Celebrating my father's birthday

Over this past weekend we celebrated my father's 88th birthday in Orlando where I grew up. It was a wonderful family gathering!

I am the oldest of three children. My sister, Evelyn, is 16 months younger, and my brother, Frank, is almost 4 years younger than I am. However, there’s a 22-year age span between the oldest grandchild, my daughter Carolyn, who is 35, and the youngest, my brother Frank's daughter Libby, who is 13. Perhaps you can imagine the logistics of getting together the seven grandchildren (who live in 6 different states) with the older ones' work schedules and my brother's two oldest in college and his youngest in middle school.

Here is a photo of the seven grandchildren with Daddy. (My two are the second and third from the right. Carolyn, although the oldest, is the smallest as you can see, and Stephen is definitely the tallest by quite a bit.)There were 18 of us altogether from seven different states (Florida, Indiana, Illinois, New York, Delaware, Ohio, and Massachusetts). We are so grateful to everyone for arranging work and school schedules and vacations in order to attend. It had been nearly 4 years since we were all together.

On Sunday everyone scattered again. Tom and I and our children and their families went to Jacksonville to visit his parents. Boy did Haiden have fun running around in their back yard!
And then on Monday, Haiden and our daughter and son-in-law flew home to Chicago. (They had a very short visit!)

After they left, we asked Stephen, our son, and Michelle, our daughter-in-law, what they would like to do. Michelle suggested a ride to the beach. Here is a photo of them there--it was quite windy as you can tell from Michelle's hair, and the large waves and gloomy sky were due Hurricane Ida several hundred miles away.
It certainly was nice being together, but the time went by all too quickly!!