Another milestone birthday

For my 40th, we took a weekend trip to the panhandle of Florida. For years, we've talked about checking out a place called Seaside. It was developed 30 years ago +/- as a "New Urbanist" community. The design of the town promotes density, open space (public green space), and walkability. It's semi-circular in design and it should take no more than 5 minutes to get from the most remote residential area to the center of the town by foot.

We stayed in the center of town - above a retail corridor. It was a great spot and if we ever venture back - I would recommend staying in a similar area...well... if it were a quiet time of year like now. I heard that the first couple of weeks of December are the slowest weeks of the year in this upscale rental community. (This is the reason we could come... it was "off-season" pricing... and even with that it was a splurge) From our porch, you look one way and you can see the public green (complete with lighted Christmas tree) with the beach beyond. Looking the other way, we could see a criss-cross of strung-up lights which created a "ceiling" to the pedestrians below walking through the retail area down to another park.

There is a charter school located on the site. There's all sorts of retail (shops, yoga studios, salons, and galleries.) We've seen a couple of architecture offices located within the development as well. There are several pools, tennis courts, and a playground. Mercer really seemed taken with the tether ball area, as you get to whack stuff there. (BTW - it's very hard to get an action shot when in the reach of the swinging ball!)

We actually liked how quiet it was. We attended a quaint church service with only a dozen other people at the Seaside Interfaith Chapel - a beautifully simplistic chapel. We rode bicycles through the streets with rarely a worry about cars. We walked along the beach and only encountered a handful of people. Speaking of the beaches... they were beautiful. The water is clear blue and the sand is powdery white. A cold front moved through before we came down, but we still walked barefoot in the sand... we just tried to stay away from the water! It did make for a gorgeous sky, though, as seen in the pics that Todd took! We have a lot of good pictures of Mercer on the beach. We will have to post those on the next blog entry!

Pretty much everywhere you turn - there is attention to detail and thoughtful architectural design. The community is very artsy as well, as there are some fantastic galleries and shops here. We probably wandered through all of them at some point as well as attending the local farmer's market. We participated in a number of art activities (several of which were geared towards Mercer). Here, he's making "reindeer food" to sprinkle in our lawn at home at a children's store after reading Olive, the Other Reindeer book at story time. They even treated him to a nutter butter reindeer cookie after all of the fun!

Santa and Mrs. Claus were walking around the shops as well. Mercer blew Mrs. Claus a kiss & I think Santa was a little jealous. Mercer has been singing Jingle Bells pretty much constantly throughout the weekend.

Almost forgot to mention: Mercer said he wanted to get me something for my birthday. When I asked him what, he said "roller skates" then he changed his answer to "Legos."

It was a nice, relaxing family weekend & a gift to spend it with both Todd and Mercer. I'm so glad we took this opportunity to come.