G-nieces, Great Fun

My three great-nieces, Grace and Sarah Barker from Waxahachie TX and their cousin Vivian Osborne from Dallas, visited me in early June. What a joy it was to show them some of my favorite places in South Florida! Our first stop was just ten minutes from Palm Beach International Airport, where they arrived on Sunday afternoon, June 4. I wanted them to see the African Wildlife photography exhibition and the Sculpture Garden at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach.

Grace, 18, recently graduated from Waxahachie High School and has a scholarship to attend the University of North Texas  in Denton, Texas, where her brother, Ben, will be a senior. UNT is the successor to Texas Normal School, that my mother (her great-grandmother) attended in 1919. Grace’s mother is my first niece, Susan, a school administrator; her father is Ernie, a videographer. I admire this family a lot. This summer Grace is a server at Olive Garden. At the Four Arts Sculpture Garden she enjoyed chatting with Roosevelt and Churchill.

Sarah, 17, will be a senior at Waxahachie High School this coming fall and is already looking forward to serving as yearbook editor. While here, she kept up with a college-level summer course and stayed in close touch with a team she directs to produce a video that will  be aired in July. No wonder her sleeping hours were different from mine! Sarah admired the Chinese Gate in the Four Arts Sculpture Garden shown in this photo album.Vivian, 16, just completed her sophomore year at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas. Her summer job is with Shakespeare-in-the-Park, a Dallas institution since 1972 that runs five weeks. In August she and her parents will move to Providence, Rhode Island, where her father, Scott, will be Assistant Professor of Theater at Providence College. Patti, her mother, has fifteen years experience as a Montessori teacher and just earned her Masters in Teaching at Southern Methodist University.

It was a special joy for me to give Vivian a handkerchief that Judith Rae Audette, my elementary school penpal, sent me in 1953. I had kept it for seventy years! What changes Vivian has in front of her. I hope this little square might help her feel welcome in her new home state. Violets are the state flower!

Our first morning together involved planning meals for the week. Here we are at Captain Frank’s Seafood Market, learning about fish. We chose the salmon from the Faroe Islands in the Norwegian Sea. That evening my G-nieces not only prepared sushi, but helped make and serve a delicious dinner.

On Tuesday we drove an hour and a half through the rain to Miami Beach, only to find that our Duck Boat Tour was cancelled. No worries, we proceeded to two other Miami favorites, the Frost Museum of Science and Wynwood Walls (see many more walls in this photo album).

On Wednesday afternoon we got to take a catamaran boat tour around Lake Worth, 20 minutes to the north. Lake Worth FL and Fort Worth TX are named for the same Gen. William Jenkins Worth, who fought in the Second Seminole War in Florida and commanded the Texas army in the U.S.-Mexico war in the late 1840s. The two-hour tour took us along the Lakeside shore of Palm Beach Island up to Riviera Beach and down the east coast of West Palm Beach. I had seen these places by foot and by car, but never before by boat and appreciated new views. It rained heavily halfway through, but “Hakuna Matata – No worries!” My G-nieces just danced on the deck through it all and didn’t mind getting soaked! I love their attitudes toward unexpected events! This album has more photos of what we saw and did.

Thursday took us south again to Coral Gables, where Vivian, Sarah and Grace enjoyed swimming in the Venetian Pool, carved out of a coral rock quarry 99 years ago. When Sarah and Grace were here several years ago with their families, we were turned away because admissions had reached capacity. I had last gone there with Margot and Nina. This time, I sat nearby, taking these 13 photos and pretending that I was in Venice.

After lunch and shopping on Miracle Mile in downtown Coral Gables, we found our way to David and Leslie’s house and visited with Nina and Margot. David was away on a business trip to Madrid, but Leslie and the girls joined us at Gringo’s for a delicious seafood supper. My G-nieces really enjoyed hearing Leslie tell how her work in the food service industry had prepared her for her career in mortgage investments. She was quite impressed with them, too.

On Friday, their last day, Sarah elected to catch up on her projects while I took Vivian and Grace shopping on Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach. We enjoyed lunch at the Parisian Bakery. After they got all packed up, we spent two hours at the Norton Museum in Palm Beach. From there, it was a short trip to PBI airport to catch their flight back to Dallas. Here’s a photo album to introduce the Norton, where I am an enthusiastic member. Grace, Sarah, Vivian and I found much to enjoy there; I was sad to have to bid them farewell.

A few days later I received a lovely thank you note from Grace, which said, in part:

The Frost Museum Wynwood Walls, and the Norton Museum–we don’t have places like that in Waxahachie. Thanks for getting us out and about every day–we would not have done that without you, but I’m so glad we did! I will always remember our rainy catamaran tour. Seeing Leslie and the twins was so much fun, as well! I also loved talking family history with you and Steve, things I had no knowledge of.  The community you have surrounded yourselves with is so kind and inviting. Hopefully, I can do the same in the future.