Tampa train station

 We finally get to spend some time with my parents over the next couple of days.  Oscar and I go to the store so that my mother

can decorate and get out Oscar’s birthday cake.  It’s finally Oscar’s birthday and he gets a soccer cake to beat the band, a whole bunch of things that we can pack that are light.  We enjoy several days just relaxing with the parents and having our Christmas dinner, sharing gifts and painting a twin sheet Christmas tree that can travel with us.  We drive around with a vague idea of a place we visited when Oscar was 3 that had a garage filled with a

couple’s Christmas village.  My parents weren’t sure of where it was, but we had a vague idea of names of streets, turning right and it being at the end of a cul de sac.  With only about 20 minutes of driving around, we found it!!! And Oscar was totally enamored.  He wanted to see every bit of it and the man saw that he had an acolyte, so he turned on the big lights and encouraged us to find Waldo and Captain Jack Sparrow and also showed some of the

other things that go on around it.  We stayed for 45 minutes and got video and for the first time, Oscar bemoaned the fact that he didn’t have his glasses.  He felt that he couldn’t see the far back village pieces and wanted to come back with his glasses the next night.  This led to a fiasco the night before we left because it got late and he wanted to play another game of marble chase with Nana and

Poppy, but wanted to go see the trains again with his glasses.  It was getting late and we had a travel day the next day, but he and John went back to the trains while we got ready to play marble chase when they got home so that we could do it all.  Oscar was afraid for the first time that he might not get to see Nana and Poppy again.  Nana has bronchitis currently and keeps coughing, Poppy still looks strained from not being able to exercise and all the treatments that he goes through.  He finally realized their mortality for the first time and it was heartbreaking to watch.  We had a hard time going to bed that night with these thoughts running through our heads.  But, Nana and Poppy were still alive in the morning and took us to Tampa to catch our train.  They wanted to come down and meet the Schillims who they’ve always heard about, but never met.  The Amtrak station in Tampa was not in the best part of town.  So, we couldn’t find any food near there, but there was a Publix that you could walk to.  Julie and I went and grabbed platters of sandwiches, chips and we had a picnic in the train station together.  The cubanitos were so good.