Something new for the new year

I'm not sure why this ringing-in-the new-year-together-in-a-rented-beach-house bee appeared in my bonnet, but there it was buzzing away.  N doesn't always humor me with these out of the blue ideas, but this one must have appealed to him, too.


Sometime near the end of summer, I began an internet search to see what kind of prices were out there.
My list of wants was fairly long at the start;
hot tub,
pets allowed,
on the beach,
3 bedrooms,
 family room
AND living room.
I was positive what I was looking for was out there.  I told myself I just had to tailor my search just right to find it.  I began to weary of the the poorly designed sites and the dead-end searches.  "Besides", my mean, little, meddling, inner voice said, "it's never as much fun as you hope it's going to be."  And that was it, I quietly threw in the towel.
One Saturday a few weeks later, the subject came up between N and I.  I told him how the search had dampened my enthusiasm.  What a guy--he heroically took over and began to share what he was finding.  He realized right away that two items on my "wants list" would need to bite the dust;  the hot tub and on the beach.  We do have a budget and those two things knocked the $ out of the park.
He found a rental business site (Bayshore Rentals) that made it easy to narrow a search within their houses, instead of having to click on each individual description and trying to remember what you had and hadn't looked at.  We found one of their houses that met enough of our criteria to be declared a winner.  Yippee!

I wish we'd been able to stay longer than 2 nights.  I loved the windows and the open floor plan.  People watching TV were a short distance from people playing games at the table or people cooking in the kitchen.  We ate and drank until we never wanted to think about food or drink again (or at least the following evening). Our bedroom was downstairs, so the kids could carry on without bothering us.  We had a fun time and now I can't wait to do it again.