Maggie made us reservations at Sunflower Cafe, one of the vegetarian
restaurant's in Atlanta. We met Mat's friend Jason for dinner. My
salad and the sesame chicken were great. The tofu/ratatouille dish
pictured was presented very nicely but overall not too tasty.
Rosa takes advantage of some down time at the airport to continue her
game of Scrabble on the iphone with Joe. She did not like all the
vowels she had to deal with in her turn. Monti came down with Hand,
Foot, and Mouth disease before we started our trip to Tennessee. Her
mouth was full of sores which made in near impossible for her to eat.
She was on constant Motrin and could only eat shakes and popsicles.
The sores in her mouth lasted about three days in total. Luckily she
didn't get the sores anywhere else so it was easier to keep the virus
contained. Dahlia never ended up with it.
We stopped at the Atlanta airport to pick up Maggie. We had an hour to kill before she arrived. The airport was full of soldiers who we figured must not be returning home because none of them looked happy. The ants paraded the ceiling beams of the baggage claim area.
We headed off to Tennessee for Joe's grandma's wake and funeral. It
was a nine hour drive from The Villages in Florida. I was thrilled to
find an actual outlet in the back of the van I could plug into. I took
advantage of the time to finish up some previous blogging posts. Monti
listened to the audio book James and the Giant Peach as we headed
through Georgia. Rosa was an attentive co-pilot keeping Joe and Carl
entertained by reading them Trivial Pursuit cards. Joe's ability to
recall names and dates on a variety of topics only angered me. He
always claims his memory is just not as good as mine when he can't
remember a conversation we had the week before. I guess our
conversations are just not as important as knowing the name of Sir
Edmond Hillary's sherpa.
The girls had a chance to see GG before she headed off to Tennessee.
Dahlia wasn't sure what to think of the whole body in a casket. At 4
years old she seemed more curious than sad. Besides experiencing
Lumpy's death a few months earlier this was their first exposure to
death. Monti seemed to watch the adults to determine how she should
act. I was glad they had the chance to say goodbye to GG in a smaller
setting before attending the larger wake.
This poor guy had been waiting too long to catch his delayed flight.
The late Duane Hanson is the artist who created this very lifelike
sculpture. His home state of Florida was a perfect place to study one
of his favorite subjects, tourists.
Dahlia had a chance to celebrate her birthday a week early with some of
her cousins in Chicago. Monti is right there to show her sister how to
use her birthday gifts.
No birthday cake for Dahlia. She chose to serve donuts from Dunkin
Donuts at her early birthday party. These donuts are just not the same
since they removed the trans fats from their recipe. The lady working
at Dunkin Donuts was very patient as Dahlia took a full 5 minutes to
choose every donut in the dozen. Monti and Dahlia both chose chocolate
frosted bavarian creme donuts.
The morning we flew to Orlando we got a call from Joe's dad telling us
Joe's grandma had passed away that morning. Joe's dad and uncle were
in Chicago at the time so they had to book their flights down to
Florida. Monti and Dahlia were excited when they found out that both
Papa and UK would be on our Southwest flight. Here they are riding
the train from our gate to baggage claim at the Orlando airport.
Gabe has grown about 6 inches in the last year. I think the next time
I see him he will pass me up. When Gabe was two he was our ring bearer
at our wedding. He never made it down the aisle due to a typical 2
year old tantrum.