Partying, Beaching, Storming

It was party time Saturday night! Our friends that live in our development kindly threw a welcome home dinner for us. We loved seeing everyone again, eating lasagna, salad, bread and a fabulous dessert, and talking right through the thunderstorms. I can’t believe I forgot the camera, for I would have shown you a few mug shots. Everyone was doing well, looked great and we talked for hours catching up with the last five months.

We drove past our home and it looks like it needs a little attention to gutters and gables, so we’ll probably be ‘a couple of workers’ on Wednesday and do some work on the outside. Getting the Little Giant ladder into the jeep will be interesting… Gary was also asked to play the role of ‘rent-a-hubby’ to clean out Donna’s gutters. He misses doing ‘man’ things for the single gals around the neighborhood, and apparently they miss him, too.

We finally left with promises to see them all again during our winter stay in Florida. Orlando is only 1 ½ hours away from our house, and we’ll be wanting to visit our new grandson after he's born as well.

Sunday we woke to a beautiful day and decided to go the beach. Gary packed up his fishing gear, and I packed lunch and a book. Anna Maria Island is our closest beach with a good little fishing pier – the Rod and Reel Pier. We have taken our family there many times. Gary caught a couple of small flounder, too small to keep and since the beach was on the bay side instead of the gulf side, there was no breeze. It's raining in St. Pete. I was in the water more than on the beach because it was hot, hot, hot! Here's a little shorebird. Here's Gary, a kayaker, and the Sunshine Skyway behind them. We had our picnic lunch in the shade, then came home. Gary went down to the creek and fed the fish there. This is a picture of Mooch. He helped himself to the leftover bait. A couple of bites, but only one bluegill made it to land. Notice Mooch to the right waiting for a chance to steal the fish. He threw it back in to grow some more. We worked on our resumes for a couple of hours while watching the golf match. Beaching makes you really tired for some reason, so we hit the sack early.

This morning we were ready to head up to St. Pete again, but Michelle slept badly last night, so asked us to wait till noon. We drove up, worked till 5, listened to thunder and watched it rain all around us, but escaped every drop all the way home. Then, during dinner, I heard a lot of thunder. I looovve thunderstorms - especially taking photos of lightning. This was a fast approaching storm, so I only got one shot before it started raining huge drops. This was a heavy-duty storm - the power went off, the wind was trying to rip off the awning (a HUGE fear of mine - we were going to go out to rescue it) and it lasted a good 20 minutes. Cool.

Tomorrow we will be doing something really interesting. A couple of special people will be here. Till then…