I was shocked when I saw our old house - we moved in with John's sister, Cindy, who was traveling a lot at that time between Cedar Key and her job for the Florida Trend Magazine. 11 years ago now the neighborhood was going through a gentrification - well apparently that fell by the way side some time ago. We lived in the bottom story of a house that had been converted into an upstairs and downstairs apartment. I remember being so scared of the palmetto bugs while we were there. It felt like for most of the 18 months we lived there that we lived in our bedroom because I was so scared we would see bugs and if we closed our door and only ran the window AC unit in our room we would stay cool. (The door you see from the street isn't the front door but the door into the bigger of the 2 bedrooms - our room). No one felt like they should tell me while we lived there but on the day we moved out John finally felt like he could share with me the lady before us moved out because she woke up one night with a man standing in her bedroom steeling her TV.
After seeing the house we drove to our favorite beach. There was a basket ball court John would go play at all the time right across the street from the beach. We learned really quickly when we lived there a great beach routine. There was an outdoor shower at the park with a really nice bathroom so we would keep a bag in our car of small bars of soap and shampoo so we could rinse of in the showers in our swimsuits and then change in the bathroom after we were at the beach.
It was fun to take the kids and play in the sand. Annie loved the ocean, I think she may have been part mermaid in a past life!!! It was colder water and we knew we were going out soon for dinner so since it was late in the afternoon we didn't bother with swimsuits for the kids, luckily I had changes of clothes for the kids in the car.
After the beach we took the kids to what we remembered as a great restaurant! The 4th Street Shrimp Store.
Since John and I getting ready to celebrate our 11 year anniversary it was neat for us to take this stroll down memory lane together. For all the gripping I do about the bugs during our time in Florida we really had a great adventure while we were there. We were newlyweds with out kids who got to spend their free time exploring a new place. We loved going to the beach after work and on the weekends, for John to play basketball, fish or swim and people watch. We loved going to the early bird movie and dinner special - from 4-6 everything was 1/2 priced! We loved the adventure of learning to live so far from the area we had grown up in and our comfort zone. We got to spend time with John's sister and extended family that we may not have gotten to if we didn't try this. While I am not sure I would move back now I am so very glad we had the opportunity to do this so long ago!!!
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