Savannah

This long awaited vacation finally arrived! I had CME money I needed to use, and we found an ER conference in Savannah around the time of our anniversary. I had been wanting to get back there and so we booked it! Tanner was going to come with and golf while I was in the conference, leaving plenty of time for afternoon and evening playing! It was a little hectic/stressful organizing the childcare, but family really stepped up and helped so much! Our flight to Atlanta was overnight but we had ample leg room! Dumb first picture, but that's what we got. It was kind of painful though because I still couldn't get quite comfortable and was so tired. We both zonked out hard on the flight to Jacksonville, but that was only like an hour flight.

First meal in Jacksonville. This yummy biscuit place. We shared this biscuit and gravy breakfast. I mistakenly thought maybe I'd eat under control and order healthier options etc etc and I felt like sharing this was a good start. It didn't stay that way. We ate lots of amazing food and I enjoyed every second of it.

We got in pretty early and the timing was good that we decided to go to the PGA World Golf Hall of Fame first, before driving up to Savannah. I actually really enjoyed it. It was pretty interesting. My favorite part of it was all the history of golf and how it began and evolved.

Our cute little Buick for the week

We couldn't check into our room for a bit. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency, right on river street. So nice! So we hung out in the lobby for a bit and played some of the games they had. All giant - this connect 4 (Tanner won), Jenga (I won, but apparently using two hands is against the rules), giant UNO and other cards that we didn't play. Then we wandered down to eat at the Mellow Mushroom. That's where we had our very first day. Precious, huh!? Then we wandered river street for a bit and got our samples from the sweet shops up and down. That was kind of a daily occurrence.

This was my favorite place when I was in school. They have tons of open peanut containers that you can sample. I'd go there as much as I could for free peanut samples - and they had lots of really delicious flavors!

The conference I went to was a pediatric emergency medicine one. Started Tuesday bright and early. They had a killer breakfast buffet every day. Tanner golfed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday while I was in class. It worked out perfectly.

I took my breaks out on river street. The stupid room was FREEZING so it was lovely to go sit outside for a minute and actually enjoy the crazy heat and humidity.

I thought I should put this on my mirror and try to believe it every morning :)

After we both got done, we wandered around downtown again. Ate at Zunzi's, this South African sandwich joint that was SO good. Then we did more wandering and learned some stuff about Savannah :)

Dinner on river street at a seafood place. It also was so good. Tanner had some crab gratin thing and I had some mahi mahi with crab on top. I think there was only one meal that was mediocre. Everything else we ate was amazing.

Some pictures of Harbor Town Golf Course. The super fancy course Tanner played at. He said it was amazing. He had a caddy as well, which he has never had and he said it made a huge difference and was just a great experience. Maybe even almost worth the green fees :)

Once when I lived in Savannah and my dad was in town for work, we went to the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge and saw like 12 alligators along the road. It was really cool and I wanted to go see some more so I drug Tanner out there in the blistering heat. It must have been a cooler day when my dad and I went cause Tanner and I only saw two in the water. He spotted both of them and I lost the contest and had to tickle his back. It was still pretty and fun I thought.

Can you see it?

Cool bird. We probably saw like 15 different types of birds. Made me wish I knew a thing or two about them.

After our jaunt in the marshland, we went back to the hotel and got ready for our fancy dinner. The Olde Pink House. Our lovely photographer cut off the top of the name...kind of dumb, but I guess beggars can't be choosers or something. But it's a pretty famous Savannah joint that is like the oldest mansion or house or something in Savannah and one of the oldest in the US...built before the US was even a thing. Food was AMAZING and probably the most we've EVER spent on a meal. Happy Anniversary to us, I guess.

Appetizers - crab cake between fried green tomatoes for me and shrimp cocktail for Tanner.

I got the special - bacon wrapped scallops and a crab polenta thing that was kind of like a mac and cheese something and was DELICIOUS. Tanner got filet mignon and it was all just so incredible. And they gave us a cute little sweet taste for our anniversary.

The next day after golf and class we went to lunch at this little hole in the wall place that was super cute inside and had the best food! Joe's Homemade Café. I think Tanner doubted me when we pulled up. I actually had never been there but it was at the top of a lot of lists and was pretty close to the school so we tried it out and it did NOT disappoint. Then over to school. It was SO weird to be back on campus. I can't believe it's been over 7 years since I've been there. It seriously feels like a few months ago. I got a little anxious looking in at the classroom I spent 90% of my time on campus. Ha. Lots of lectures and stressful tests and such. It was cool. Saw my favorite teacher, Mr. Burns. And it was just great to look back on that experience and what it has been for me and where it's taken me and our family.

This was Tanner's favorite probably. Ha. Just kidding. I dragged him through the jungle of Skidaway State Park. They had a few miles of trails that we walked along that was so beautiful. Not too hot in the shade and we didn't see any snakes.

You can't tell that well from this but across this little bridge to a lookout tower, there were thousands of these little tiny hermit crabs running through this grass stuff. It was cool to watch and listen to!

We went back to the hotel and then dinner at the Blue Moon Pub or something. Pretty terrible service and the food wasn't that impressive. Oh well. Like I said, we did pretty good with every other place we ate. After that we wandered around and went to Leopold's Ice Cream. A pretty famous joint, which was confirmed by the HUGE line when we got there. We stuck it out and it was worth it. Oh man it was sooo good.

The next morning I skipped out on a few lectures so we could get an earlier start to Jacksonville. We luckily got to check into our hotel pretty early. Then we made our way over to Neptune beach. We lucked out and got a killer parking spot and walked for a couple hours along the beach and picked up a bunch of sea shells for the kids. It was a really nice beach and the water was so warm and I decided I want to go there for a family vacation with all the littles. We ate at M Shack for lunch and it was killer. I had probably one of THEE best salads I've ever had in my life. It was sooo good. And of course we got shakes which were so dang good.

Then back to the hotel and then to dinner. We got sushi that was pretty close to the hotel. Not the best sushi we've ever had but it was good. And our hotel was right on the river again so we wandered along the "river walk", saw a couple dolphins and just enjoyed the nice evening.

We ordered room service for breakfast which was delicious and fun to just stay in. We had a few hours to kill before the airport and Tanner wanted to go to the TPC Sawgrass golf course. He was bummed (not me...$$$) that he couldn't play there - it was closed that weekend. But he got some souvenirs from the pro shop and we snuck out onto the course and snapped some photos of the 17th hole. It was a pretty amazing golf course and club house. Would be fun to watch the Players there, for sure.

Then off to the airport. We got shakes there (thinking I'd be sooo good when I got home, that I needed to indulge just one more time. Hahahaha). Then off to the babies who we were actually really starting to miss...but it was hard to say goodbye to this vacation. It was just what we needed. IT was a good one!

I don't think the kids missed us much though. They had an AWESOME time being with Mimi and Papa, Carrie and all the cousins and my parents spoiled them and took them to the zoo, etc. They had a great time and these are some of the pics of their fun while we were gone. So so so grateful for them for keeping them happy and taking care of them so we could get away.