We are back in Florida.

It was a great trip north even though I was fretting about missing the house construction for so long and fretting about Hurricane Irma going over our RV lot in the Florida Keys, our motorhome, and our new house in Leesburg, Florida.  We were busy.  I sang a couple of songs at a Bluegrass Jam that brother-in-law Tom goes to every Friday night.  Sister Barbara put me up to it. On Saturday, we attended the wedding of Son Christopher’s childhood friend, Joey Cumberland at the Calvert Marine Museum. Christopher was the best man.

Here is the wedding venue.  It was perfect weather for a wedding.

We had not met the bride so this was our first look at her.

You know how the kids who are in your house so much you begin to think of them as one of your own?  Joey introduced me to some guests as his “other mother”.

My son Christopher is the tall one with the skinhead. Mama has not been able to convince him to grow his hair.  He was an excellent best man.

On Sunday, Andy and I took Christopher up to Annapolis for a visit with his grandmother. At 93, she was having a good day and recognized us.  She snuggled with Christopher the whole time.

We also stopped at the Naval Academy to visit Grandpa Moulton.

Fortunately, someone else drove Christopher to the airport on Monday morning so I didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night for that.  We drove up to Rockville, MD to visit Son Andrew and his family.  Since they were all at work and school, we stopped to visit Laura Bender aboard Kindred Spirits at the Gangplank Marina in Wash. DC on the way.  It sure was nice to sit on a boat again.  We had a great visit, including a nice lunch at a nearby restaurant.  Andy slipped and fell on (not off) the boat as we were leaving.  By the time the kids came home from school, I decided that someone should have a look at Andy’s swollen knee.  So we went to a local Urgent Care clinic rather than to watch baseball practice.  The x-ray revealed no break.  They put Andy in an “immobilizer” and prescribed elevation and ice.

On Tuesday, we went to visit Susan and Richard during the day.  Richard is recovering nicely from open-heart surgery and was looking well and rosy, if not robust. It was not enough time to catch up with all the chatter Susan and I needed to accomplish.  We returned to Sister Barbara’s house on Wednesday. She has started back to school, I think this is her last year of nursing school. On Thursday, we visited one of Daughter Jennifer’s childhood friends in Solomons.  Kelly’s baby boy Liam is ten months old and as happy a baby as you are likely to meet.  He loved Andy, as all children seem to do.

A highlight of the trip was my 50th high school reunion, which will require a separate post.  I had so much fun squealing and hugging childhood friends. I talked about it for most of the drive back to Florida. We saw more than a hundred electric utility trucks heading north, their hurricane clean-up work done,

We drove straight to the house when we got back to Leesburg. There is a lawn, shrubbery, and some trees. And shutters, which I had not noticed until I got the pictures on the computer. There are also screens in the windows.

The sod is multi-colored.  This is the west side of the house.

We have a house number.

And baseboards. It is beginning to look finished. There were two or three painters inside putting another coat of paint on the walls and touching up scuffs, chips, and scratches. The walls no longer look as blue.

The master bath has medicine cabinets and a mirror.

I watched two men install the glass on the shower stall.

We have a laundry tub and a dryer in the laundry room but there was no washer in sight.

We solved the mystery of a small PVC pipe sticking out of the outside wall of the garage.  This is the irrigation system controller on the wall.

The guest bathroom also has a medicine cabinet and mirror.

The big excitement was in the kitchen.  The dishwasher was installed, but I did not take a picture of it. The cabinet over the refrigerator finally got doors.

I have a stove with five, count ’em, five burners!  I’ve been trying to cook four-burner dinners on three burner stoves for seventeen years and am beside myself with excitement.

Here is a better look with tiles on the wall behind.

The pantry has shelves.  I can’t wait to get my food out from under the sofa in the motorhome.

Someone drilled a hole in the countertop for the sprayer, which is now under the sink.

The clouds were pretty across the golf course.

This will be a flower bed/ veggie garden. Notice the downed tree in the background, a victim of Irma.

My herb/kitchen garden has a little erosion from the hurricane rain.  The small tree in the background looks dead to me.  It is a dead Live Oak.

The misplaced outside electrical outlet has been removed.

We probably should not have been surprised to see a downed tree next to Sao in the RV park. It had been standing on a neighboring property. We were lucky, it fell between us and our neighbor.