Trip to Florida

We have been absent for a while, but that is due to technical difficulties that we hope are about done.  Catching up, Ellis, Anders and I had a wonderful trip to Florida for our cousin Brandon's Bar Mitzvah. Here is the start of the trip with Anders and Ellis getting excited about the plane taking off.  Anders kept saying, "Plane?  Fly?"  In fact, I should mention that starting on this trip, Anders decided that verbal communication may be worth the effort and has since repeated words he hears a great deal.

Here we are on the first night in Stuart, Florida, visiting cousin Terrie, who was an amazing host.  I had not expected to see much of her considering how much planning and logistics that go into a Bar Mitzvah.  And it was her boys' last week of school too.  But we saw her every day and really got to spend time with them and catch up.  It was wonderful.

The kids loved Terrie and Tom's house, which has a pool and a putting green.  We also lucked out with the weather, which was cool and breezy.

We also got to catch up with cousins Amy, Jody, Leslie and Uncle Bobby and Aunt Sally.  Here is Ellis with Amy and Jody.  Ellis really enjoyed spending time with the big kids like Jody, Tyler and Brandon.  She told me that she found "big kids to be fascinating."  And the big kids, especially Jody, were really sweet and generous with their attention.

Kackie stayed with us in the same hotel room, which the kids really loved.  As you can imagine, attention from grandmothers is very special and seemingly infinite.  Thankfully for Kackie, the kids took to sleeping later on this trip, usually until around 8am.

Anders could not get enough of Uncle Bobby.  Every time we walked out of our room, he would look around and say, "Bobby?  Bobby?"  If he saw Uncle Bobby, he would walk right up and take his hand, as you see here.

We did make it to the beach, but conditions we way too rough to get into the water.  It was almost too windy to be on the beach at all.  But we stuck it out for a little over an hour.