Endless Summer

We just got back from our last trip of the summer, a few days in St. Augustine. We visited with my sister-in-law and her family who live there and did tons of touristy things, which we never do.

Here's Anna at the Alligator Farm Zoological Park. My nephew, Kevin, is the Assistant Curator and we are all outrageously proud of him. He is, in fact, the youngest Assistant Curator at any zoo in the country. I got a surprise this trip. I found out they even have bunnies! (As pets, not food)

I really love it up there. St. Augustine is so beautiful and peaceful. There's a lot of great shopping and art galleries and restaurants in Old Town but, across the Bridge of Lions, over on the island, it maintains it's little beach town atmosphere.

In a way, summer never ends here in Florida. There will always be sand and sun and sea and sky.

Still, the rituals of the season's closing brings along a sense of bitter-sweet nostalgia. School will start in a couple of weeks, the long and sometimes pointless days of freedom coming to an end for my children. Beach shoes will be abandonded in a corner of the garage and the sand buckets will await hopefully on their shelf for next year's castle building, pieces of broken shell clinging stubbornly to the bottoms.

Will Anna still want to build castles next year?