OUR night

earlier in the week, my sister offered to have natalie spend the night at her house for the first time. natalie was elated! this must have been the best week in her life -- school all week (which she loves), and then a night at Titi's house at the end of the week to top it off! Later in the week, my mom called me with an offer we couldn't refuse: her and my dad wanted to have russell spend the night with them on friday, thus giving russ and i the night to ourselves! what on earth would we do??? after a lot of thinking, we decided to take a walk on the beach and go from there.
we headed out to the beach at around 7:00, walked on the beach while we people-watched (we were amazed at how many people were out there), then we took a walk on the jacksonville pier and watched the color of the sky change as the sun set.

the pier is very long and this was the color of the sky when we began our walk:

when we first got there, we saw some amazing waves, it must be from that hurricane out there. it's hard to tell from this picture though


the color of the sky by the time we got to the end of the pier:


walking back to the stairs, we watched this guy surf for a few minutes. we saw him surfing while we were walking on the beach earlier. i can't believe how much strength and endurance he must have had swimming for so long and waiting for the perfect wave to ride. he was pretty far from the shore too, alone, with God knows what else lurking around him in the waters... talk about being fearless. i guess it's the love of the sport.

after the beach, we headed to panera for coffee (for russ) and pastries (for me):

when we arrived home we watched our netflix movie of the week which was so much better than we expected (that's always a plus), while we snacked on my favorite chips (Wise BBQ) (and it was a tasty batch!).

waking up this morning was very strange. i looked at the clock and noticed that it was past 10:00!!! what a treat! so then we ate a small breakfast and anxiously waited for the kids to come home.

having a night alone is definitely bittersweet -- we love the time together, yet miss the kids like crazy! glad to have them home!