Two days before Christmas
Here we are in Tallahassee for Christmas.
Our flights down from Connecticut were pretty uneventful, once we got on the first flight. We got to the airport at 5:30 AM, an hour early. The lines were horrendous, and then it took the stupid lady at the e ticket kiosk 15 minutes to print out our luggage tags. Then she told us it was too late, we should go rebook our flights. Yeah right! Like we are really going to get on a later flight on Dec. 23rd! But the line at security was very short, and we made the plane.
We got to Jacksonville about 11:30. I had been asking Michael for weeks what he thought we ought to do between 11:30 and 4:30 (when Eleanor and Wesley were supposed to arrive) but of course he couldn't decide until we actually got there. The verdict -- pick up the luggage and the car, and go to Holiday Inn for lunch. When we got to the Holiday Inn, we saw a brochure about local activities. On the front page, the Cummer Museum had just started a traveling exhibit from the British Museum on Egyptian temples and tombs. So of course we had to go. We got directions, hopped in the car and drove there. The exhibit was fairly small, but they had some extremely nice things in it, including some large statues, and a head from a colossal statue. The museum is on the river and has a beautiful garden. We enjoyed it very much. I had been so bummed out because we had to get up so early and then wait so long (this was the airlines fault, not Eleanor and Wesley's) and then it turned out that we got to do something really nice while we were waiting.
We got in the car to drive back to the airport, and Eleanor called to say they had arrived. Perfect timing! We fought our way through the airport traffic to pick them up, then started out toward Gainesville. Traffic was not too bad, so we got there in the usual hour and a half. On the way to Jack and Ina's house we drove past the house I grew up in, but it was dark by then, so Wesley couldn't really see it. This is the first time he has been in Florida.
We arrived at Jack and Ina's house 5 minutes after Mike and Sharon left. They had been down for the Florida - Ohio State basketball game, and had tried to wait for us, but had to get home. Oh well, we will see them on Christmas. We went out to dinner at a very nice restaurant with Jack and Ina, then wrapped the presents we had brought with us and went to bed.
-------------------------- Sunday, December 24th, 2006
Our flights down from Connecticut were pretty uneventful, once we got on the first flight. We got to the airport at 5:30 AM, an hour early. The lines were horrendous, and then it took the stupid lady at the e ticket kiosk 15 minutes to print out our luggage tags. Then she told us it was too late, we should go rebook our flights. Yeah right! Like we are really going to get on a later flight on Dec. 23rd! But the line at security was very short, and we made the plane.
We got to Jacksonville about 11:30. I had been asking Michael for weeks what he thought we ought to do between 11:30 and 4:30 (when Eleanor and Wesley were supposed to arrive) but of course he couldn't decide until we actually got there. The verdict -- pick up the luggage and the car, and go to Holiday Inn for lunch. When we got to the Holiday Inn, we saw a brochure about local activities. On the front page, the Cummer Museum had just started a traveling exhibit from the British Museum on Egyptian temples and tombs. So of course we had to go. We got directions, hopped in the car and drove there. The exhibit was fairly small, but they had some extremely nice things in it, including some large statues, and a head from a colossal statue. The museum is on the river and has a beautiful garden. We enjoyed it very much. I had been so bummed out because we had to get up so early and then wait so long (this was the airlines fault, not Eleanor and Wesley's) and then it turned out that we got to do something really nice while we were waiting.
We got in the car to drive back to the airport, and Eleanor called to say they had arrived. Perfect timing! We fought our way through the airport traffic to pick them up, then started out toward Gainesville. Traffic was not too bad, so we got there in the usual hour and a half. On the way to Jack and Ina's house we drove past the house I grew up in, but it was dark by then, so Wesley couldn't really see it. This is the first time he has been in Florida.
We arrived at Jack and Ina's house 5 minutes after Mike and Sharon left. They had been down for the Florida - Ohio State basketball game, and had tried to wait for us, but had to get home. Oh well, we will see them on Christmas. We went out to dinner at a very nice restaurant with Jack and Ina, then wrapped the presents we had brought with us and went to bed.
-------------------------- Sunday, December 24th, 2006