Worth More Than a Thousand Words

My daughter and her husband, saved their money to take a vacation. They hadn’t had a vacation in a quite a long time. They couldn’t wait. A trip to Florida!

This trip was special. My daughter wanted to visit the area around St. Pete Beach where my dad had lived. He passed away two years ago. She wanted to visit his widow and also the Italian bakery, La Casa Del Pane, where my dad was almost a permanent fixture. Well, I guess he is now as they have a photo of him on display there.

They decided to go through a travel agent. They wanted to go to Disney as well but the amount of money was astronomical. Still the dollar amount was unbelievable. But they were excited!

As soon as they touched down in Tampa, everything you can imagine (and many things you couldn’t imagine) began to go wrong and continued even when they landed last night at O’Hara in Chicago and couldn’t get off the plane. Apparently, there was something wrong at their gate and the pilot couldn’t dock. So for 45 minutes he drove them around the airport. He jokingly said they would wouldn’t be charged those extra miles.

The trouble began when they tried to pick up their rental car in Tampa. Then the problems carried over to the resort. (I use that term loosely). This hotel, which is located right on the gulf, is where we stayed at as a family when the kids were young. Apparently, it changed hands since then and the condition has deteriorated greatly.

I will spare you all the details of this trip. You would not believe it anyway. Even Hollywood couldn’t have kept up with this one.

After some of the worst stuff happened, some of which involved the police, a very sick little girl, puke in a rental car and in car seats while stuck on the Sunshine Bridge in stopped traffic during a major thunderstorm, puke everywhere in the hotel room, using their vacation money to purchase cleaning supplies and disinfectants, not being able to board the plane to come home even with their already printed boarding passes because the travel agent used incorrect birthdates, being sent to another area to reissue boarding passes (all this with their little ones in tow), then being paged by name over the intercom for last call to board the plane….all the littler awful things became kinda funny. Like the faucet handles falling off when showering, the fridge having to be replaced twice, the TV not working, the dryer at the laundromat breaking while using it, my daughter being puked on, peed on, and pooped on, texting me all through the night with play-by-plays and memes….yeah, those became funny.

Their trip began on Monday and by Tuesday night my daughter and her husband were exhausted and just wanted to go home.

But this picture…this picture tells the story. It was taken by Mando of his precious wife and children on their flight home yesterday.

My exhausted Denae is asleep with her babies who mean more to her than life itself. She was strong throughout. She did what needed to be done to take care of her family. She went without sleep. She worked hard through the days and nights. She is lovingly dedicated to her family.

Every time I look at this picture it touches the very core of my heart and brings tears to my eyes. I feel her pain of the expectations they had and of what went down. But I am so very proud of her for holding it all together and for being the mommy and wife that she is. She amazes me. I love her so much.

If my dad were here he’d say, “She did good.”

This picture to me is worth more than a thousand words. It’s priceless. ♥️

Andi