Monthly Archives: July 2023

Two weeks after sending Ryan back home to finish out his school year and actually graduate, we started another family trip with our youngest Grandson, James. By the way, we did threaten Ryan that since he already got his graduation gift, if he didn’t graduate, he had to pay us back for the trip. There really never was a question of him not graduating but it sounded good.

James lives in California and wants to study mechanical engineering. Several of the universities he wants to apply to are on the East Coast, so for Spring Break, he and his parents’ scheduled visits to the 3 schools he is interested in. We were pleased to be included in this trip and be a part of this important part of his future.

First stop was Georgia Tech. There was a lot of nostalgia involved in this trip because that’s his dad’s alma mater and I have to say, a very impressive school. Unfortunately, they do not have a legacy admission policy and being out of state residents make his odds of being accepted extremely low.

Nothing about this university was small or quaint, but James is likely to be a big city adult someday.

Next, we headed to Virginia Tech but on the way, we stopped at the Billy Graham Library for a short time because we were so close, it didn’t make sense not to stop. We could only spend an hour or so there but saw enough to decide to come back soon to finish the visit. Although it gave lots of information about the Graham family and Billy in particular, it focused a great deal on Christ and the importance of having him in your life.

Before we knew it, we were on the Virginia Tech campus with lots of military looking young people. Again, not a quaint small school.

Then off we went to the final stop, Penn State. This school made the others look like summer camp. But it was cold and raining and we opted to stay at the hotel and chill. No pictures.

Since we were in Pennsylvania anyway, we keep going until we got to Telford where we were able to visit with Jim’s baby sister Carol for a few days before dropping the family off at the airport and heading home.

This year will likely be a big family time travel year starting with a quick trip to Texas in January because I was sick for Christmas, and we didn’t get to see family for the holidays.

In March we planned our grandson’s graduation trip during Spring Break. Since he leaves for Marine bootcamp as soon as his high school graduation is over, we had no other option for his trip. Alaska was not an option in March, so he picked a Carribean cruise starting on March 12th and returning March 19th.

I don’t remember when he got so tall, but this picture makes me feel super short! We weren’t sailing long before Ryan found a group of young people on board and a volleyball game.

Our first port was supposed to be Princess Cays in the Bahamas, but it was too windy for the tenders to get us into port, so we had to move on to the next port without a stop. Fortunately, Princess has lots to do all day to keep you busy and we exposed Ryan to slot machines so he could experience throwing money away and getting nothing in return. I think he was cured. That first night we also arranged a special Italian dinner for his graduation at Sabatini’s Trattoria. Although we had told them it was a special occasion, they fell short and did nothing special. I had an opportunity to write a review and within hours, there was someone contacting me and offered to do it again at their cost to make it up to Ryan. This time they did it right.

We also exposed Ryan to all kinds of foods he never experienced before, and he was more than willing to try new things. Dinner and a show became our nightly activity and then he would retreat to his new friends and volleyball while we found things to keep us busy.

Our first port was Puerto Rico where we toured the island by bus to see the rainforest, the fort.

After the tour, we went to a well-known restaurant. and had a lunch of fish tacos and mofungo (classical Puerto Rican dish) further expanding Ryan’s food experience.

The next day we were scheduled for Amber Cove, Dominican Republic but the rain cancelled all our plans, so we ventured out on our own just walking around in the rain.

That was where we discovered Jim’s foaming sneakers. It seems all the times he cleaned his shoes with soap, he had not rinsed them well enough and as we walked in the rain puddles, the foam got activated again leaving a trail of sudsy bubbles. We got a good laugh out of this. After dinner, the ship was having a Spring Break Deck Party because there were lots of young people on Spring Break on board ship. As always, Ryan was in the middle of it.

The final stop was Grand Turks and we had good weather and great snorkel and stingray encounter.

All through the cruise, Ryan was volunteering for all the games and by the end of the cruise, everyone knew Ryan.

We hoped Ryan had as much fun as we did, getting to know this older version of our grandbaby. What a fine young man he has grown up to be.