Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Puerto Rico Adventure - Day 8

[Composed August 5th, 2024]

Today was our travel day back to the US mainland. We had a special breakfast to celebrate J's birthday. If there's a better way to start the day than with Ben & Jerry's, I've yet to find it. After ice cream and waffles, we finished packing, crammed kids and suitcases into the rental car (sorry J's lap and G's legs) and headed to the airport for our flight.

The flight itself was uneventful, but we were dumbfounded when we caught sight of the arrival boards in baggage claim when we landed in Tampa:

Out of the 45 flights scheduled to arrive, only 6 were on time. This was thanks to hurricane Debby, which had made landfall north of Tampa just hours earlier. Debbie had doused us with rain in Puerto Rico and Tampa, and yet, we somehow managed to execute our trip as planned. Man, we were lucky!

We hugged it out as Dad picked up the Tampa kids at the airport. Before we knew it, Shira, J and I were in a hotel in Gainesville enjoying our last night of vacation before we dropped J in Jacksonville.

In a last act of souvenir buying, J and I did some shopping in the Puerto Rico airport. J opted to buy a set of travel dominoes; inspired, I did the same.

As we chill in our hotel room, J's been showing Shira and I how to play the domino game All Fives (or are we playing Muggins?), and it's awesome. In the past, "playing dominoes" meant playing a simple kids version where the goal was to chain together tiles. This is fun for little ones, but hardly a riveting experience.

All-Fives, however, introduces scoring. And with scoring comes strategy and decision making. The result is a game that's easy to learn, but includes decision making to keep the players engaged. No wonder playing dominoes is so popular, it's a ton of fun!

Thanks J for opening our eyes!

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