Day Five: Snow and Time To Go

I was down in the basement brushing my teeth in the spare bathroom on our last night of vacation while Dustin wondered around waiting for me. He called me over to look out the window. And that's when I saw it...snow! IT WAS SNOWING! I know everyone who lives north of Florida who reads this will think to themselves "big deal". Like I said before, it had been 10 years since I last saw snow. And that time was the FIRST time I had seen it. So since I was experiencing snow for only the second time in my life, I thought it was a huge deal. I finished brushing my teeth, ran up two flights of stairs, grabbed my phone and video camera and then ran back down again. It was so so pretty! I couldn't wait to wake up in the morning and see how much had fallen. 

 
backyard - night

backyard - morning

It wasn't much according to the locals but it looked very snowy to me! I was anxious to go outside so I quickly got dressed and packed up some last minute stuff and we carried our luggage downstairs. Then Dustin and I went outside to check it out. Yep, definitely snow. Ha! I was just so mesmerized. This was a lot more than the patches of snow we saw on our first day here. And then we noticed that our rental had a nice coat of snow on it. Dustin unlocked it and I went to grab the handle but it was practically frozen. I got out our handy dandy scraper and let Dustin go to town while I did important things like video tape this special moment. It took awhile for him to clean the windows, lights, and handles. People actually do this every morning?! I would cry. Those northerners are tougher than us, that's for damn sure! People down here whine when it's 60 degrees out. Ha!

Once we were properly numb from the snow and air we went back inside for a bit to say goodbye to Grandma and Pap. I made sure to take some photos of the three of them all decked out in their Pens sweatshirts. It's always bittersweet leaving and saying goodbye. On one hand I can't wait to get back to the familiarity and routine of home but on the other hand it's so nice to spend time away.

Dustin drove us to the airport without any snow issues. The only concern was the really steep road in his grandparent's neighborhood but it didn't give us any problems. Thankfully, the roads were completely clear the rest of the way. 

We dropped our rental off and ran inside to the warmth. Then we headed straight for the ticket counter. We were never able to choose our seats online for some weird reason but I assumed that they would put us together. Yeah, that didn't happen. Our tickets indicated that our seats were rows away from each other. Thankfully, we were able to change them when we got to the gate. Our only option were the very last two seats in the back of the plane. We didn't care as long as we were together. 

We had so much time to kill that we ate "breakfast" (he ate Sbarro and I had a sub from Subway) and then walked around the Pittsburgh Sports store. Dustin talked to the cashier about Pens stuff for a good 10 minutes. That's something that always stands out every time we come up - the hospitality. I mean, every restaurant, every store, no matter where we went people were friendly and kind. It is not like that here in Florida. Maybe it's because the majority of people have a common interest in all of the Pittsburgh sports teams or maybe northerners are just nicer. Either way we love it.

Our plane was a few minutes late which was annoying but not a big deal. I was just at that point in our vacation where I wanted to be home. It's common knowledge that every flight to Orlando is going to be packed with kids that are going to Disney. This flight was no exception. Every seat was filled as opposed to the flight to Pittsburgh where there were several empty rows. There were a ton of kids, at least one baby, and one dog. I thought for sure it would be the worst two hours in the air I've ever had. But it wasn't at all. The children were all well behaved. The baby slept or watched an iPad the entire time. The dog was probably the noisiest one of the bunch with a few barks during the trip. 

We came home to a beautiful blue cloudless sky and a 75 degree afternoon. We were happy to be home. But what a trip! It was mostly fantastic and has already gone down as one of our favorite vacations so far. We don't plan on going back for awhile so the memories will have to get us through until the next time we visit our home away from home.