She also surprised us with birthday cake! She bought a delicious ice cream cake that tasted just like a big Reese’s peanut butter cup, Dad’s and my favorite candy. It was good! Photo Credit: Roma. |
After dinner we opened birthday gifts and then went to bed. Our original plan for Friday had been to spend time relaxing at their house, go for a morning run, and spend the afternoon at the pool. But our plans had changed on Monday night when we received a phone call from one of Dad’s best friends who lives in Pennsylvania. His wife had died very suddenly that afternoon. They weren’t sure what caused the death, but whatever caused it was exacerbated by the 100+ degree heat wave that week.
We were very shocked as this friend was only in her 50’s. After thinking it over, Mom and Dad decided we would all go to the visitation on Friday afternoon.
We left shortly after breakfast and drove for several hours into the mountains. |
Before arriving in town we stopped at Arby’s for lunch. We stopped a little bit early to avoid the traffic back-up caused by a visit from the President in a nearby town. |
The heat that day was incredible. It was well over 100 degrees which is really unusual for this part of the country. I started sweating just walking from the van into the buildings!
That evening we had a light dinner of sandwiches and watched a movie before bed to unwind a bit. Everyone slept in quite late Saturday morning after all of the traveling we had done in the past two days.
After breakfast we kids finished the movie we had started the night before. Once that was done we slowly packed up and left around lunch time.
But we had one more stop to make! One of my Great Aunts and Great Uncles just moved up to Ohio from Florida because my Uncle is very sick and needed to be closer to the rest of the family. We stopped by their home to visit, since we hadn’t seen them in several years. It was so good to see them, and also to see one of my Mom’s cousins who had stopped by their house as well.
After that we made the long trek home. It was a different sort of vacation, but I’m thankful for all the opportunities we had to serve others and visit with lots of family and friends that we don’t often get to see!
Hope you had a great birthday! Mmm, the cake does look good.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry about your dad's friend's wife.
A few weeks ago here in Georgia, it was 107!!
That sounds like a lot of driving!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment, Joy, and welcome to our blog! The cake was indeed very good!
ReplyDeleteWow, that is really hot! I much rather prefer 70 degree temperatures to the 90+ degrees we've been having lately!
~Bianca
It was indeed a lot of driving, Amy! I was getting a bit tired of being in the van. At least I was able to finish several books during all of that free time!
ReplyDelete~Bianca