here she stands

Ok so here is all goes. Spent the entire week in fort myers, FL with my dad, mom, sister, grandma viv, and aunt sue. Long week but also went really fast. We drove the whole way down there, which wasn’t too bad since I slept a bunch; seems to go faster when you aren’t coherent. My mom is officially the best backseat driver of all time. She drove all the way from Wisconsin through Kentucky. When my dad was finally let to drive, my mom insisted on telling him when to brake and put the cruse on, where to pull off, “Watch out...They’re slowing down... STEVE!” Now she is sitting in the back seat, where she can’t see the road, seems to work better that way ;)
We got to Florida on Sunday at 5am, slept for a few hours and then did some sight seeing with the whole family. The traffic here is always busy. I really don’t think that I would like to live here all year round. It is definitely not the “minnesota nice” down here on the roads. Monday I went to the Twins game with my sis and dad. They played the Florida Marlins and lost 4-3 in the 11th inning. Great game and a great sunny day for it. Love that my gma and pa decided to snow bird it to the city where the Twinkies spring train.
My grandma lives in a retirement community with hundreds of other retired folks called Jamaica Bay. It is a huge modular home (trailer park) neighborhood with swimming pools, shuffle board, exercise room, huge club house, card clubs, luncheons, etc. Each morning I took a run around the neighborhood. It was so nice to be able to do this in March without having to wear my sweats :) One morning, as I was stretching on the porch, I was listening to the silver-headed men as they stood outside “supervising” the rebuilding of one of the neighbor’s porches that had been damaged in one of the hurricanes last fall. They were talking about dinner and one of them was saying that he had french toast and eggs and stuff for dinner the night before. He added “That Ensure stuff just doesn't do it for me, blek!” I couldn’t help to smile and chuckle a little bit to myself.
The other night while I was online trying to get my FAFSA stuff done, a guy that is going to NMB this summer imed me. Kind of, no very, weird to be talking to someone who I have never met in person. But still cool to get to know a little bit about him; makes me even more excited to meet the rest of the peeps that will be chillin’ in NMB with me this summer. There is a blog set up for all of us to talk back and forth, set up rides, etc. Last night as I was looking through a bunch of the comments and looking at others blogs I began to start feeling old. I’m sure most of you are like what?! cause I always tell people that I am not old, even at 21 still don’t feel that much older than 15. The handful of people who have things posted are mainly 19, and I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see that one of the guys is 22. Not like someone's age means ANYTHING, but when I don’t know people at all, it’s something to easily compare (bad habit). It was really cool to be able to read about how God has been working in the lives of those that I will be spending the entire summer with. I think its so crazy awesome that it is so easy to openly talk to other Christians; that brother/sisterhood is already tight without much contact. God certainly is cool like that! I am excited to be able to see the relationships form over the summer and be challenged in ways that I haven’t before.
I am also excited for many of my friends who are also venturing out on project. I will be on opposite coasts of many of you all and in a state I have never been before. It has started to really hit that I will be done with classes in less than two months and in SC two weeks after that! I am way excited for this adventure. Not sure if that excitement is more for classes being done, or for project, but I sure am excited about it.
Alright, so back to Florida. Wednesday me and the fam took a trip down to the Everglades area and did a little gator spotting. FYI: Everglades City is not a city. But it does have a really good restaurant with awesome wait staff and even can operate when the electricity goes out: didn’t skip a beat. After seeing quite a few alligators, we headed back through all the traffic back to grandma’s house. This night we ate dinner with a cousin of my grandma and her husband, Donna and Jack (found out that was short of John, go figure;) ). It was really fun to meet them, since I was probably as little as a pea pod that first and only time I had ever seen them. We talked a lot about traveling and a bunch of other stuff that I don’t remember. It really surprised me to find out that Jack regularly stays up till 2am and then gets up ever morning at 5/6am! Crazy, still a farm boy at heart!
Thursday it rained ALL day long! Just downpoured in sheets, flooding all the streets. Too bad that it was our last day in the sunny south and it had to rain. We past the time doing a little shopping and hit up a great citrus place. My grandmother has a friend, Babe, who is ALL Irish. She is such a spit fire of an old lady, and a true red head. Since it was St. Patrick’s Day she insisted on making us the traditional corn beef and cabbage dinner. First time for me and my sister to have this meal. It was so good! I’m not too fond of the cabbage but the corn beef and tators were excellent. The best my parents said they had even had. Then we had this interesting cake concoction with blue frosting; green if you ask Babe. I love hearing stories from my grandparents and their friends and my parents. It is hard sometimes to keep an open head to how they grew up with some of the names they use for people and the prejudges that they hold. But I also think that it proves how far our generations have really grown and how we are seeing the people of the world for people and not always the titles that come along with them. This last night in Florida was full of fun conversations, and like I mentioned earlier, Babe is a spit fire. She can’t be more than 4’10” but packs an attitude the size of Texas. She was saying that when she plays cards that “once the cards are in her hands the friendships stop.” And when we were going slow to the dinner table she said that we were all “slower than the second coming of Christ.” It’s crazy to think how agile and quick she is when she is 87 years old! I only hope to be able to cut a rug like she does when I get to be that age.
Don’t plan on going through Atlanta at 3pm on a Friday afternoon...
We got up at 5am, pulling out of the park at 6am heading north. After hearing that we are going to get 5-7” of snow today didn’t help my ambition to get out of Florida. I do love the warm weather down here, and hopefully this tan will stay for awhile. Although I’m sure I will get my fill of the sun during the 80-90 degree days in NMB this summer. Maybe we will get to take one last sledding trip in ‘Kato before it all melts away.
So on to what I learned this trip. I learned a lot about myself actually. That I really need to work a lot on my heart where my family comes. I get so impatient and short with them all at the littlest things. I’m way more guarded with things that I was two years ago, and that scares me to think of where I will be after this summer. I don’t know why but there is something that has changed that makes me really careful with what I share with them. Which is just so dumb since the life i had freshman year was way different(worse) than the one I have now. I think a lot of it is that I don’t like to hear the immediate reaction of my mom and dad when I share things with them. My mom especially comes off very strong and doesn’t let things sink in before she tells me her opinion. I really need to give this worry to God and allow him to form my heart and change it to reflect the love that I do have for my family.
I also learned that my aunt sue can drive me nuts. She has the tendency to talk all the time and not really think quietly. It all just comes out. I feel bad for her though, not having a family and seeing what everyone does with their husbands and kids must be hard. It is sometimes hard for me to just deal with seeing my friends with their significant others. I can’t imagine being 49 and seeing all your family married and having kids. But we were able to have a good conversation about church on the way down here and hopefully she will begin to understand that her life is still blessed in other ways than with having kids; that she has a family in all of us and her brothers and sisters in christ.
Ok so I know this was extremely long, and I could really still keep writing forever. I haven’t actually put a quarter of what is going on in my head on this thing. Getting back to Mankato, school, reality is not something I really want to do. That brings duties and classes that I just don’t want to do :) I want it to be May 13th around 5ish, as I’m sitting in traffic on 169 chilling out to some tunes in my overly packed car. Love you all and see you soon! :-* muah!