Family Reunions

I've been in and out of contact for the past ten days because, for the first time in ages, I almost had all my children together in one place.  The only child missing was my oldest son, who's deployed right now.  But his wife and our two grandsons, along with our two daughters and youngest son, plus D1's husband, D2's fiancee & S2's girlfriend, were able to travel south to join us.  Yay!!

And so, with the family in tow, we all drove down to Orange Beach for a holiday retreat.  We stayed at our normal digs, a condo we rent from someone LTC knows.  (Love it!)  And while Debby was moving up into the Gulf, we took a chance that the weather would offer us a few days of sun.  Luck would have it that Debby veered right, traveling into Florida, giving us the most perfect weather we could have hoped for, though ruining many Floridian's plans.  (Sorry guys!)

As you can see, we had a great time with our grandsons!

And nothing could have brightened my day better, then to see a real pirate ship sail by!

To cap off my spectacular day, I got to play putt-putt with my grandsons at Pirate Island!

And to prove how adventurous I felt, I chose to eat REAL shrimp.  You know the way they really look when they come from the sea after they've been steamed.  We ate at a place, fittingly called Steamers.  Great restaurant where you'll find nothing fried.  Oh!  (Let it be known I LOVE shrimp!)  But I hope you can imagine the look on my face when these babies arrived.  Let me tell you, there's nothing like starring down a buttload of shrimp that resemble something out of the horror movie, Aliens.  (So much work too.  Le sigh.)

But there you have it!  A great time was had by all, especially by me.  We cooked.  Feasted.  Bathed in the sun and frolicked in the waves.  We experienced few sunburns, lots of fun, and had a great time playing Poop On Your Neighbor, a fantastic card game D2's fiancee taught us. 

By the way, did you know Poop spelled backwards is... Poop?  Just sayin...

Were you affected by Debby this past week?  When is the last time you had a family get together on holiday?  And, do you prefer your shrimp in horror mode or deveined and shelled like I do?

P.S. I hope I get points for venturing out of my comfort zone.