Sunshine State

There are things about Florida that I will not miss. 
I will not miss the spray-painted K's strewn about the neighborhood.  Not a fan. 
I will not miss the small replica of the Dust Bowl on permanent display in the yard. I will not miss the turquoise toilet or the wood paneling in our fabulous rental home.  I won't miss the lack of options, particularly when it comes to health care for the Littles.  I clearly won't miss the dang zombies.
However.  I will miss the weather, both rain and shine.  I will miss the Southern manners.  I will dearly miss the (lack of) traffic.  I'll miss Joe Patti's fish market extraordinaire and the way they recognized us each Sunday and slipped Little One a free pink sorbet gelato.  I'll miss the quaint, New Orleans-style downtown with the lacy wrought iron and the espresso and beignets.  I'll miss my beloved yoga studio, our church, and with my heart bleeding will miss the preschool.  I'll miss the lazy familiarity of a small-ish town, the plethora of festivals and street fairs, and of course the incomparable beaches.  I'll certainly miss the easy flight school hours J kept while we were there. It was kind of like a very extended Florida vacation for us all. 
But what I will miss the most, for sure, is some of the people.  Especially these ones:

These people who sipped coffee in my living room on Friday mornings, gave me someone to bake for, and let me try out my rookie yoga teaching skills on them.  These people who listened and advised and commiserated and seriously cracked me up.  Friends whose lovely children were Little One's friends, so that they will be double missed.  Friends who have interesting things to say, who are fun to be around, and who bring over truck-loads of gorgeous hand-me-downs, stop by with spackle and breakfast on moving day, surprise me with jewelry just out of sweetness, or offer to let me (and my kids and my mother) sleep upstairs for a week and feed us everyday. 
The kind of friends who arrange for your husband to watch the kids before he leaves.  So they can whisk you off to a fancy brunch replete with mimosas, and a walk on the beach collecting shells to complete a gift that will always contain a piece of Florida. To remind me of the beauty I found there.
Funny but in the moving and traveling I've done so far, I've noticed that what I always miss most about a place isn't the places at all.  It's the people I happened to cross paths with as we were passing through.  I hope ours cross again soon.