95th Birthday Celebration

This past weekend, my entire family went down to Florida to celebrate my grandfathers 95th birthday.  My grandfather lives down in Florida with his "lady friend" and is totally with it.  He still drives, goes to dinner, drinks, is active, and has the best memory of anyone I know.  So my family including my parents, sister, the wife, Riley and I joined my 2 aunts, 2 cousins, and their children to have one big celebration for him.

The entire celebratory crew

It was also nice to get out of the nasty snowy North East.  Temperatures above 25 degrees with no snow was more than welcomed. 

During the weekend, we had one big lunch for everyone and a few dinners if people wanted to attend.  For the most part it was a tale of a few different vacations.  First, we went to see my grandfather.  It is was only the 2nd time he got to meet Riley so this was nice for them to spend some time together.  The wife and I went down a few days early since the flights were cheaper and it also gave us some time without the entire posse there.  So we got to see some friends that we haven't seen in a while. 

The other part of the vacation was a typical vacation with the family. I mentioned this when we went to Maine in August last year. Everyone says they want to help out and give the wife and I a break, but it turns out that is only true when it is convenient for them.  It was so frustrating.  Riley is also in a "the only person I want to spend time with is Daddy" stage so no matter who was with him, he would cry and reach out to me.  This meant that everyone else got a nice vacation and could enjoy their meals peacefully and I was the one standing outside the restaurant with him when he was cranky, or I was the who couldn't relax since he would always want to be around me.  For the most part, I love when he's like this.  But every so often its nice to have a break. No such luck this past weekend. 

The before doughnut bite

The after licking his lips to get all the sugar he can

This also marked the first time Riley went on an airplane.  He did pretty well.  We planned the flight times around his usual nap time thinking this would give us an advantage.  Yeah, we struck out.  The flight going down to Florida, Riley was his normal playful self and then he fell asleep the last 20 minutes of the flight. No huge complaints here. The flight back, well, it was a nightmare.  He was so cranky and whiny and of course wouldn't go to mommy.  So I was that parent who had the crying baby on the plane.  Just about 20,000 feet on the decline Riley woke up from his short little nap and was wailing.  There was nothing we could do.  I kept apologizing to everyone I saw, but for 15-20 minutes the screeching that came out of him was intolerable.  But he calmed down and was good after that.  All in all, I would give Riley a B+ on the plane.  I would give the wife a big fat F though.  She said she would help but all she did was play cards with a random 8 year old girl on the plane, then read her book and magazines while I was playing with Riley. Even when I asked for her to help and get me something, she had an attitude and looked at me like I had 3 eyes or something.  I'm definitely owed for that one.

The one thing that I really took out of this past weekend was how appreciative my grandfather was of everything. It's not every day that you turn 95 and that we got to celebrate with him.  It was really nice to see 4 generations of family there.

4 generations of the men in the family

He can't wait to get in the pool

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