2,288 Miles, Day 3

On Monday, we took the day off. No obligations, no family to see, just peace and quiet on the beach. Magi doesn't go to the beach too much, so I took Sera down myself. She saw the rolling dunes along the boardwalk and said, "Snow!" I laughed and gently corrected her, so now she knows what sand is. We walked down to the end of the boardwalk and took her sandals off and Sera looked like she was walking on the moon. She waddled down to the water with me, smiling all the way. She was having the time of her life. I took her by the hand into the water, and when a wave lapped over her knees, she almost jumped into my arms. It was cold, but it wasn't that cold.

We walked back up a ways and set out our things on a towel. Sera immediately took the shovel we had bought her and started digging in the sand. As we dug a nice hole, she started throwing sand with her hands...both hands...at the same time! This went on for a while, until she discovered the most amazing thing: a seashell! She was fascinated by it, and when I suggested that she put it into her spare pail, she put it on her arm like a purse and started looking for more. She found about a dozen that she liked shouting "I got it!" each time, rejecting the broken ones, and she had a great time. I took her back up to the pools, where Magi joined us, but the pools were still a little cold for her tastes.

As Sera took her afternoon nap, I got to read. I had picked up a copy of The Godfather for five dollars at the local Books-A-Million and dove in. The last time I had the opportunity to really relax and read was almost a year before, when the last Harry Potter book came out, and Magi and Sera were on vacation without me. If you love the movie, you should really read the book. At this moment, I'm watching the movie for the first time since reading it, and like most good adaptations, the movie is well-supplemented by reading the book immediately before. Some of the scenes make a lot more sense now, and my memory fills in the subplots, almost entire chapters that had to be left out for the sake of time. Brilliant work, both novel and movie!

The evening presented quite a treat, as Magi's mother, Sheila, drove down from Mobile to watch Sera so that we could go out to dinner alone for the first time in over a year! Magi's sister Kati had suggested a new place called Cosmo's in Orange Beach, so we tried it. Let me just say that we now have a new favorite restaurant in the area. A basket of warm bread was brought to the table, which is nothing unusual, but this bread was. It had kalamata olives baked into it, and was served with a creamy garlic butter that was just out of this world. We had the Firecracker Shrimp as an appetizer, which was very tasty, just spicy enough. For dinner I had their seafood pasta, which I'll just copy and paste from their menu: "Fresh gulf bay shrimp & blue crabmeat sauteed with broccoli and snow peas, with lemon pepper linguine tossed in a sun-dried tomato Chardonnay cream sauce." It was amazing! Magi ordered their special, which was baked flounder. It was a little dry on the outside, but they made everything right for us. By that time she was full from all the food we had already eaten, so they took it off the bill and gave us a free dessert. We chose the Red Velvet cake, and that was wondeful too. It was quiet, it was romantic, and it was just what we needed after a year. It was perfect.