Home again, home again, jigitty jig

[madeleone]

Just a RL catch up post. Hubby and I have been on an extended road trip for the past four and a half weeks and just got home yesterday. We left Michigan on Friday, 2/2 and returned home Tuesday 3/6. Whew, what a busy month! On the last leg of our journey Hubby stated he was looking forward to getting home and returning to his regularly schuduled rut. LOL!

This plan started out to be a week in FL in the Kissimee area with three of our four kids and their families in a shared rental house.  Then DH mentioned he would like to visit Pt. Charlotte, where his folks lived for years, to see some of the old neighbors and his neice and great nephew. So we added three days there. I mentioned that in all the years our vacations were spent going to Florida to visit his folks I never did get to see the Keys like I wanted to, so we added a couple more days there. Then there was the old high school friend and golfing buddy of DH's who winters in Titusville and is always saying we should come visit so we spent another four days there. From there off to two days in Orlando before all the kids arrived, where we spent a day a Universal because I just HAD to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter--so glad we did! Being a couple of out of shape old farts, it was exhausting, but totally worth it. Plus it helped get us in shape for the time we planned to spend at Disney with the kids and grandkids.

So on 2/15 we all moved into our rental: an eight bedroom, six bath home, with full kitchen, laundry, huge lanai with a pool, hot tub and built in grill. We had six families in all, three couples with two kids each (so six grandkids) and three sets of grandparents. And having that many people made the cost of renting the home quite reasonable, much less than staying in a hotel and eating out every day. Everyone kind of did their own thing. Son's family and in-laws did three days and saw all four Disney Parks.The two girls and their families have younger kids so they split two days between the Magic Kingdom and the Animal Kingdom. We spent most of the time there with our youngest daughter as my other daughter had her in-laws to help out with their little ones. Then they both wanted a kid-free day so the two couples could visit Universal so the grandparents babysat that day.

Originally we'd planned to head home after that week, but back in January when we were visiting our older daughter her hubby had mentioned that right after he returned from Florida he would have to go out of town for week for work. Being the quick thinking Nonnie that I am, I said, 'Hey we're going to be in Florida anyway it wouldn't be that hard to come here and help out for a week while B is gone.' Having a pre-schooler and a toddler to wrangle, my DD was happy to accept the offer. So we planned to leave Florida and meet them at their home in Alexandria, Va.

Then by lucky happenstance while perusing the route, I realized that only a short 50 min detour would take us to Murfreesboro, NC, where hubby's aunt and uncle live. We haven't seen them for years, but were always very fond of them, and they are both in their eighties so we knew we shouldn't miss the opportunity. I knew they lived there but didn't have an address or phone number. Luckily hubby call his sister who had the info and we were able to contact them and arrange to stop the next day. We had a lovely afternoon visit, went out to lunch with them--which even though we had invited them Uncle Jack insisted on paying for--so I made him agree that now that we know they are only a few hours away from K's, we will come back and it will be our treat next time.

So the last week we got to spend some good quality time with the grandkids which was nice. And we even got to do some DC sightseeing on Tue. 2/27. While S was at preschool, we packed R into her stroller and DH, K and I took the metro into town and walked the National Mall viewing the monuments. It was a gorgeous day, near 60 and sunny. I'd seen them before with K when we came ten years ago when she was in college, and again last fall when my other daughter and I went down to visit her. But hubby had only seen them from a distance when we came last year as we spent time that day at the air and space museum with our grandson. We got to see the Washington Monument, but only from the outside as it is being renovated, the WWII memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial.

I was a teenager in the sixties and early seventies and seeing the Vietnam memorial makes me tear up every time I go even though I didn't personally know anyone who died in the war. Just seeing all the names on the wall and remembering seeing it on the news every night as they announced how many Americans had died that day and how very divided our country was then, it still breaks my heart a little. It was especially moving for Hubby as he is a Vietnam vet having served in the Navy from 1969 through 73 and he'd been in Vietnam, Thailand, the Phillipines and Japan. He was able to find the name of a high school classmate on the wall and took a picture of it, and we took pictures of him at the wall. In fact a stranger came up to my daughter and said she had got several nice pics of her dad when he was looking for the name and taking pictures of it and asked if she could have her phone number to send them to her, which she did. So nice of her.

So that's how our one week trip turned into over a month. LOL! But now our travels are over, at least for now, and I'm happy to be home and I might just snuggle down into the rut right next to hubby. I have some pics and if I can figure out how to get them from my phone to my laptop I will post a few.