Annual trip to Florida

We thoroughly enjoyed our annual trip to Florida this year, although it was fraught with misadventures!  I was going to start the trip by visiting my friend Jessica in Florida, but we had a miscommunication with the date, and so I didn't show up on the day she expected me and she wasn't available on the day I had planned to go...and so the misadventures began!  We did manage to stop by for a quick overnighter with my brothers near Jacksonville, which was wonderful.  This is a classic uncles-with-my-kids moment...

I didn't take a lot of pictures while I was in Florida...we were too busy enjoying family (my parents, my grandparents, and my Aunt Connie, Uncle Chuck, and cousins Amanda and Alicia were all there)!  (My mom did a fantastic job of chronicling our days together on her blog, if you're interested in more pictures.)  Here are a few snapshots of our time together.

 

In the middle of our visit, Bruce had a conference to attend in Miami, so the kids stayed with the clan and Bruce and I headed off for a quick jaunt.  This trip, too, was full of misadventures, but we figure we'll laugh about it someday!  My favorite part of the stay was the hot tub and the chaise lounge on our balcony...I thoroughly enjoyed a couple of lazy mornings soaking and then lounging with a book in hand.

I also spent a sunny afternoon at the rooftop pool.

The courtyard was open-air and very pretty.

We were glad to get back to the homestead to see the kids and everyone and enjoy another day of being lowkey.

 We managed to squeeze in a little time for sewing, of course!  I used my mom's short-arm quilter to quilt my Christmas quilt...

 and I finished handsewing the binding on while we were driving home to Georgia.

 My mom, grandma, and I also managed to start a quilted tablerunner project.  We had originally planned to make them start-to-finish while we were together, but sometimes life interferes with the best-laid plans!  Here are our first blocks...

(from the left, my grandma's, mine, my mom's)

And here is mine, actually sewn together.

I also got to help my mom lay out her "circle quilt" blocks, which was really fun.  We also worked together to stack and label them for easy sewing and now she is working on that...I can't wait to see it finished!  It's a stunning quilt, even just laid out in pieces on the floor.

My dad and David worked on a lot of projects together...my dad is wonderfully patient about including David and David is in his glory, working like a man.  They cut down a tree, used the hatchet to chop branches, worked with the tractor, and a million other little things.  They also gave our van a facelift -- new headlights (see the difference between the old one and the new one in this picture?), a wash and vacuum, new rear shocks, new (matching!) hubcaps all the way around and a powerwash under the hood.

It's great to have our old girl looking so good.

She looked really impressive riding on the flatbed when one of the brakes blew on the highway on the way home!!!

Did I mention misadventures?!

But he Lord was good even in the midst of the trouble...we were going slowly enough that the brake loss did not cause us to get in an accident, we were adjacent to an exit when it happened and we got right off the highway, our insurance company covered the whole tow, all the way to our regular mechanic shop 50 miles away from the breakdown, and they even found a towtruck with a cab big enough to take all four of us with him.  The friends who had been carsitting Bruce's car while we were in Florida (they took him to the airport, so he had left his car at their house) met us partway with his car, so that we had a vehicle.  And now our car has new rear brakes AND it looks pretty. :)

This was definitely a memorable trip, in a lot of ways, and it was as wonderful as it always is to be with family.  I do vote for a slightly more boring trip next time, though!