(Late) Florida Trip!

        Well, it took about ten years, but I'm FINALLY posting the pictures and memories from our Florida trip!

We had the best time with our friends David and Lindsey, and had some lovely moments as just the birds too.

We took this trip right before Thanksgiving and the plan was to get away, recharge, and take some much needed time for ourselves...and we did just that. Toby and I love our little lives and we try our best to do everything to the fullest, but sometimes we just get tired, as we all do, and we need a break. So this was our break. G-D had some things in store for us and we didn't even know it :)

        Besides the hilarity and good times we had with our dear friends, we had some GREAT one on one G-D time while at the beach.  Have you ever just felt oppressed for no reason? Well, we have. I think a lot of believers think that you must be in sin or have some big pressing issue if you feel oppression but guess what, that's not always the case! Sometimes the enemy is crouching at your door, and sometimes G-D allows it to teach you something. Well, that happened to us one day. We both felt really weird and we were like "wait, this is our vacation! This isn't fair!" But in the midst of it, we talked all about the things G-D had done for us and how He has kept all of His promises thus far to us and He will keep the ones yet to come. It made us feel better. Then we got to the beach, and what do we see? A giant rainbow. A physical representation of His promise. We nearly cried. G-D totally allowed the oppression because that rainbow, that joy, WOULD NOT have meant what it did if we hadn't experienced some pain with it. If we didn't know suffering, we wouldn't TRULY know how wonderful joy is. If we were never sick, we wouldn't be thankful for health. G-D uses all of our situations for His glory and our benefit. It is a beautiful thing. That was, oddly enough, the highlight of our trip...just watching the L-RD hold our faces in His hands and lifting them upward! WHAT A GREAT G-D!

        So needless to say, the beach was beautiful, our friends were amazing, G-D was THE BEST, and we had a good ole time!

Our Shabbat meal on the road :)

A lovely gift from our hosts when we arrived

Our boys having fun in the thrift store

Bi-focals never looked so good.

You'd think a thrift store juke box would have classier stuff, haha.

The birds at the beach :)

Toby enjoying the waves, and blithely unaware of the stingrays
lurking a mere fifteen feet behind him.

So beautiful and relaxing. I miss it.

PERFECTION.

Reading the Hobbit at the beach. And yes, I did feel like I was sitting
on the shores of the grey havens. I even listened to Into the West :)

Bliss.

Livin' the dream, baby!

The Walking Dead, Season 1 anybody??? (Colquitt, GA; on the way home)

~B~