Soaking Up the Final Hours

Friday was another very relaxing day hanging by the pool, reading, and soaking up the sun. Sal Joe and Fat Nicky were back, though neither wanted much to do with Thomas. My parents and brother went golfing so we didn't see them until close to lunch time. We brought the boys up to eat lunch at the villa, and I took another snoozer. The afternoon brought more pool time, which we soaked up every last minute of.

For our last night, we decided to try a restaurant at the resort next door. It was sports bar full of Yankees fans (make that LOUD Yankees fans), but the food was great. The boys were pretty good, until Andrew decided to start running laps around the 10 or so empty tables behind us. A very sweet, grandparent-like couple were amused the first few times, then started telling my dad that part of the benefit of growing old was that you didn't have to deal with "this" anymore. Point taken.

Friday night brought some crazy lightening, thunder and torrential rain. One of the resorts got off a nice show of fireworks before it fizzled out in the rain which we could see perfectly from our living room window. The boys enjoyed it for the most part, though Thomas was not thrilled about the thunder. I had to spend quite a bit of time soothing him to sleep that night, and promised that the thunder and lightening would be over by the next day.

Leave it to Mother Nature to make a liar out of me. The thunderstorms had fired up again around 4 or 5 a.m., just as we were waking up to head to the airport. It was storming pretty good all the way to the airport, which the boys really were not thrilled about. I was a little anxious about getting out of there, but luckily it all blew over by the time we were boarding our plane to leave.

The travel back home was another long and trying day. Most of the goodies and new movies we'd brought had been seen and the novelty was mostly worn off. We had one blow up with Andrew on the flight from Miami to Dallas, but a trip to the bathroom and a discussion about what was appropriate behavior on an airplane helped. We successfully kept track of and chased Andrew through airports in Chicago, New York, Aruba, Miami and Dallas. That's some serious mileage.

We were so happy to be home, the boys especially. Andrew's relief came in the form of him completely crashing in the car not to wake again until 6:30 the next morning. Thomas was a little more wound up, and we had a hard time getting him to go to bed at a decent hour. We would go back to Aruba in a heartbeat, either with kids or without. It was an amazing vacation and one that we feel so very fortunate to have had the opportunity to take! Thanks Mom and Dad, and Happy Birthday!