04.14.06
Good times in Destin
Lucas would never hesitate to come and meet me whenever I was within driving distance of him. This usually meant Destin if I wasn’t in Birmingham, although I got him to drive over to Atlanta or Athens a few times too. I could just call him up and say, listen, I will be wherever in a few days (usually a good couple of hours driving from him) and he would say, ok, i’ll see you there.
Three summers ago was one of my favorite trips to Destin. Rob and I went down for a week and convinced Chance and Jen and Seph to come too. Then of course, we got Lucas to come on down, even though Chance made him leave the dogs in Auburn. We hired a guy to take us sailing one afternoon for Rob’s birthday and treated Lucas and Rachel and Lane to ride along with us while Chance and crew stayed behind. It was a great day – we drank about 2 cases of budweiser on the three hour boat ride, jumped in every time we got hot or needed to pee, and Lucas chatted up our captain, Brian, while Brian did a little fishing. When we got back, we got more beer and hit the beach for a few hours until sunset listening to music, talking and playing with Seph.
All of us on the boat
Our captain Brian was fishing since the rest of us really didn’t want to do anything other than sit there and drink. But once he caught a big fish, Lucas started getting interested. He went over and we took this picture while he pretended to be proud of his big catch (that Brian had caught).
The next summer, Rob and I planned our trip down to Destin again, but this time we thought maybe we should spend some time alone since we had never actually been down there just the two of us. But as the time for us to go down there came closer, I couldn’t stop myself from letting Lucas know we would be there so that he could come for just a few days on the weekend. Well, as it turned out Rob proposed on the beach the first day we were there, which was a big surprise for me. We had been back from the beach (now engaged) for about 30 minutes when Lucas called and said, we will be there in about 20 minutes. Now, we had never discussed exactly when he would be coming, but it seemed that Lucas had decided to come on the first weekend. It was pretty funny. When I told him we got engaged and showed him the ring and everything, I could tell he felt a little bad they had come down. But I specifically remember thinking, well who cares, Rob and I will have plenty of time alone and I was happy to have Lucas be a part of that day and I knew he had made a big effort to get down there. So we ordered pizza from Mellow Mushroom and settled into life Destin style with a movie. We also decided to go sailing again. We found the same guy to take us and this time Megan and Wes came with us too. It was a great repeat performance and we had started a summer tradition.
Even before we had the condo, our parents took us to Destin every summer for as long as I can remember. There were several summers when dad organized a deep sea fishing trip for the whole family to go on. This is after one of the trips, where we got to pose with our whole catch. Summer of 1995, me, Gabe, Lucas and John.
Another trip years earlier, Chance and Lucas getting down to business.
And even earlier, we were too little for the big trips then, but I think we would go down to the docks to see all the catches being brought in. Gabe and Lucas.
The year we finally nagged mom enough to take us to Big Kahunas.
Summer of 2000, Lucas in our condo posing silly.
Hmmm…me and Lucas, I would guess around summer 1990, when we still actually played on the beach.
We got the same house on Noreigo Drive on the bayside for a few years. This summer dad got us a windsurfer. Lucas was actually pretty good. This picture is off of the deck of that house of Lucas windsurfing. I couldn’t find pictures of the summer that we got a jet ski for the summer at this same house. That was a blast too. We could dock it right at the back of the house. Needless to say, Lucas LOVED that.
I have so many memories of beach time with Lucas and I know that it was one of his favorite places, as it is mine.
