Florida Bound!

Such a big day! Andy had to leave for Argentina yesterday night (boo), and this morning I set the alarm for 5am to wake up the kids and get to the airport for our big flight to Florida!! Our good friend Ken was our hired chauffeur :-), and he got to the house right on time at 5:30. Both kids were in great spirits, and we had such a nice drive to JFK - no delays to speak of, and great conversation with Ken!

We arrived around 7:20, and within a few minutes we got a call from Mom and Dad, Ian and Eli, whose flight had just arrived from Portland. Before we knew it, we were all having a jolly breakfast in a little aiport cafe. The flight was quicker than expected, but we had a few delays after that....

first our booster seat wasn't with the rest of our luggage, but they gave us a loaner and we'll get ours back on our return; then we had to wait for AGES for our rental car to turn up... but finally it did and we were on our way to Marathon! It was already about 2pm, so we were hungry for lunch; after we were about 20 minutes from the airport, we started looking for a place to stop. We pulled off for a Burger King sign, but then veered off towards a promising looking strip and happened upon a fantastic little Cuban bistro called 3 Vs Cafe.

What a great lunch! Jorge, the owner, was so friendly and nice, and he brought us samples of the soup of the day ("Dirty Potato") and was so attentive. We got a free Cuban coffee on our way out, as well! On the way to Marathon we stopped in Key Largo at the Jewish Community Center where Aidan was preparing for the bar mitzvah with his mom, Jessica... it was so lucky we

stopped, because Ian, Mom and Dad will all be participating in the service, and they needed practice! It was wonderful to see Aidan and Jessica, and Ollie was overjoyed! After that we finally got to our house in Marathon, got the bags into the house, and headed to Aidan's house for an impromptu barbecue that Jess and her husband, Roger, had arranged for us... everything tasted so good! Both kids had various minor meltdowns as the evening progressed, but that's to be expected when you're soooo overtired and overexcited! What a fun first day!