I'm on a Mexican radio....

Do you have anything here besides Mexican food? 
-Dusty Bottoms - "Three Amigos"

Just got back from a wonderful vacation break in Mexico. It was SO nice to have the time away to relax. We had friends join us for the first part of the vacation and we had the resort to ourselves (well, not to ourselves - just no one else we knew was there).

We went snorkeling, we went to the Explor adventure park and did zip lines, cave swimming and ATV tracks. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. We only had one day with showers and those only lasted a few minutes. It was a WONDERFUL week.

It's good to come home on a Friday so you've got the weekend to get back into the swing of regular life. You'd think we'd been at the resort for months. It's like I forgot about groceries, bills, laundry - work - :-) You mean I have to stop reading by the beach all day? But I still have books left on my Kindle! What is this craziness?

Anyways- I'll be better about blogging. The Facebook absence is harder than I thought it would be. Who knew so much social life was on there. I'm going to have to put forth some effort and start emailing folks to check on them.

The holidays are upon us!! We're planning to play spooky music and hand out candy on Wednesday night to any trick or treaters who come our way. I think I'll even cook up a tasty pot roast in the crock pot.

The weather is finally getting cooler here in Tampa. Our high today is 82 and the high tomorrow is 79. I know those are still pretty warm - but that's about as "fall" as it gets down here so we'll take it. After being in the tropical Mexican/Caribbean heat for a week - these temperatures are downright cold. I'm going to have to break out 3/4 length sleeves so I don't catch a chill! ;-)

Today's plan is for cleaning - gotta work through my list to get it all organized, dusted, swept, mopped, vacuumed, disinfected, febreezed and washed.

Zip line in Explor

Cave Swimming

Our House - In The Middle of Our Street

Our house it has a crowd
There's always something happening
And it's usually quite loud  
-Our House by Madness

A few blogs ago I decided to list items that would be in my dream home. Shortly after that blog post we found a perfect little house, on a perfect little street in our favorite Tampa neighborhood, Old Seminole Heights. This neighborhood is not the most expensive, trendy part of town you'll find in Tampa - It's kinda middle of the road - which is one of the things we really liked about it. The Hillsborough River is nearby, there are beautiful oak trees lining the sidewalks on just about every street. The entire area reminds us of the neighborhoods just a few blocks away from downtown Florence, AL or Tuscumbia, AL and that's probably got a great deal to do with why we love the area so much. It feels like home to us.

Tampa is divided up into several small neighborhood areas and there's a lot of neighborhood pride in each one. I love it because even though you live in this HUGE city - you still have a small, hometown feeling in our neighborhood. There's lots of porch parties where the entire neighborhood is invited. There's picnics and ice cream socials. There's a farmer's market on the lawn of the high school just down the street from us that's open on Sunday afternoons. There's an elementary school around the corner from our house. There's a Starbucks down the street and there's an adorable dog boutique next door to a sandwich shop/catering place on the other corner. We could not be happier with what we found.

I loved the house we purchased in Tallahassee. I was homesick and having a home that was all my own to paint and fix up as we pleased went a long way to ease my homesickness. But this house in Tampa is the kind of house I always wished I could have. We've been in it since May and I'm still in love with its cute porch, hardwood floors and its charm. It's a great place to call home and come home to.

I've got some plans to post before and afters of the house as we've fixed it up. Of course, it's a constantly changing work in progress - but that's the fun of it isn't it!?

Our house before the builder/remodeler purchased it in August 2011. I believe it was a 2BR/1BA with no central heating and air.

Our house in the listing after the builder/remodeler had done extensive renovations and upgrades. It's now a 2BR/2BA Bungalow. Those stone/masonry walls go all the way up to the roof - which is handy in south Florida where termites abound.

In May 2012 - just a few weeks after we moved in we painted the door and window casings with a blueish purple - hung our star and set out our plants.

The living room pre-renovation.

Matt started painting the wall the day we closed. We moved our mattress over that evening and never spent another night at the rental house.

The living room after we moved in. The builder added columns to divide the large room in the middle of the house. He also added a china cabinet next to the fireplace by reversing a closet in the kitchen. We moved the living room to the area around the fireplace and the dining room to the front of the house.

The living room after we had lived in the space for a while and gotten more settled. We found the replica of the original "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster in the United Kingdom pavilion in EPCOT. My garland is made from pieces of driftwood. The photo above the mantle is one I took of Elizabeth Lake when we were in Glacier last summer. Curtains are from ikea and homemade. The chairs in the middle are from a thrift store in Tampa.

Here's the mantle decorated for fall. The halloween decorations are up now - but those pictures haven't been taken yet.

Our Fall front door.

We've got some cooler temperatures here this weekend. Our highs in the low 80's and lows in the high 60's - that's about all the fall you're going to get here in Tampa. The best part is the break in the constant humidity. You finally don't feel soaked after walking from your house to your car.

Happy Fall Y'all!!

Goodbye Facebook, it's been real.

I bid farewell to Facebook.

I was checking it too much and spending way to much time worrying over other people's political beliefs, moral beliefs, life events and wherever else I was sticking my nose into where it didn't need to be. It was too much. It was time to move on.

I feel like, in a way, it was time for me to grow up. I don't mean that people who use Facebook are immature or not grown up - that's just how it related to me. Lots of folks use it to stay in touch with friends, family, etc. - I think, maybe, it was holding me back? We'll see if I'm right. I'm going to keep in contact with folks in other ways - this blog for instance - and some old fashioned ways. So feel free to email me anytime to say hello - or leave a comment on this blog with your email. I realize it's funny to call email "old fashioned" and if you prefer a hand written letter I can certainly write you one. Now, whether or not I ever get a stamp for it is a completely different issue.

Facebook gives you the option to download all your Facebook data. I'd recommend this as we had lots of photos that were lost when our hard drive crashed and pulling them off Facebook was the only way we had them for keeps. It's a smart thing to do. It even archives the comments on your photos and the entire history of your profile page. These archives save as HTML documents, but I converted them all to PDFs and have saved them in our Google cloud. It's a nice little way to have it all saved even if you don't plan to quit The Facebook anytime soon.

We'll see how it goes. If I come crawling back because I just can't stand not knowing about folks - please be kind. I'll feel guilty enough on my own.

So, dear Facebook, keeper of all relationship statuses, blurry sonogram photos that keep me from recognizing the married name of an old friend, updates from Honey Boo Boo, instagram photos, status re-posts for causes, political commentary, college football commentary and Farmville - I bid you adieu.

Photo by Hannah Sumner