Winter Break 2023. Day 2. College Reunion.
Well, the night was okay.
Hallie was up in the middle of the night drinking water from a plastic water bottle, and the scrunching of the water bottle woke up me. Did I mention she left her new $26 water bottle in the side of her seat on the plane? Anyway, I ran in before she would wake up Madeleine, but maybe I’m just the worst sleeper and everyone else can sleep through normal noises.
The kids woke up around 7:15ish, and we actually made it out of the hotel room by 9:05am, which was only 5 minutes after our 9:00am goal. Not bad. We drove to Zak the Baker where we picked up cinnamon rolls, chocolate, regular and almond croissants, chocolate chip cookies and a babka. We then headed to Andy’s and Tink’s house!
Andy was a year ahead of us in NYU and he and Tzvi were really close in college. He and Lauren got married in Montreal and Tzvi and I drove up there for the wedding. (Completely unrelated, but somewhere there is a phenomenal video of Tzvi having a meltdown at a rest stop in Vermont after he realized he forgot his suit for the wedding.) Anyway, this was our first time seeing them in maybe ten years. They now live in Cooper City, a gated community 10 minutes from Hollywood. It’s like Weeds - little boxes on the hillside, all the same… all with Teslas.
Their house is a gorgeous ranch with ceilings as high as the sky. We walk in, take off our shoes, and the first think Hallie does is run into the living room, slide down in her socks and hit Lauren’s dental diploma that leaned against a wall. Thankfully it didn’t break, and the kids didn’t break anything else the rest of the time. They had prepared a bagel brunch for us which was really nice. It was great that we had Inbar there because she hung out with the girls while we were able to catch up. We had a really nice time with them. It makes me feel so old that our activity is now going to old friends and catching up. They also had a nice pool; it wasn’t heated so we didn’t swim but the girls put their feet in. I guess in Florida you never close your pool but you also don’t heat it, which makes sense.
They took us on a short walk to the clubhouse and we saw the gym and pool. There was also a splash pad area and the girls obviously wanted to go in but didn’t have bathing suits. I stripped down Madeleine, but Hallie’s dress got soaked. It didn’t matter though because they had a great time.
We all then went to Target to buy Hallie a new dress. This was quite a target. You know when you see influencers doing Target hauls and you think where could they have gotten those clothes because they definitely don’t’ exist in my Target? The answer is Florida.
Finally we left, Madeleine fell asleep in the car, and we made our way to Salt and Straw for ice cream. I got caramel sea salt with snickerdoodle. Tzvi got a flaver that had coffee and tres leches cake, and Inbar got Oat Milk and Cookies, which she thought was oatmeal cookies.
Then we drove back to the hotel just in time for Shabbat, except then I had to run right back out to go to CVS to buy Oreos for dessert and a deck of cards so we’d have something to do. I’m pretty sure last year I also bought a deck of cards at this same CVS. Our entire card drawer is filled with the cards we buy because we forget to bring cards on vacation.
For dinner, we had ordered food from So Heavenly and thankfully we had put my parents in charge of dinner. They have a fridge and microwave in their room so they dealt with everything. Shabbat started around 5:30 and we went to their room for dinner. I think this was the first time Sherry had experienced a Feit Hotel Shabbat Dinner where you cram into a hotel room and eat lukewarm kosher food. I will say that the food was very good. We had beef with onions, roast chicken, veggies, some appetizers, and a cous cous salad, except Inbar was getting very upset that they called it cous cous because it’s really ptitim, which isn’t cous cous. The girls were going crazy jumping on beds which made Sherry nervous.
Getting the girls to sleep took over an hour, but after that we sat out on the balcony watching a naked woman in a hotel room across from us pack her suitcase. As she packed she got more and more naked. It was very odd, because it seemed obvious that she was visible to the entire hotel. Tzvi thinks she just didn’t care. My mom doesn’t understand how someone could not care and diagnosed her as having a psychiatric disorder. Sherry thought that the man who was with her was forcing her to be naked in front of the window because it turned him on. We played cards on the balcony until 10:30 when we were finally dairy and sat with Inbar eating the leftover Zak the Baker pastries.
And that was Friday.