9/25/19 - Day 1

After being home for three weeks from Portland, it was time to head out again, this time for Rochester, NY to see Derek, Shelby and Zoë.  It takes significantly longer to get to Rochester than to Portland or Tucson so day 1 was pretty much just a travel day. We flew American Airlines which was a mistake. Long layovers, delays, etc made for a very long day. We were thrilled to finally make it there and decided that we’d drive straight to our rental while it was still light so we’d be able to find it easier. That turned out to be a good decision because it was much further away than I had anticipated and there weren’t street lights so it would’ve been hard to find in the dark. I decided to splurge just a little bit and we rented a cottage right on Lake Ontario. When I made the reservation we didn’t know where the kids would be living yet and it ended up being 25 minutes away from them so that wasn’t fun but there was no way to know. The cottage was adorable! I had pictured it being on the beach with sand outside the back door and a walk down the beach to the lake. Nope. The water came right to the house, under the deck, so we really were right on the water. It was a beautiful view.

After getting unloaded we headed back to the kids’ place. They’re renting an apartment/condo in the Chili area. It was precious to see the look on Zoë’s face when she looked out the door and saw us. Her cries of “Gamma!” and “Gampa!” made me all teary-eyed. It was so good to see her again even if it’s only been six weeks or so.  Their place is small but really nice with three bedrooms and two bathrooms and a teeny, tiny kitchen which is hard for them since Shelby loves to cook and Derek loves to bake bread. It’ll be nice when they can find something a bit bigger for the rest of their time there.  The back opens up to a huge grassy common area with lots of trees in the distance. What a great place for the little one to run around. There’s even a swing set.

I had made some dolly clothes for Zoë’s baby so gave them to her and she seemed to like them. She loved the dolly hat the best!  We didn’t stay long since we were exhausted, having left home 13+ hours earlier and it was Zoë’s bedtime too so we headed out with plans to go to breakfast in the morning for Derek’s birthday.