A Full-orida Weekend: Permitted

Still sung to the chorus of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious...

Vet-dance-gradu-patch-mom-anni-sickness-permit-weekend

Yes that's a lot of words to fit, so we're abbreviatin'

This might be just enough, we can't fit anymore in

We have done some crazy things in our Full-orida weekend! 

There was one last major task for us to accomplish before we left Florida. As Florida residents, we used the opportunity to get Maureen her learner's permit so she can start driving. We could have done the Ohio thing, but that leaves us at the mercy of knocking out her requirements before we PCS and then having to clean up state residency at some point. The "cleaner" approach is for us to take the trip to Florida and keep everything there.

We took the same approach in 2019 to get Ephram his learner's permit, so we thought we had this figured out. Apparently, in Florida's attempt to clamp down on illegal immigrants getting Florida driver's licenses they now require two proofs of you having Florida address dated within the last 90 days. There is no exception in this rule set to help out military dependents.  Seeing as we haven't lived there since 2023, it took Shaun about 30 minutes of searching through e-mails to find some documents that still had that connection.

In the end, he was successful, however, and Maureen walked out of the DMV with her learner's permit in hand! Normally, Shaun would have taken her to a lot somewhere to give her her first driving lesson, but they had a place back to Ohio to catch. Instead, they drove Connor's car back to Orlando, dropped it off at a parking lot for a friend to pick up later that week and caught a plane back to Columbus.

Anna, Daniel, and Connor had originally planned a longer trek home through Atlanta, GA that included visiting Josh & Susie and a Rubik's cube competition. With Connor not feeling well, they adjusted course to picking up the things that they had left behind in Jacksonville and boogeying straight home instead. 

Yes, it was a crazy, chaotic four-day weekend. Still, it was a lot of fun. Best of all, we get to look forward to improving on it next year. Connor should be graduating with his master's degree in 2027 and Maureen will need to get back to Florida for her actual driver's license. That means a second round of Full-orida is definitely in the cards!