Eden

I mean, Auburn.  It is common to confuse the mythical paradise of Eden with Auburn University--my bad on that one :-)  We just returned from a quick 3-day tour of parts of the south.  We first went over to Orange Beach to visit some dear friends from back in the day (Jon and Meghan--I graduated from high school with Jon a long time ago...).  Jon and Meghan have a great condo right on the beach, which was beautiful even if the weather didn't cooperate.

Fortunately Jon and Meghan's place comes equipped with cable TV, which allowed us to watch Auburn destroy Purdue in the Music City Bowl, after which Ashley proclaimed she will have to watch all future Auburn football games at their condo.  We also played a lot of rounds of Just Dance on their Nintendo Switch.  I was surprised how much Bode got into it.

Between dance-offs, I grabbed a quick picture of Ashley and Jon.

There are some videos of Jon and me showing off our moves, but sadly, I don't have their videos...perhaps Ashley has them on her phone, but since I'm the caretaker of this blog, those movies won't ever be published here :-)  Jon and Meghan also have a beautiful dog named Brody, who became fast friends with Bode.

We left Orange Beach on Saturday morning and headed up to Auburn.  We got there around 2:00 and spent some time in the book store and walking around, which we happened to trip over...

and of course Ashley needed a picture in front of the world's greatest wall (even better than the Great Wall of China according to an unofficial survey of Auburn fans).

We went to the Auburn vs North Florida basketball game.  I'd never heard of North Florida--they are the Fighting Ospreys.  This was Ashley's first (of what she hopes to be many) basketball game in the new arena.

The game wasn't very close--Auburn was ranked 12th in the nation.  I'm not sure where UNF was ranked, but they were simply overmatched--Auburn's players were so much bigger and faster.  As an example, Auburn's #50 (Wiley) is just huge.

Still, it was fun--Auburn's coach seems to yell the whole game.

Here's a nice shot of the venue--it's not very big, which is nice--makes it a quaint place to watch a game.

For four or five consecutive possessions, I would film the Auburn team, hoping to get a video of them just scoring a basket.  They kept missing, and I was getting frustrated.  Fortunately, I was filming when this happened--it was pretty cool.

After the game, Bruce Pearl (the head coach) does his radio interview, which was the perfect time for Ashley and Bode to get their picture taken "with him."

As we left the arena, Ashley realized she had not seen the new statue of Charles Barkley (for whom our dog Barkley is named).  Thus, we needed a photo.

We had a wonderful time at Orange Beach and Auburn.  We got home today to two very happy but well taken care of dogs (a neighbor watched them).  Now, we are all begging for a miracle win by the Browns to allow the Steelers to sneak into the playoffs.  Here's hoping!