Seahorses

This morning's skies were a little stormy, so we missed the green flash of the sunrise, but we did catch some beautiful rays of light filtering through the dark clouds as the sun rose higher above the horizon.

It was pleasant weather this morning, watching people on the beach from above as they exercised, rode bikes, or in this case below, did a bit of Tai Chi.

It was a nice morning, really.  The rain didn't come until later, and that gave us an opportunity to go for a stroll along the beach, just the three of us one more time before we had to say goodbye.

This morning we had to say goodbye to Mommy, who is staying here to help with Nana and Ba-Ba.  Meanwhile, Madison and I were getting ready to make the journey up north once more.  

We had a nice photoshoot with Wilson here before we left, as I was wanting to take this volleyball down to the beach and I kept forgetting.  The idea was that we do this "Castaway Cove" series every so often at church, and it would be nice to have a photo of our little guy here, washed up on shore.

Speaking of "washed up on shore," we were walking along this morning and spotted a seahorse stranded in the sand.  He was wiggling his tail a bit, so we scooped up the sand around him and lifted him up without touching him, carrying him off to the deepest part of the water I could walk to.  Hopefully he'll make it, but I certainly gave him a better chance at galloping off into the deeper parts of the ocean.

Anyway, we left eventually, and said our sad goodbye to Mommy once again, just as we did last October.  It was painful.  In fact, this whole situation has been very painful.  Madison has been great about it, here for family and understanding of the situation, showing love and being faithful in all things.  

The two of us made our way north, waving goodbye, and making that long journey up the coast.  We went through some rain, and saw a few NASCAR-style accidents on the other side of the road, fragments of car all over the place.  But only in a few places did we really significantly slow down.  Of course, Henry County had traffic.  

Madison took a few pictures with her phone on the way up.  This one above was of the Osceola Rest Area, which is one of the nicer rest areas to go to, as it is in the middle of a National Forest there.  We took this picture to send back to Mommy to mark our progress on the way home.  And because Race Trac's gas pumps weren't working right in Port Orange, we stopped a little earlier at Magnolia Plantation to get some gas.  This is a big old Antebellum building, complete with rocking chairs on an upper floor that you can't get to, and a mysterious bright blue water fountain in the front, and what used to be nice bathrooms.  There's all kinds of produce inside, and look at these decorations Madison took a picture of.

It's in honor of the seahorse we saw earlier.  We saw some other seahorse decor as well a little later.  But we didn't buy any of that - we just got some chocolate and some sodas, and of course some gas.  The idea was to stop in Cordele to got to Cracker Barrel this time.

Madison took this photo to send back to Mommy to show where we were.  This was twenty minutes before the waitress came out to tell us it would be another fifteen minutes for her order of chicken tenders to be ready.  That being said, we decided to get up and go somewhere else.  We didn't have that much time, sorry.  We wound up going the traditional route, and got our Chick-Fil-A at Cordele, just like always, and of course it was quick, and great.

We didn't have too many things going on after that, other than the traffic.  Atlanta was easy to go through, although the other side of the road had a pretty huge accident.  It's easy to see with all these cars flying through so fast.  We were listening to a podcast all about Princess Leia all the way home, one that was more an examination of her character.  Madison and I were enjoying listening to that - Maddie would blurt out this or that in agreement, or in one case explaining something slowly to me, as I was slow to catch on.  I apparently have to watch the last three movies again.

Anyway, we got home.  And it was quiet.  We did a FaceTime call with Mommy, and we read from "The Wizard of Oz" together, and prayed.  We did a little bit of cleaning up as Mommy was guiding us along with packing for lunch tomorrow, and putting things away.  It wasn't much longer we were all asleep.  We're all rather wiped out.  It's not how we'd want to spend our Labor Day, but it's the right thing to do, and the best thing to do.  And knowing you're doing all you can to help someone else out is the best thing you can do.