After arriving home, all of their stuff landed on the kitchen table and overflowed onto the floor.

Last week, my two youngest daughters boarded a plane for the first time. They were anxious and a bit nervous about the plane trip. One of the girls had previously declared she would NEVER fly but had been wooed into the idea with the thoughts of warm weather and a spring break in Florida after a very long cold winter in Michigan.

They boarded the plan with their grandpa. That’s right. A 62-year-old man was accompanying a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old on a trip that would last at least a week. I’m not sure how he got talked into agreeing to that.

As the mother of those two girls, I wasn’t too worried. I knew they’d listen to their grandpa — probably better than they would have listened to their parents. I was more worried about how things would go once they arrived at their destination — a retirement community where their great-grandma spends the winters.

Granny, as I call her, has spent the last several winters in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. Her daughter owns a condo nearby and more recently a grandson has moved down their permanently. For as long as Granny has been going down there, she has been trying to convince her oldest son, my children’s grandfather, to visit her. He hasn’t been easy to convince. A week in Florida is not his idea of a relaxing vacation (although he might enjoy it if it was spent primarily on a fishing boat).

While Granny spends each winter in Florida and summer in Michigan, getting Granny back and forth between the two becomes a bit of a production. It is a complicated excursion, organized primarily by Granny’s oldest daughter. Who will drive Granny’s car? Because Granny must have her car. How will the sewing machine get there? Will everything fit in Granny’s car? Last winter, it even involved some northern Michigan neighbors, on their way to their own winter home, hauling and dropping off a golf cart. Granny uses a golf cart (rather than her car) to get around the retirement community where she lives.

Although the trio flew down to Florida, they would be heading back to Michigan in Granny’s car. My father-in-law would drive with his mother as a passenger and two granddaughters in the backseat along with Granny’s aging toy poodle. I’m not quite sure what to say about that dynamic. One of Granny’s daughters said she’d love to be a fly on the wall in that vehicle while another daughter responded, “I wouldn’t!” They are both probably right.

The trip ended, for my daughters, last night a little after midnight. My father-in-law helped them bring their stuff in, and he seemed to be in good spirits. That may have been because the trip was over. I have not yet heard everything about the trip. I am eager to hear the different takes from the various generations.

I have heard bits and pieces.

After a rather bumpy landing, while embarking from the airplane, my youngest daughter said loudly, “Grandpa, I’m never flying again!” which brought laughs from her fellow travelers.

The senior citizen that my oldest daughter first spotted two years ago appears to still be around and still creeping out the girls — apparently he wears a Speedo while swimming laps in the community pool.

Did I know that some places throw away their pop bottles instead of returning them for a deposit?

Did I hear they could have gone parasailing again since the company screwed up their pictures from the first time but didn’t get to because Grandpa wanted to get on the road?

Parasailing was awesome.

Although she didn’t see any, my youngest daughter is still proclaiming she swam with dolphins because she went swimming in the Gulf of Mexico.

And if you call the Gulf of Mexico the ocean, Granny will correct you. It’s the gulf not the ocean.

Salt water doesn’t taste good.

Whenever Granny asked the girls to do anything, Maxine volunteered before Amanda had a chance to even open her mouth.

About spending two days in the back seat with your sister: she kept touching me. She also apparently kept stealing my phone and taking pictures of me. (And I don’t have to identify “she” here since they both made the same claims.)

Granny told them to knock it off at least once. (I think that number is low.)

My girls were the whitest people there right up until they became the reddest.

People kept telling my daughter, “Wow, you are really burned.” She didn’t think they needed to tell her that. She knew.

The girls? They are really burned. Ouch.