Thursday morning we drove the 30 or so miles remaining to Mr. D's hanger where the fun would take place. The plane only had room for 4 people at a time so there were 2 shifts. Ellie and Andy went up 1st followed by Benny and Danny. Ellie got queezy about half-way through and Ben told me that Benny got really quiet also. When they landed, Benny was the 1st one out and went to sit in the truck for about 10 minutes. His way of curing air-sickness. They enjoyed their first airplane ride though. Ellie even got to become a member of the Young Eagle's Club.
After the flying lessons we headed back to Mr. D's house, which was maybe a mile down the road from the airport. This made me truly miss living outside the city limits. It was hard to keep the kids inside the house. There was so much to do 'Outside'. Imagine that! No one wanting to play on the computer or XBOX and they played TOGETHER! No fighting. Ellie spent most of the day raking leaves while the boys either played with toys, rode the adult sized bike, or played baseball. They all took turns destroying the leaf pile in the end and I got some really great pictures with my new camera.
We left Tallahassee around 2ish in the afternoon to allow enough time to get to Jacksonville before dinner. By the way, 6.5 years old is the age NOT to take your child on a car trip. At least if they are as impatient as Danny. He must have asked every 5 minutes "How much further", "How much longer"..! AAAAHHH! We made it to Jacksonville in one piece and got settled in and rested up for our multiple family visits we had in store over the next few days.
On Friday we went for a ride to check out previous homes in the area. We had a kind of lazy day ending with family gathering at my Grandma's house for dinner. We even had a visit from Santa on a Tow truck! Seriously! When I was younger Santa used to come around Grandma's neighborhood on the firetruck with the sirens blaring. THAT was awesome. They don't do that anymore, maybe because of budget cutbacks, or noise complaints! But these wonderful people picked up where the firefighters left off a few years ago and volunteer their Christmas Eve to bring Santa around on the Tow Truck. They hand out presents and candy to the kids and let them climb up to sit on Santa's lap for a photo. This year my cousin Joel got a proposition from one of the ladies near the front of the truck who had obviously been partying already that evening.
Christmas morning was good. I heard the door to our room open pretty early but then I heard Danny ask Andy if he could sleep with him. When I woke up about an hour later I found Benny and Ellie sitting on the couch waiting for everyone else to wake up. I had to literally wake Andy and Danny up. The 2 early birds waiting on the couch had already peeked and knew what Santa brought. Grandma made cinnamon rolls and we opened all of our presents. We got ready and went to church with MY Grandma at our old church and came back home just in time for my younger sister and her family to arrive. Ben left to go check on his grandparents who were up from the Tampa area house-sitting for his parents. Around 4 ALL of us (including Ben's grandparents :p) headed to my Aunt's house to have Christmas dinner with my step-mom's family. We missed Thanksgiving in Jacksonville so it was nice to see everyone we hadn't seen in several months. Ellie the girl scout cookie salesgirl spared no one with her sales pitch. Well, more like mom saying "Go ask her".
Sunday brought another visit to church with my Grandma and lunch at my younger sister's house in Yulee. Oh, I neglected to mention that my younger sister had offered to have a sleep over but only had seats to take 3 kids so she took the boys home with her on Saturday night from my Aunt's house. It was really, really strange only having one child and it was eerie how quiet it was. So we headed to my sister's house to have our Christmas with my Mom and other sister and her family. We all got a nice surprise when PeePaw walked in the door too. I noticed while eating my lunch that Andy had left the table and I didn't hear him anywhere yelling like he normally does. I walked around the corner and found this.
He was so exhausted from playing so hard that he fell asleep without lunch. My nephew also fell asleep and we waited about 30 minutes to start opening presents as to allow them at least that long to nap. Well for Andy it wasn't long enough. He always wakes up grouchy and it took him probably a good 30 minutes to lose the grouch but we still couldn't get him into the picture of all the grandkids.
No comments:
Post a Comment