You can try to avoid change, but sometimes change finds you.

I am unfortunately not one of those women who can ask their mother for advice and encouragement.

That statement is probably one of the toughest things I have had to come to terms with since my mom’s passing. When something like that happens, I imagine most people are filled with a multitude of questions. You want to know why this had to happen. You want to know how this void can be filled in your life. Yet my biggest question was incredibly selfish. I wanted to know who was going to teach me how to be a wife and eventually a mother.

In the grand scheme of life, I suppose that my burning question is rather insignificant. The world’s great minds have asked far more important questions than this. But still, I asked the question and it has bothered me ever since.

I felt like the little girl who so badly wanted to be in the same class as all her friends in school and was instead put into another and forced to start over. But my teachers are not who I expected they would be. It was not until recently that I realized that I am surrounded by teachers with such a huge wealth of advice and love. These new teachers are my friends and family. I wouldn't allow myself to see them through all the tears, I suppose. In a relatively short time frame, I have been told stories and given advice that I feel will be invaluable as I reach certain points in my life. I actually look forward to learning more because everyone has, in forms large and small, contributed to my continued growth as an adult.

Wade once told me that he believes the most sincere showing of appreciation one can give is to simply say “thank you”.

And so I say to everyone, thank you!

Orange Beach Trip

As I mentioned earlier, this past weekend I took Wade's fourteen year old sister, Erin to Orange Beach for the weekend. My aunt and uncle have a house there and were gracious enough to let us stay and track sand everywhere.

We left Loganville around noon on Friday and it took about six hours to reach Orange Beach, AL. My aunt and uncle were at a meeting that evening, so we found their house, threw our bags into our rooms, changed clothes and headed to the beach. Erin had never seen the Gulf of Mexico before, and she was certainly amazed at the white sand and blue-green water. The weather wasn't entirely perfect for sunset pictures, but my little camera did capture a few nice scenes.

My pictures probably pale in comparison to those of our budding family photographer ...

Hopefully Erin had a great time!

After taking pictures at Alabama Point, we drove circles around Orange Beach and Perdido Key. Erin had never been to Florida, so I drove her there. Took about 2 minutes. We struggled to find any places to eat dinner that weren't crowded. There were massive groups of beach goers, I assume mostly families, since they were all wearing their white shirts and kakhi pants and shorts as if they had just finished taking their family pictures on the beach. Around 8pm local time, we finally settled on Cosmo's on Canal Road. They were on a hour and a half wait, so we opted to order our food to-go, which still took thirty minutes. I had to remind myself that I'm traveling with a teenager, since she ordered a rather expensive pasta dish that I had to pay for! I should have been more specific by suggesting a budget friendly shrimp po-boy.

While we were there, my aunt wanted us to try a Smoked Tuna Dip that she bought at their local seafood market. At first I thought it was rather like tuna salad, but after a few more trys, I was hooked.

Erin even liked this stuff. We ended up finding the seafood market and buying another container to replace the one we devoured and another one to bring home. I just had to put it back in the fridge so that Wade could at least try a little. At $8 a pop, I sure don't need to eat a whole container at once.

Saturday morning we went to the beach. We learned that if you arrive around 10:30am, you won't find a single parking space at the local public beach access. We had to shark park for about fifteen minutes. But finally we were at the beach. Just the two of us with a small cooler and two beach towels. No chairs. No umbrella. No little canopy. We looked like amateurs compared to the sight we encountered. After two hours, we were cooked and decided to go home and shower and go find lunch.

We ended up at The Wharf, where my cousin works. Erin had wanted to go shopping with the spending money her dad had given her. Spending money? Wait - you had spending money this whole time yet you ordered a $20 pasta? Needless to say, The Wharf is a relatively new development in Orange Beach. However it is a little more high-end than Erin was hoping for. We couldn't even walk into stores. I suppose if they had a Hot Topic or similar store, she would have been happier. We found a little pizza joint and inhaled a late lunch. I was just thankful to be inside. It was sweltering! Erin finally settled on a cute t-shirt at The Wharf Store, a trinket of her productive shopping excursion I suppose.

Our initial plan had been to catch a sunset dolphin cruise on Saturday evening. But Mother Nature had other plans. There were big storms rolling through the area and the dolphin tour companies just had some silly hangups about putting tourists on a boat in the middle of a lightning storm on the bay. Erin had to settle for jumping out of my car at the docks to take a few quick pictures. Here she is running from lightning --

So Saturday night was a bust. No dolphin tour. No good pictures on the beach. We retired early and hoped for better luck before we left on Sunday.

Sunday morning we woke up early and were on the beach by 9:30am. Erin learned that you don't sit in the surf and expect to be left alone.

Overall, this was a great little weekend escape. I just wish that we could have stayed there longer!

Said one guy to his wife ...

When I got home last night, I decided to tinker a bit with this blog. If anyone has any suggestions on how to properly use a different template, I'm interested to hear about it. Every time I tried to make a change, I received error messages!

Moving right along ... while I was attempting to understand HTML code, Wade came upstairs and asked me what I was doing. The conversation went a little like this:

Wade - "What are you up to?"
Me - "I'm trying to make some changes to our blog."
Wade - "We have a blog?"
Me - "Yes, as of today."
Wade - "Why do we have a blog?"
Me - "Because I thought it would be fun."
Wade - "Are you mentioning me in the blog?"
Me - "Well, its called "A Tale of Two Garretts (and a dog), so yes."
Wade - "Don't mention me on there!"

Points go to Wade for knowing what a blog is after all. Then all points are revoked because I said so.

Welcome!

Thanks for visiting the Garrett's blog! Okay, so its really Brittany's effort. Wade will only be mentioned and in a few pictures here and there. I don't know if he's ever seen a blog, much less thought about posting events and pictures for the world to see.

I'm heading to Orange Beach, AL this weekend with Wade's little sister, Erin. This will be her first trip to the Gulf of Mexico and my first trip to Orange Beach. She's fourteen years old, so it will be interesting to find things to do that don't make her roll her eyes. At the advice of my aunt who lives in Orange Beach, I suggested to Erin that maybe we take a dolphin cruise. She loves photography and animals and I figured it would be a good opportunity for her to show off her mad picture-taking skills. She makes my pictures look like a three year old picked up someone's disposable camera, licked the lens and then tried to get as close to the object as possible before blinding them with the flash. I'm still planning on taking my camera, mind you. But I am a little intimidated.

This weekend marks the first time I've been to a beach since going to Negril, Jamaica last fall. I'm pasty white and expecting a fierce sunburn. No matter how much sunscreen I use, the SPF or how many times I reapply, I will be crispy like a Thanksgiving turkey. This is also the first time I have travelled with someone considerably younger than me. I don't want to be the annoying "adult" who has to remind her to use sunscreen. She's old enough to where I won't need to escort her to the ladies room, right? Man, I'm in trouble!

Well this introduction turned out a bit longer than I had anticipated! Back to work ...