Posts Tagged ‘palm trees’
Morning Night
Yesterday I woke up in the morning surrounded by crunchy snow and went to sleep last night among palm trees.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
In a very hush, hush operation, Cyndie and I flew to Florida to surprise her father for the weekend to celebrate the occasion of his 80th birthday. I texted Elysa when we arrived last night to let her know we were gone from home. I told very few people about it in order to avoid leaking the secret and spoiling the surprise.
George and Anneliese are running the ranch in Wisconsin while we are gone.
Oddly enough, the weather at home is predicted to be unusually warm while we are down here. Almost defeats the purpose of traveling to Florida. Good thing we came down to be with family, not just to get away from the cold and snow.
You know me. I LOVE snow! That doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy the predicted sunshine and 80° while we’re here, though.
Cyndie’s brother, Barry and husband, Carlos, arrived just an hour before us last night. Marie told Fred she needed to go to the store so she could pick us all up at the airport. She pulled off the surprise wonderfully and we made a grand entrance to greet Fred at the house.
Marie served a late meal on the lanai and we sat around the table in the warm (and humid, relative to up north right now) night air reminiscing about many entertaining memories of the properties that Fred and Marie have purchased over the years.
Not a single one of them turned out wrong. They’ve had this place for 16 years now, and it feels natural to be here again. I remember what a surprise it seemed back then, when I first heard they bought the house.
It’s a real honor being here with them all to make the milestone of 80 years a special family event.
No snow pictures for a few days now. Hope you don’t mind.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Reality Check
I am going to pause today in my ongoing chronicle of our Guatemalan adventure to provide some perspective that I think will show why I choose to describe our 10 days with the Morales family in such specific day-to-day detail. This is the April reality that we have returned to at our home, latitude 44.7739° N:
You may be able to barely make out the silhouette of our horses in the distance through the falling flakes, but you won’t find any palm trees and I can attest that there was absolutely nothing similar to a balmy Pacific breeze.
Do you blame me for wanting to relive every precious warm moment of that visit with our great friends in their beautiful country? It’s winter-cold here again and the wind is gusting mini-blizzards straight out of the Arctic circle this week!
Seriously, tomorrow I am going right back to describing our last days at the beach house and then our return to Guatemala City in preparation of boarding the flight home. Maybe it’s escapism. I’m not proud. I do it because I can.
Aw, heck. I can’t even wait.
This is what I am talking about…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 