We found a home in Mandarin, Florida. It needed a bit of fixing up. It was brick, had a large lot with plenty of parking space. The girls declared it a perfect "party house!" They knew about such things. We had money left over to pay off bills and manage our lives better. Jimmy had made a hard call on that one, but it worked out well.
"Staying Together", that song. It meant so much for us to be able to do so many things for ourselves, our girls, families and friends.
Mom moved down from VA five years after dad passed away and about seven months after we moved to Mandarin. It was nice to have her here on the next street in a home she loved for the last ten years of her life.
Out of the blue he ordered a bunch of lumber. It was out in the driveway when I got home. He had decided to build a tiki bar on our porch. No plans. He roughed out how he wanted it to look and just started building it. He was doing this project on his off days from work and helping to babysit our grandson, Jackson who was about 14 months old. He would instruct him on the various tools and have him hand him nails.
Out in our other three bay garage he had also built there was a line of nails pounded into the baseboard. One day I asked him why they were there. He told me Jackson had spent the day learning how to nail. When Jimmy would work on the cars he was restoring it was the same scenario. Teaching and expecting him to learn tools and parts.
On another occasion he rented a bulldozer just so he and Jackson could have fun digging in the dirt! Priceless.
He was a great mentor.
" Life after mom." Meaning that we would have time to ourselves again since both girls were now married. Not that it was bad or anything. We made some long range plans. We planned a big vacation for our anniversary every five years. We started out by going to Aruba, then to St. Thomas and Playa Del Carmen, Mx. In between we made trips to the Florida Keys. We made at least one to two trips there a year either by ourselves or with the whole family.
We bought a few boats, one sank with a hurricane and a jet ski.
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