Garrett comes to Florida

This was a big summer for our family! My nephew Garrett decided he was old enough to come to Florida to stay with Grammy & Pop (and Aunt Annie/Uncle Devin, AB, Mamie & Tucker) for a whole week!

When Beau and I were kids we always spent some time in Georgia with our aunts/uncles/cousins during our summer break and our cousins would come to Florida to do the same. Those were always my favorite parts of every summer growing up.

How fun that we’re continuing that with our own kids now.

Mom, the littles and I, headed out on a Friday morning to meet Beau & Kristy half way. We ended up meeting in Cordele, and had an early lunch at Cracker Barrel. Mom and I couldn’t believe it when Garrett threw his orange suit case and pillow in my car and hopped in, ready to go. We were fully prepared for him to change his mind. He is, after all, only seven years old. He was ready to come to Florida, though, so while Kristy was able to let him (ha ha) we took off!

We decided we’d stop on our way home in Tifton to take the kids through the Agrirama museum. They loved it, and the best part was, it was mostly outside. Everyone got to burn off some energy and stretch their legs for the ride home. The kids loved touring the old Tift house and going in all of the restored buildings, seeing what life was like a “VERY LONG time ago.” They all got a kick out of the skeleton that was in the dr.’s office, and of course AB wanted to try out the crutches. She has a thing for braces, glasses and crutches.

We saw a working grist mill where the kids got to help close up the bag of freshly ground grits.

We cooled off with ice cream in the drug store

and had to get a picture of my mom and the kids in the tobacco patch. My Papa was a tobacco farmer and my mom and her siblings spent many days setting, topping, cropping, and racking tobacco. I, too, spent a little time around a tobacco barn growing up, and those are the kinds of things that make kids better people. Nobody in our family or even around our area grows tobacco anymore, so who would have ever thought we’d all be standing in a tobacco patch together someday.

The inside portion of the museum was last, and filled with old tractors and farm implements…

and even a replica of what harvested and cooked tobacco looks like. There’s no other smell like it and I know a flood of memories came back for my mom when she got that first woof of it.

On Friday night, the kids all spent the night with Grammy & Pop, and they pretty much bounced back and forth between our house and theirs all week that Garrett was here.

Sunday morning, we took him fishing at the limerock pits before church. We didn’t have any luck with the fish, but the kids loved climbing the big hills.

That evening, our church started our VBS. AB was excited to have a visitor to take to VBS, and Garrett had just finished up VBS at their church, so he was ready for another one!

Monday we took a trip to Dinosaur World. So fun. I’ll post about it separate.

The rest of the week, during the day the kids played around the house, we swam at Pappy’s pool, took Garrett to lunch at our favorite Mexican place and our favorite pizza place, and rode him around on the farm a little bit.

At night we had VBS, and that ended on Wednesday.

On Thursday night, all the kids stayed at Grammy & Pop’s again, and they took them out to dinner for Garrett’s last night here. He picked Texas Roadhouse (with suggestion from Mamie, I’m sure- that’s her fave).

On Friday morning, we packed him all up and Grammy & Pop set out to deliver him home. It was such a fun week and I hope when he’s grown up he’ll have good memories of summers spent here with us.

~amw~