Knapp Family Vacation

Hi All,

It has been a crazy week getting caught up with work and sleep after Florida, hence my delay.  I am sure that everyone has been waiting with unprecedented anticipation;)  Well, wait no more.  It was an incredible week at the beach.  We landed in rain on that first Saturday afternoon, but the sun and humidity attacked with full force and it was beautiful and HOT the remainder of the time.  We stayed in an awesome beachside resort called Watercolor in Santa Rosa Beach.  It was a perfect place for the little girls to play and swim and there were ample pool and beach bars to keep us adults fairly preoccupied.  One of the highlights was our first night.  Ann and I arrived around 6 to find the Knapp clan had already taken over the "Library" and had a personal waitress in charge of quenching all thirsts.  We started to get a little wound up before dinner and took that same enthusiasm into the restaurant.  Well, my family is loud without cocktails, so add in a few, and it is a recipe for chaos.  We have been known to clear restaurants in the past.  We were actually clapped out of the restaurant when we left that first night by "Barry Manilow" and his family.  It was not really Barry, but we nicknamed him that since at that time he appeared very similar.  The funny part is that we continued to run into Barry the rest of the week and would refer to him often, and the fact that he did not look like Barry Manilow at all!!!  Anyway, after the raucousness of the first night, we settled into a nice daily routine of switching between the beach and the pool and enjoying the sun.   It was so much fun playing with all of the little girls all week.  We played in the ocean and the pools, and went sand crabbing almost every night on the beach.  That was always one of my favorite memories as a kid growing up, so I am so glad to see that all of my nieces are enjoying it too.  I can't say that we caught the "Attila the Hun" of sand crabs, but we made some great efforts.  They are growing up so fast.  It is hard to be as far away from them all when they are at such fun ages, but that is why we have to take advantage of that time.  Beyond that, we found some great restaurants like Caliza in Alys Beach(Picture Below) and the Red Bar in Grayton Beach.  We could not have asked for a better week.  There was unfortunately one low spot.  Summer vacation also means the annual golf tournament, usually two 18 hole rounds with a two-man scramble format.  The teams have always been myself and Mike Graham versus my dad and Michael Oliver.  Let's just say that my team has sacrificed many strokes and the amount seems to grow more every year, but it has always been a very close match.  It just happens that Mike and I have never lost.  Well, we were sitting pretty good after round 1 this year, feeling fairly confident about our position going into the final round, and then the unthinkable happened.  We lost the front, the back, and the eighteen on Championship Friday.  You know the term signifying the start of the Revolutionary war, "the Shot heard round the world," well this was the loss heard round the world.  Perhaps it was complacency, perhaps the extreme heat, perhaps giving too many strokes, but bottom line, we lost it.  I think Mike and I felt more defeated than Tiger Woods on that fateful Thanksgiving evening after being chased with a 5 iron and crashing into the neighbours tree.  I know they say all dynasty's must come to an end, but this was a tough one to swallow.  I will say that we were gracious in defeat and the winners were very modest in their victory, albeit my cousin emailing me from STL this week to tell me he heard that we lost:)  No, in all seriousness, it was an incredible vacation.  Thanks mom and dad for another great week full of memories.

I guess that is about it.  There was one temporarily lasting effect from vacation, and that was getting the shakes at about 11am on Monday-Wednesday from not having a cocktail by then!!!  We are here in London this weekend, looking forward to a relaxing couple of days.  Annie has to make a quick trip to Frankfurt on Monday and Tuesday for "work."  I have a feeling it is really just for bratwurst and kraut, but I won't question this one.  We are off to Copenhagen, Denmark next weekend, so if I do not post before then, there will be one the following week.

Cheers
Kevin and Ann