Sunday was as simple as we predicted, but gobs of fun. We "churched" with the Smarts and had a great visit afterwards at their house. John convinced me why Patty and I want to go to Tucson in October for the 30th Anniversary celebration of my Phi Kappa Psi fraternity chapter. Rosemary really impressed John with her knowledge of airplanes (unfortunately she has limited flight time in fighter jets, but she held his attention anyway).
Then we were off to Blauvelt, NY. One of the 8 FDNY officers with whom I attended the FEMA Master Exercise Practitioner courses at the National Fire Academy has become a great friend, and he has two boys John's age, so we hoped they'd get a long. They were nervously shy, for about three minutes, and five hours later we couldn't pry them apart.
Soon after we met up with him, he received a call asking him to respond, along with others of FDNY's command post planning section, to help staff the command post of the major wildland fires in Montana. He put plans together and ended up leaving at 0700 Monday morning. I couldn't help thinking of the phone call like that that I got back in October of 2005. "What's your schedule like the next few weeks? I need you to go to New Orleans..." Understanding wives are indeed gifts from heaven.
On Monday I left for NYC and the real business of the trip, and left John watching "Night at the Museum" at Grandma's. They have tentative plans to go to the Statue of Liberty, maybe the NJ State Fair, and maybe play more with the Flatley boys from Blauvelt.
I'll get back to Closter Thursday evening and we head for home Friday, which includes a stop in Adelphia to meet up with my best friend and John's Godfather, Harry Carter.
home... the sound of it is sweet.
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