Every year, a group of us heads to the Florida Keys for two weeks.
Some of these friends have been in my life for 25 years, and we’ve been taking this particular trip together for several years now. We rent a house, fish, snorkel, spend an unreasonable amount of time in the pool and generally have nowhere we need to be.
This year one friend decided our group needed a name: The Glacial Pace Gang.
It was earned.
Getting everyone motivated to leave the pool for pretty much any reason was a challenge.
And that’s exactly what I love about this trip. There are no schedules. No pressure to see everything. No feeling that we’re wasting the day if we’re still sitting around the pool at 3:00.
Over the years, the trip has developed its own traditions, inside jokes and things that just feel like us. And because I’m a picture person, I love finding little ways to make it more personal and sometimes bring the memories from last year’s trip into this one.
Here are a few of my favorites from this year.
Last year’s picture became this year’s napkins
This was mindlessly easy.
I took one of our photos from the 2025 trip, uploaded it and had personalized cocktail napkins made for this year.
That’s it.
But I loved seeing a picture from last year’s trip become part of this year’s.
Picture people already have thousands of photos sitting on our phones and computers. Use them! Put one on the napkins, the cups, a sticker: something completely unnecessary and fun.
Not every photo has to end up framed on a wall to be worth printing.
Kaye with an E
I also ordered personalized wine markers with everyone’s names on them.
They were a HIT.
My friend Kaye spells her name with an E, and seeing how genuinely excited she was that there was actually a tiny wine marker that said Kaye made me smile.
For something so inexpensive and so incredibly small, everyone got such a kick out of them.
Sometimes personalization really is that simple.
AND YES, they really are this inexpensive. Just pay shipping. I honestly expected junk for this price, but they were PERFECT.
There is always a puzzle happening
We are big puzzlers.
There is almost always a puzzle taking over a table in our rental. Someone works on it with morning coffee. Someone adds three pieces while walking past in a bathing suit. Someone sits down for five minutes and is still there an hour later.
This year we finished three 1,000-piece puzzles.
And if your vacation group includes a bunch of picture people, I found a photo-themed puzzle that was basically made for us.
I thought I was testing a printer
I brought the Kodak Mini 2 Retro because it’s my September Picture Person Product.
The plan was to use it for a few days, see how it performed while traveling and report back.
Instead, I started carrying the thing everywhere.
It went in my beach bag. It came out by the pool. We’d take pictures and people would choose which ones they wanted printed. Then everyone wanted to watch the next one come out.
I truly didn’t expect everyone else to get such a kick out of it.
All too often photos end up never leaving our phones. Sometimes you just know they might sit on our phones for the next five years.
This was different.
We’d do something, take a picture and a few minutes later that moment was sitting in someone’s hand.
The print became part of the experience while we were still having it.
I brought the printer because I needed to test a product.
I came home loving it because of what it added to the trip.
Picture people, get in the picture
If you’re the person documenting the vacation, there’s a very good chance you’re also the person missing from half the photos.
I brought a tiny Bluetooth remote for my phone. I could set up the phone, get into the picture and click.
Done.
This was especially perfect for the Glacial Pace Gang because nobody wants to spend 20 minutes taking a group photo.
Even my friends were impressed. Two immediately added the remote to their Amazon carts after seeing how easy it was.
Anything that gets the picture person into the picture without making everyone else wait gets my vote.
A few other little things that made the trip more fun
Not everything needs to be personalized or practical. I brought drink-umbrella straws that made every pool drink more fun, little glow lights for our nights outside, and the giant inflatable duck that has somehow become a recurring character on our trips.
None of these are necessary. But sometimes the completely unnecessary stuff ends up in the most pictures and becomes the stuff everyone remembers.
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A camera that doesn’t let you see the pictures
I also brought a little novelty digital camera with one very important feature missing: you can’t see what you’re photographing.
You take the picture and move on. No checking it. No deleting it. No taking six more because you didn’t like the first one.
You find out what you got later.
For someone who has spent most of her life behind a camera, it was surprisingly fun to have that little bit of mystery back.
The practical thing in my bag
And because picture people can apparently fill any amount of storage they’re given, I also brought a Piodata MFi Micro SD Card Reader.
It lets me back up photos from my phone to a microSD card while I’m traveling. And if my phone starts filling up, I can move photos off and keep shooting.
Not as exciting as a giant inflatable duck.
But considerably more exciting than seeing Storage Full in the middle of vacation.
The funny thing about traditions
You usually don’t know you’re starting a tradition when you start one.
You bring a ridiculous duck to the pool. Someone starts a puzzle on the dining room table. You put last year’s picture on this year’s napkins. Someone gets ridiculously excited because her tiny wine marker actually says Kaye with an E.
You print a picture by the pool and hand it to a friend.
None of it feels particularly important while it’s happening.
Then you do it again.
And eventually someone says, “Wait. Aren’t we doing the duck this year?”
And just like that, some silly little thing became part of your history together.
After 25 years of friendship, I’ve learned that our lives aren’t made entirely out of big memories.
They’re also made out of half-finished puzzles. Drinks by the pool. Inside jokes that make absolutely no sense to anyone else. And a group that takes forever to get anywhere because nobody particularly cares if we get there at all.
Maybe that’s why picture people love these little things so much.
We understand that today’s completely insignificant moment has a funny way of becoming tomorrow’s “Remember when…?”
So take the picture.
And if there’s a giant inflatable duck in it, even better.
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