Home again home again jiggedy jig

I don't know why, but it was absolutely perfect to have it begin to rain as soon as our plane landed at KCI. We had some rain in Florida, but mostly it was heavy sprinkling. Nothing that kept us from doing anything. The rain here was cool and perfect and made the light fleece hoodie I was wearing feel delicious. I loved the warmth and sun and tropical feel of Florida, but I also loved coming home to an entirely different climate and season. Ahhh.

We had a marvelous, relaxing trip. We didn't have to drive much because most everything we needed or wanted to see was nearby. We walked a LOT. We walked the beach so much I began to recognize sand castles and shell collections from other beach-goers. We walked the Broadwalk numerous times, and we did all of our walking in flip-flops. We rationalized our slices of key lime pie and chocolate marble cheesecake because of all of the walking. We sat on our balcony and watched the ocean in the mornings and evenings when we weren't on the beach, and watched ships glow with lights at night. We watched countless small planes pulling banners behind telling us to watch various TV shows. Do they always do that or was it for the holiday weekend? I figured out it was a pretty smart way to advertise because all you have to do is follow the coast with your message since you have a built-in audience all facing the water.

Things we saw that we would never see here: a parrot, an iguana, crabs, pelicans, seagulls, palm trees, coconuts, the Everglades, the sun (and moon) reflecting on the ocean. Things we missed: our own bed and friendly people.

And for the freakishly frightened flyers? The trip there was really easy but the pilot was hard to understand. Sounded like he was talking through a drive-up window speaker. The trip home was really rough but the pilot had the absolutely perfect pilot's voice. He sounded incredibly competent and was probably ruggedly handsome with graying hair. He made me feel better even as I was trying to figure out how my kids would locate our car at the airport if we didn't make it. I counted three partially burned out seat-belt-on lights from our row (6) to the front of the plane. I wondered if all of the cockpit lights were working properly, or if some of those were burned out too...

We are glad to be home. I'm going to take a bath to celebrate.