georgia girl, Florida sure is tempting!”)