Rob’s Birthday in Florida

10-17 December 2013

What started out as a trip to visit C.J.’s brother Rob and maybe help him get the family home in Palm Coast cleaned out a bit turned into a family reunion lacking only brothers Greg and Bill.

C.J. and I left as usual in the dark of a cold and rainy morning. We left the car at Sandstone Inn parking lot when I found out that the prices that AboutAirportParking.com quoted were higher than what the Sandstone quoted online. [I was amazed.] We met Ginny and Wally in Atlanta and then shared a ride with them in their rental car from JAX to Palm Coast where Rob met us with snacks and drinks. [That was plenty to eat because we had a meal during our layover in Atlanta.]

A breakfast on the coast at the Java Joint was the exception to our usual morning oatmeal but it was enjoyable to sit on the porch sheltered from the north wind. Back at the house we spent much of the rest of the day raking up the maple leaves which were still falling as we bagged up the piles. Meanwhile Wally used the electric leaf blower to clear the roof of pine needles.

Mary and Dave flew in from Chicago and Pat drove down from Williamsburg, VA. On Saturday Jennifer and Kevin came over from Tampa with their newborn daughter, Macy. That night Mary prepared her signature pot roast and we all had a great meal. C.J. baked fresh rolls; Jenn and Kevin brought Key lime pie and fresh crab; and Mary whipped up a batch of brownies (which, together with the pie and ice cream, gave us the requisite three desserts).

Meanwhile during the week, Rob, Dave, Wally and I worked on clearing the accumulated grime and hard-water deposits off the windows. Windex took some of it off but we needed to soak some of the worst ones in CLR and then attack them with a razor blade scraper. The sisters mostly worked on deciding what should be kept and what could be thrown out or donated to Goodwill. Many trips were made to Goodwill. On the last couple of days C.J. and Ginny spent hours going through boxes and boxes of photos, discarding most of the travel photos unless they were good ones that contained a family member.

By Monday we were ready for a break and everyone else had left except us, Rob and Gin. We took an evening walk along the Intracoastal Waterway down to the children’s memorial park. Before heading back to the house for another dinner of leftover pot roast, we stopped at Farley’s, an Irish/sports bar in European Village.

Rob and Gin drove us to the airport around 1100 on Tuesday. We got there in plenty of time to have a hearty lunch at a decent restaurant before going to our gate. It was a good thing we got filled up because there wasn’t time in Minneapolis to get a bite before boarding. We were a little late getting into Seattle (probably because the flight out of Minneapolis was late leaving the gate). It didn’t matter since we had to hang out and wait for our checked baggage – Rob had given us two old suitcases so C.J. could take home some mementos she wanted to save. We were lucky to catch the Sandstone Inn shuttle without even having to call for a pickup.

It seemed like a successful trip to me. Rob had already gotten rid of a lot of stuff before we got there, but we really whittled down the piles that were cluttering up the place. The living room looked pretty nice by the time we left.