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This year we decided to visit our families down in Florida for the holidays. Lucky for us, we left just before the first big snow storm of the year in Boston, and missed the blustry weather altogether. The 60 degree weather in Florida may have seemed cold to the locals, but we loved being able to leave the house without spending 10 minutes wrapping up every inch of exposed skin in jackets, scarves, mittens, hats, wool socks, fleece lined tights…Yeah, it was good. We spent the first bit of our trip in Jacksonville with Nick’s family riding beach cruisers, eating tons of amazing food, relaxing with family, even hitting up a little early morning power yoga with the sis in law. I always feel so spoiled whenever we stay in Jax because there is an endless supply of delicious food, an amazing view of the beach, and everything feels so effortless.

After Jax, we made a quick stopover in Gainesville to see our friends and their two young-ins, including their newest edition – baby Felix. Of course, we were having such a good time catching up, playing sarcastic-themed board games, drinking sangria and general shenanigans that I didn’t take a single photo while we were there. However, it was a great time. Our friends are lucky enough to live a mile from San Felasco state park, which has amazing mountain biking trails – so we rounded up some bikes and went out on a ride. This was only my second time on a mountain bike, but lucky for me I snagged a full suspension very cush ride, and the trails were amazing. I only crashed once (because I was flying way too fast down this hill and basically washed out in the corner), and learned what getting the wind knocked out of you feels like (not very awesome, in case you were wondering). BUT, it was really fun, and the weather was perfect.

That night my dad picked us up from Gainesville, and we headed down to his place is good ol’ Umatilla (aka, middle of no where – but a cute and quaint little city just south of the Ocala Nat. Forest). The first day we played some tennis with my dad and one of his tennis buddies – Nick and I were really terrible, but grateful for an excuse to be outside – then caught up with my parents over dinner.

Day 2 was quite eventful as we were joined by our friend Jason and my nephew Micah for all-you-can-eat make-your-own-pancakes-on-a-hot-griddle-in-the-middle-of-your-table breakfast at DeLeon Springs, followed by a canoe/kayak/paddle boat excursion down the river to look at local wildlife (crazy big birds, a dead sucker fish and a fresh water stingray).

Post DeLeon (and amazing spanish moss), we went over to Hontoon Island to trek around for a bit, then back to my Dad’s to make a big dinner with more soup and salad. We entertained ourselves that evening with many games of Twister and Jenga.

The next morning (Christmas Eve), Nick made us an amazing mexican double crust quiche, then we got all packed up and headed to my Grandma’s house to make our big holiday meal. I always find it interesting how many of the things that I consider tradition come from holidays at my Grandma’s house. She is so particular about linens, decor, dishes, food choices, etc but knowing which table cloth she’ll want to use in the dining room, and how to set the table just right makes me feel at home. My grandma pulled out a backgammon board at some point in the afternoon, and I taught all interested parties how to play. I definitely need a backgammon board here at home – it’s my favorite traditional board game by far.

While Christmas Eve was all about tradition, Christmas day was very nontraditional this year (by some standards). We were joined by Jason again on Christmas – he rounded up five mountain bikes for us all to ride out in Santos park which has a system of very well marked trails. The highlight of the park was the BMX course they built out called the Vortex with table tops, this huge/scary drop in from like 20 feet up, and all sorts of other weird stuff that should not be attempted on a mountain bike. Of course, I tried to go over the table tops and one pedal strike issue later, I was on the ground with a bloody elbow. That was no big deal, other individuals in our party had worse spills (namely on this crazy 2ft wide wooden plank 6 ft in the air called the “qualifier”), but it was all in good fun, and there were no serious injuries at the end of the day. We rounded out the night by making a huge batch of vegetarian shepherd’s pie for dinner and pumpkin pie for dessert.

It was a fantastic visit to Florida, so nice to escape the winter weather, even if only for one week. And the timing was perfect because we made it back in time to celebrate someone’s 28th birthday with an ice cream cake:

Turns out piping frosting with my new pastry bag and tip set is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Of course, I don’t think adding those balloons did the cake any favors, but hey, I was having fun, and Nick didn’t mind having an ugly birthday cake.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 4th, 2010 at 7:57 am and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.