Sweetness Here!

I got the call from Sarah on Thursday, February 21, 2008 at about lunchtime. In fact, I was eating lunch at the time with Tim McEntire at Countryside B-B-Q. "He's on the way", she said. I managed to get away around 5:00 or so. The girls would've gone with me except for a 4H Fashion Revue and 4H Entertains on Saturday that they had been preparing for for a long time. In the meantime Paul had booked me a reservation through Priceline at the Intercontinental in Buckhead ("Beam me up, Scotty") and I arrived there at about 10:00 p.m. Went to bed and got up early Friday morning and headed to Piedmont Hospital. Sarah is a L&D nurse there so you could say that she received very good treatment.



After what seemed like no time at all and an extremely "easy" delivery, Ian James Kotronis entered this world. The name was a secret until he came and I think was only nailed down that very day. No wonder they couldn't tell anyone! This precious little baby had to go to the intermediate care nursery because of some minor respiration problems followed by some equally minor jaundice problems. We got to hold him in the nursery but he wasn't able to go to his mama's room. But...he is home now and doing well and we are planning to go see him early in March.

Old Florida, New to Us

Between Crescent Beach, on the southern end of Anastasia Island and Palm Coast is a section of A1A that is sort of lost in time. The first time I drove down there from St. Augustine Beach with Sarah and Paul we turned off at the first road that said "Old A1A" only to end up on a dead end road with a few houses that, I guess, were pretty close to the ICW.

A dirt road it was, that I suppose was "Old A1A". It was beautiful, with live oaks and spanish moss, typical of Old Florida. After going back out to "new" A1A we headed south again and shortly came to a state park named Washington Oaks Gardens. This section of A1A is paved but you still get a feel for what it must have been like years ago. It's only about a mile long....

Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia site from the link above:

The park's land has a rich history. Native Americans found the area a productive hunting and fishing area. After European settlement of Florida, the property had a number of owners and was used for various agricultural purposes. One owner was a surveyor named George Washington, a relative of President George Washington. In 1936, Louise Powis Clark, wife of the industrialist Owen D. Young purchased the property as a winter retirement home. She devised the name "Washington Oaks" for the property and is responsible for developing the park's formal gardens, citrus groves, and house. Mr. Young died in 1962 and Mrs. Young donated the property to the State of Florida in 1964. Her donation specified that the "gardens be maintained in their present form".

By the way, if you click on the pictures you get a full-sized version of them.

The orange and grapefruit trees were hanging full

on this beautiful January day and the fruit was ripening. We managed to find some that was ripe (after tasting some that were not quite) and I have to say it was very good, especially a pink grapefruit we ate fresh from the tree.

Across A1A from the entrance to the main part of the park is another section on the ocean side. There you will find a coquina beach. Coquina was the standard building material in the area back in the day and is still used in various forms even today. Coquina is different from Tabby, which is more prevelant on the Georgia coast but there is some Tabby in St. Augustine at the Fountain of Youth.

While we were in town Paul and I got a little fishing in. No catching, just a little fishing.

I hope we can all get back to St. Auggie again real soon.

Sweetness on the way!

Pappy? Papaw? Gramps? Grampaw? Papa...yeah, maybe that. And Nana? I think so! How can it be that I am going to be the proud Papa of a sweet little baby boy, who, I'm just guessing now, but who will come into this world as a fat little black-eyed black-haired bundle of Papa-lovin' joy! Just blessed I guess. Sarah and Paul seem to be taking all of this in such easy stride that I just know that "what's-his-name" is surely getting such peaceful vibes from them that his eventual emergence into our world will be absolutely serene. Well, I'll ask Sarah about that later. Anyway, I dearly look forward to the times that he and I will have together. How can I not wonder...what will he look like, what will he be like, what will he love, what will he want from life and what will he bring to this world? I don't know but I surely look forward to finding out!

Recipe for Near Disaster

Take one 25 year old Gheenoe that's been sitting peacefully at my sister's house at Lake Lure in Western North Carolina for years. Add a new $850 trailer and a slightly used 2007 15hp Suzuki motor bought on eBay for close to $2000, which is 10hp more than the boat is rated for. Drag all this down to St. Augustine, Florida because I have a place down there now and a burning desire to go fishing which I have rarely done and done only once in salt water. Add my Dad to the front end of this nautical missile and me at the helm, and drop her in the creek and head out to the Intracoastal Waterway. What do you get? My Dad with white knuckles and me with a curiosity about what that popping sound is at the stern of this monstrous little torpedo. When, on the return trip from the ICW, where, by the way, the wake from a passing yacht convinced me that leaving the creek and venturing out into the ICW was probably not a wise decision, I got to thinking that if the transom of this boat were to crack off from the sheer weight and propulsion of the motor that the boat would probably fill up with water pretty quickly. I decided at that point that a bigger boat was in my future if I was going to fulfill my dream of catching all those "doormat" sized flounder that my family and I are so fond of. Do ya'll know anybody that wants to buy her?