June 1, 2022 - US Coast Guard Retired

Today was Chris’s first day as a retired man, so we filled it with lots of exciting activities:

1. We had an appointment at 9am to get new (retired) military IDs for the entire family. We walked into the ID office and could proceed no further because it was packed beyond capacity (as set by the Fire Marshall). What I had hoped would be a quick 30 minutes was not looking very promising. We stood around for a little over 10 minutes just waiting for the sign-in sheet to reappear with the receptionist. When she returned, we waited in line to sign in, told her we had appointments (that had started 10 minutes ago) and she took our info and told us to have a seat. We learned there was a second waiting room, so there were actually MORE people waiting than we originally realized! At this point in time I was glad that I told the kids to bring their Kindles, and sad I didn’t bring mine. Luckily we didn’t have to wait more than 10 additional minutes before we were called back. We had a fun time joking about life with the woman making our IDs and Chris now has an ID that is good until he is 65. I however need to go get a new ID and new picture every 4 years. Yet again the man gets to look amazing well into older age, while the woman will show her age every step of the way!

2. Surf shop time! We needed to buy some wax for the boards and we picked up some silicone rings too. We have been talking about getting them for a while, and decided that since our 19 yr anniversary is coming up, we would pull the trigger.

3. Next stop – Costco! Chris needed new AirPods, Aleah needed trail mix, and we all needed lunch. We ARE living on a fixed retired income now! The Costco on the east side of Jacksonville, FL has to be the busiest Costco I have ever seen for 11am on a Wednesday. And we just moved from DC!!

4. Verizon store to buy mobile internet. The free wifi at the RV parks is not cutting it AT ALL. Now we need to teach the kids how to use data sparingly, like we all had to do before cell phone plans offered unlimited data.

5. I-Fly. In their Easter baskets the kids received flight time at IFly, so we made reservations for the 3 of us to go when we would be in that area of Jacksonville. Chris watched and took videos.

6. Dan and Kasia Judycki’s house. They didn’t know what a momentous day it was when they invited us over for dinner. We know the Judyckis from Hawaii and Chris last saw Dan 5yrs ago, so it was great to catch up and reconnect. We lucked out with a bonus, the 4 kids got along amazingly well! Jack & Aleah have definitely been missing some kid play time and the 5 hours at the Judyckis will hopefully hold them over for a while. We got to have a great dinner and watch a beautiful sunset from their dock. It was a magical way to end the evening.