We met at Breezy Lake Drive to go together to breakfast, with the intention of eating at a Denny’s. However, it was totally jam-packed when we got there, as was the Cracker Barrel next door to it.
Rather than drive around for another place, we decided to have a quick breakfast at a Wendy’s, as it was the being together that was important, not what and where we ate.
Besides, I wanted to get back to the house in time to take a bunch of pictures before we headed to the airport.
(You can see two of those painted limb stubs up in the tree above them.)
(I was giving my dad new-fangled-21st-century-gadget instructions. He done good.)
(I like this because it also shows the intricate stone work—
the puzzle-piece chiseled fit of each stone.)
We had uneventful flights home in terms of delays.
There was a little drama on the first flight as a man was traveling with a child as his guard and though they had to sit together, they didn’t have seats together. I was sitting across the aisle (two seats on each side) from mom and dad with a girl I didn’t know, so we both agreed to move to give the guardian and his guard our seats together.
I ended up near a sexy daddy with the tiniest baby ever in his lap. I helped him a couple of times as he held the baby on his lap with its head in his palm, and really had a hard time reaching things: like the bottles, opening them, and sticking them in the baby’s mouth.
As we neared Philly, he noted to his wife who was sitting behind us with their other child (also a baby, older, but not old enough to have her own seat), “We’re barely going to make our connection. And it’s going to be interesting, because he’s fully loaded,” he said indicating the one in his lap.
“Well, we definitely don’t have time for that,” she replied. I just held my breath the rest of the way.
We had a very rulesy flight attendant on that flight, and she chastised two people—calling them out by their row and seat to put those seat belts back on!
Both of our flights were on time, so we had virtually no layover in Philly, as by the time we got to the Philly-RDU gate, they were already boarding.
I stopped along the way to the gate to get two Philly Steak & Cheese sandwiches “to go” as mom kept moving, pushing dad in a wheel chair to the gate.
There was a long downward slant in the floor at one point, and he got a little too much momentum going for her to be able to slow down, and so she asked him to drag his feet on the ground some. Yabba-dabba-do car feet.
I’m not saying I’m my parents’ son, but as soon as the bell rang on the plane indicating that we were at our “cruising altitude,” my father and I both said at the exact same time, “Good, we can eat.”
When I took my first bite of the sandwich I thought, “Wow, this tastes a little like goutons.” (I can’t find this French word, but this is the only way I know how to spell it. It’s an old French recipe of ground pork that my grandmother used to make.)
Not 30 seconds later, my mom leaned over and said, “John, this tastes like goutons, don’t [sic] it?”
It’s so weird, because these sandwiches were from the same place that we’d gotten them on our way up during our Philadelphia layover, and neither of us made the connection at that time.
Back at my house, I threw my stuff in the house, and then lead mom and dad over to I-40 East to send them on their way back to Jacksonville.
All in all, it was a tiring, but well-worth it trip in terms of heart-warmth alone.