Thursday at the Froeschkes

 7-8-2021 - Thursday

We had a busy day today, with a break in the middle.  Catalina had a horse riding lesson at 10:00, so she is patiently (hah) waiting for her mom to get ready to go. (Patience is not one of her strong suits.)

Finally, she got to the stables.  Her trainer, Kelsey, makes her brush Jacob before they ride.

The arena is pretty wet, but since its sand, it isn't really muddy.

They have about 110 horses here, that they own, plus about 40 more boarders, so there are lots of horses.  They were getting some tacked up, possibly for a trail ride.

I guess this one had an itch under the saddle.

Catalina leads Jacob to the arena, then gets mounted up and is ready to go.

This is her most favorite thing, and she loves every minute of the hour or so they spend here.

They did a little barrel practice, and an obstacle course.

Andrew had stayed home with his dad, so he was ready to play dominoes when we got back.

Then it was time to head into Tampa for basketball practice.  I got a picture of the Tampa skyline from the freeway.  They are going to have a boat parade on the Hillsborough River on Monday to celebrate the Bolts Stanley Cup win.  We will be over at Indian River then, but it would be cool to watch.  The Hillsborough River goes right past the University of Tampa campus, where Bridgette teaches, so we could probably get a good viewpoint.

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  The basketball coach used to play for the Florida Gators, and John and Bridgette are pretty happy with him.  John warmed them up until practice officially started.

Then they got lined up for practice, which starts with some drills.

They had some shooting drills, then a scrimmage -- boys against girls.

That lasted about an hour and a half, then we stopped on the way home for dinner, then finished our domino game.  We watched the Phoenix Suns until half-time, then it was time to go to bed.  This morning, we were glad to see they won.

I finally remembered to check the Jeep manual for fuel capacity, and learned that we have a 19-gallon tank, so we weren't quite as low as we thought.  Good to know. 

Tomorrow is packing day, getting ready to head over to the east side of Florida.  We hope for good weather (no hurricanes) and good fishing next week.

Wednesday at the Froeschkes

 7-7-2021 - Wednesday

Joe had an appointment for the Jeep this morning, to get the oil changed and the tires rotated, so he was up and gone at 8:00.  It's cloudy, breezy, drizzly, but Elsa has moved on so we are out of the woods on that front.  It threatened rain all day, but held off until the late afternoon, then it poured.  But there was no lightning or thunder with it, so that didn't keep the kids from playing outside.

We did play Mexican Train during the day.  They were waiting for Grandpa to join us, but he was gone first thing, then he worked on the RV during our second round, so we had to play without  him.

After Joe got back with the Jeep, he and I drove back out to LazyDays to get more springs for the leveling jacks.  We had to go three places before we found any, but he finally did get two more sets.  With John's help, he got those installed.  Then the jacks wouldn't go up, but he found a broken wire and fixed that.  I don't think our vehicles like Florida -- they are used to a dry heat!

Bridgette's been going to the gym about every day, so after dinner, she went over there.  Joe and I were in charge of clean-up from dinner.  When she got back, she baked us a cake!  That was a nice treat.

We watched the Lightning Bolts win the Stanley Cup, then went to bed.  Not the most eventful day, but we are getting to spend some quality time with the kids, and that's what we came for.

Tuesday at the Froeschkes

 7-6-2021 - Tuesday

We expected it to be raining when we got up at 8:00, but that forecast changed to rain starting at noon. Then 4:00 p.m.   You certainly cannot base your plans on the weather forecast here -- it changes every hour.  Andrew brought out his stack of Garbage Pail Kids cards and we sorted through them, looking for matches.  Catalina had a few cards too so we added them to the pack, then Andrew dug some more out from his room.  Joe and I went to Target and I looked for more of those cards, but they didn't have any.

Today was really all about getting ready for the storm, and then waiting for it to get here.  Joe and I ran some errands, did a little shopping under the threat of rain, but it apparently slowed down and it took all day to get here.  (We even carried our umbrellas in a couple stores.)   John and Bridgette picked up anything loose in the yard.  They got in a little football practice in the evening, still waiting for the storm.

This is one of John and Catalina's sneaky football plays.  He swings her around and over Andrew, but then she's too dizzy to run.

It had begun to drizzle, but that didn't bother them.

Bridgette and I stayed on the patio, and Joe joined us.  (We really don't like to be rained on.)

When we came in, we got out the dominoes and played our first game of Mexican Train here.  Andrew really liked it, probably because he won three hands.  But Joe beat him by 7 points.  Catalina picked this game up quickly and could pretty well play it on her own.  John joined in to help her, but she was doing fine without him.  We only got through the 8's, so we will continue that game tomorrow.

Having been through storms here in the past, John and Bridgette took the storm warnings seriously.  He moved Bridgette's new truck closer to the garage (we had the Jeep in the garage, since her new truck doesn't fit), set the basketball goal down, and picked up anything loose.  He filled up the water tank on their camper.   All I did was bring in a flashlight from the Jeep.  They told us to charge our phones in case we lost electricity, and we had stocked up on water.   But it was really almost a non-event, it went west out in the Gulf and passed us without any significant damage.  I saw on the internet that there was some street flooding, but we got lucky this time.  John said, now we wait for the next one!  Oh yeah.

We did see 2 sandhill cranes yesterday when we were running errands.  We always see lots of birds and ducks, and we have been watching for the peacocks again, but still haven't seen them.  John saw a dolphin when we were at the beach but I didn't even see that.  

Wednesday morning is a little cloudy, and the high is only supposed to be 82.  It's drizzling a little, and rain is forecast for the afternoon, but what else is new.  I'm pretty sure we will play some more dominoes.

Monday at the Froeschkes

 7-5-2021 - Monday

John has the day off today for the holiday, but Bridgette had to go in for a little bit because her grad students did some water sampling over the weekend. After a late breakfast, we all went to Bass Pro to pick up a few items for our upcoming fishing trip.  We discovered Joe's fix-it yesterday on the Jeep didn't work -- I had a wet floor on my side again this morning.  After a little more research, he has decided it has to be the air conditioner condensation dripping off the floor, so he bought a piece of hose to make the drip line a little longer.  We will see on our next trip out if that takes care of it.  There is so much humidity here that water pours out of it every time we stop.

After lunch (at Hooters) John and Bridgette took the kids back home -- they were still tired for last night's late night.  I got Joe to stop at one shop for me, then we joined them and got our nap in.  The predicted rain held off until about 6:00, but it did get here.

They had friends over in the evening -- Andrew's football coach Jeremy and his family.  Bridgette got in another tutoring lesson with their son Jace.

And the girls played War.

Jeremy was working with Andrew in the rain.  He said, "well, we play football in the rain."  

Andrew was doing a pretty good job catching Jeremy's throws.  We tried to get an action shot, but between the movement and the low light, the pictures all came out blurry.  But Andrew takes the coach serious, which is why Jeremy enjoys working with him.

Joe and I watched from the dryness of the garage.  We heard a noise, and saw that another spring on the RV had broken.  John said he always knew those things just sit out there and break, but he had never actually seen it happen.  

Before the football players came in, another spring broke.  I don't think they like the rainy weather here. Joe had just bought 2 boxes at Lazy Daze on Saturday, so he will have to use one box up before we even get back on the road.  We will obviously be making another trip over there to stock up on them again.

The company left and we watched the hockey game then.  Unfortunately, the Lightning lost, so there will be another game.  John always gets in a little time with his lap dogs every night.

We never got our shopping done, so that will be on tomorrow's agenda, although John did hook up the boat to the new truck to see how it towed, and made a stop at Walmart on that trip.  It looks like Elsa is going to go west of Tampa, so we should miss the brunt of that storm, although we will probably get some rain out of it (hopefully no tornadoes).