With many years of parking and traffic studies and an entire season of hourly parking, we will continue our pay-by-the-hour parking structure for the 2023 season. As families and friends plan to vacation in SEASIDE® this year, we anticipate a bustling town center, filled with award-winning shopping and dining, enjoyed by those staying in Seaside and other 30A communities. Whether you’re driving in for the day, planning to bike into town for the afternoon, or catching our complimentary shuttle, there’s an easy way for everyone to get to Seaside. After numerous parking and traffic studies, input from well-renowned parking consultants, and  three implementations of various paid parking methods, the pay-by-the-hour rate structure launched in 2022 offered the most flexibility and ease of use for our guests. Beginning March 1, the hourly paid parking program will be in effect. Parking rates will vary by day, occupancy levels, and events. This allows us to maintain proper vacancy levels so visitors have available parking to use and ensures that the parking is most efficiently managed. Similar to last year, the paid parking experience will have guests park their vehicle on Smolian Circle. Upon arrival, you will notice signs placed around Smolian Circle letting you know what zone you have parked in. Input your license plate number and payment information, then head into Seaside to enjoy your day! We encourage visitors to download The Passport Parking app in advance for a simple parking experience. The Passport Parking App can be downloaded here. The... Read More

  Emerald Coast Theatre Company is proud to present You and Me Under the Sea Saturday, April 1 and April 8, 2023 at 9.30 a.m. (Friday school field trip performances are sold out). This interactive live show is performed with the youngest of audience members in mind (6 months to 5 years old). Flap your flippers and swish your tail as you float along the waves and explore underwater worlds! You might meet a curious sea turtle or a mischievous dolphin as you sing and clap along to the rhythm of the clam shells keeping the beat. Let your imagination run free and your fins flap along as we take you under the sea! A new work created just for you by our Junior Company teen players. A collaboration written by Phillip Padgett and the Junior Company Players. “Our Theatre for the Very Young is very special in two ways. One way is to watch the eyes of little ones from 6 months old to five years old light up with the live action and colorful nature of the shows. It is a pretty great experience. Add to that the fact that our Jr Company High School Players wrote and collaborated with ECTC staff to create the show is pretty great too. It’s a very creative experience for both the audience and the actors,” said ECTC co-founder Nathanael Fisher. Cast List: Miss Angel – Lainey Whitten School of Fish: Kate Sprenkle Selah Metzger Caylen Curle Caleb Vantassel Alexa Whitten Lily... Read More

  By Dr. Richard Chern M.D. I’d like to start off by saying thank you to everyone who voted us BEST IN DESTIN for both Anti-Aging Clinic and Women’s Wellness Clinic.  We are so excited and for readers of South Walton Life we will be offering FREE consultations in the month of January- so call us today! In this article, I want to talk about how The Hormone Restoration Center looks at the thyroid just a little bit differently than other physicians in the area.  The thyroid cycle can be confusing, EVEN FOR DOCTORS!  We occasionally get calls from primary care physicians who worry their patient’s thyroid level is too high or too low.  The problem is they are looking at the wrong lab values.  If you ask any of our patients, they will tell you we spend a long time discussing the thyroid with them and they all say, ”Wow, I’ve never had someone explain it to me before.” To get the thyroid to work, the brain secretes Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) to tell the thyroid to produce hormones.  Thyroxine (T4) and tri-iodothyronine (T3) are two of the main hormones produced in response to TSH.  Thyroxine (T4) goes back to the brain to tell the pituitary to reduce the amount of TSH produced while tri-iodothyronine (T3) regulates nearly every aspect of our metabolism. This is called a negative feedback loop like you see between a parent and child.  The parent yells louder and louder at the child to clean... Read More

  By Kirk McCarley, In the 2003 novel, “The Five People You Meet in Heaven,” Mitch Albom charts the life of amusement ride mechanic, Eddie, who loses his life in an amusement park accident.  Upon his arrival in heaven, he encounters five of the people who had a significant impact on him while he was alive. Eddie lived much of his own life unfulfilled, that is until he also met those he had influenced or affected most significantly, many of whom went on to have great achievements themselves.  Eddie, through his seemingly understated and unknowing acts of service, learns in the afterlife that he provided that opportunity for them. In my vocation as a Career and Life Coach, clients profess a variety of reasons and underlying motivations for seeking services.  Some would like to sharpen their communication skills to enhance their performance in job interviews.  Others, already in a role of leadership, aim to better their professional presence, to promote to the c-suite.  There can still exist a few more, pursuing improvement in life goals:  better relationships with family and friends, more effective time management allowing for decreased stress and increased chances for recreation, or improved health and fitness. These motivations eventually point back to a desire for a higher quality life, often defined by more time, better health, or greater financial resources.  What is often surprising, however, is that when peeling deeper, a most profound desire of the human heart seems to be the craving to “matter,” to make... Read More

  By Rick Moore, It seems each generation abbreviates more and more. Responding to a text a message with the two letter word “OK” is simply not short enough. That is way too long! The latest trend is to just type “K.” I asked a young person why not just type “OK.” He said it was because OK stands for Oklahoma. So “OK” is not OK. Now that we’ve got that straight, where did “OK” come from (the word, not the state)? The word may have come from the very area I now call home; the Choctawhatchee Bay Area. In “All Mixed Up”, the legendary folk singer Pete Seeger sang that “OK” was of Choctaw origin, as the dictionaries of his time (Webster’s Dictionary, New Century Dictionary, and Funk & Wagnalls) tended to agree. The earliest written evidence for this Choctaw inception is provided in writings by the Christian missionaries Cyrus Byington and Alfred Wright in 1825. These missionaries ended many sentences in their translation of the Bible with the particle “Okeh”, meaning “it is so,” which was listed as an alternative spelling in the 1913 Webster’s Dictionary. Saying “Okeh” was like saying “Amen.” This explanation sounds good to me, but not so with everyone. This explanation is definitely not OK for some folks from Boston. Many of the good folks in New England believe that “OK” originated around Boston as part of a fad in the late 1830s. They say “OK” stands for “oll korrect [all correct]”. This origin... Read More

  By Victoria Ostrosky “‘Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’  This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:31-32) To God, marriage is a picture of Christ and the church, and is a great mystery.  Jesus loved His church and gave Himself up for her.  His love is absolute and complete. His sacrifice is absolute and complete.  And the intimate communion God desires with His children is of paramount importance.  The Garden of Eden was a place of communion and rest.  Walking and talking with God every day, all day.  But the fall happened, and everything changed. God instituted marriage way back in the Garden of Eden.  We know how difficult it can be to maintain the level of love and commitment necessary to stay together for the lifetime we’ve promised each other.  We can get led astray by attention from someone else.  We can keep a mental list of all the times our spouse has hurt us or disappointed us.  We forget that we have culpability in the daily decisions we make.  And, over time, we become strangers. But God knew what He was doing, and, as Believers, we need to set an example for the world.  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  Those aren’t just pretty words to put on a wall plaque. Garland Rowland, a small group pastor at Destiny... Read More

  March is National Music in Our Schools Month (MIOS), a time to celebrate the importance of music education in our schools and to recognize the incredible dedication of our music teachers! Teacher giving music lessons at school This event was established by the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) more than 30 years ago, and its goal is to raise awareness for the importance of music education for all children. This year’s theme is “music is all of us”, with an aim to highlight how music is everywhere in our lives and has a unique way of bringing us together and giving everyone a place to belong. You can find out more on their website: https://nafme.org/programs/miosm/ This month is the perfect opportunity to acknowledge the amazing music teachers in our schools and their endless dedication to teaching music to our children. Over the years, our public schools have spent time and resources growing music programs including: music rooms, chorus, band programs in middle and high schools, purchasing of instruments and supplies, auditoriums, and forming a team of certified, encouraging, and enthusiastic music educators. We are especially thankful for our earlier music teachers who were the pioneers of music education and made sure that the children had the opportunity to learn, listen, and experience music. We wouldn’t be where we are today without them. One of the highlights of this month is National Marching Band Day on March 4th, which celebrates the “marching arts” like drum corps. Marching bands are... Read More

  By Maurice Stouse,  As we head into March, we are seeing some early trends or patterns for investors. First among these are short term interest rates. The Federal Reserve raised rates to 4.75% in early February. That was .25% smaller rate increase than their previous meeting. We are seeing short term savings rates and CDs yielding at or near this level as well. Investors are left wondering if rates will continue to climb. The Federal Reserve is keeping a close watch on inflation which, after the February report, sees prices as going sideways for now (as opposed to continuing to go down). Digging deep into those numbers we see that goods are down to 3% and wages are now growing at 4.3%. The cost of services continues to keep resilience in the face of inflation.  Wages may continue to wane as the white-collar labor force is seen as over employed and the same for many blue-collar professions. Restaurant and hospitality businesses continue to be seen as under employed. There has been a lot of news about layoffs in the tech sector. While significant those workers account for less than 2% of the workforce. Many of those returning to the workforce also see being productive and industrious – a key to a happy and fulfilled life. We are also learning more about the Great Unretirement or the growth of the so called “unretiring”. Many Americans who retired during the pandemic are coming back to work. That is a sign of... Read More