Happy New Year 2017 - Visitors - Movie - Firepit - Recap 2016

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I wish all our family and friends a Happy New Year 2017. May your dreams come true and good health throughout the year. 

Our year ended with a great visit from Mike and Julie from Illinois. They're visiting family and friends in the area. Mike was our son Frank's best friend and he was with us a lot while growing up. He's like our third son. We're hoping he comes back to stay longer. Thank you Mike and Julie for coming. (Click on the pictures to enlarge). 

There was a blank day with nothing going on so we went to see the movie Passenger. It was a fun movie with lots of flaws. It's something you could wait for it to be on TV. 

After the movie we went shopping and found a Bulk Nation store. It's only been there four months and will be one of my favorite places to go. They have bulk bins of flour, grains, candy, anything that can be bought and can be scooped. We went to one in Canada and it seems the only place in the states with that name is in Florida. Maybe because so many Canadians come here?  It's in Lakeland, Fl. 

We had one day of winter. Temperature went to 45 Friday night and a few of us sat around a fire pit. We were all bundled up but the fire was a great way to bring in the New Year, even though it was the 30th. Tonight is New Year's Eve, a party will be at the clubhouse, but we'd rather stay in and watch TV celebration from New York. 

Recap of 2016

The beginning of 2016 was knee surgery. The update to this point is it's better but  I have more work to do for more movement. I still can't get up and down without a sharp pain from a chair. The bend is great, walking is good if not too long. I'm not giving up, some say it takes a couple years to be perfect. The good thing, I'm no longer falling or having the knee give out. I also got my left eye fixed from being set for nearsighted to farsighted. It's perfect, so now I have twenty twenty in both eyes. I still wear glasses because I'm on the computer or reading a lot, but in the car I don't need them (but can't read the dashboard for speed).

The end of March we bought a mobile home in Auburndale, FL. It was so hard giving up the lifestyle of the RV. It was also exciting to start a new chapter in our lives. We fell in love with the area and being on a lake is ideal.


We put Tumbleweed at Quality Ridge Motors dealer lot to sell. We can sell together or separate. It's still there as of this posting.


Many upgrades have been made to the house since we moved in this year. It's amazing how something simple can make life so much easier and convenient.

I stayed busy most of the summer making crochet "critters" for the craft fair that I started in the park. We stayed busy with the summer group of people that live here year around. Remembering names is my biggest hangup, but little by little the more I see the same people the better it gets. Old age isn't good on the memory.

May was gearing up for hurricane season. We did have hurricane Matthew on the east coast, but we didn't get anymore rain then a summer storm. We missed the brunt of it but a sample of what can happen was evident. We'll leave if it's ever a cat 3 hurricane. We were on the hurricane team to find out who was staying and who was going. That's not a bad job, very few here in the summer months during hurricane season.

We went to North Carolina for Mother's Day.  It's sure different without the RV. We stayed on Marine  base in the lodging, which is similar to hotel.








The end of May we went to the kids in Illinois. Our step granddaughter was getting married and we stopped in O'Fallon, IL on the way to Chicago. We love visiting, but it was a lot different not having the RV this time. Motels are costly compared to RV parks. We've thought of getting a class C RV but not sure if the cost will outweigh how much we'll use it.

In June we put in the new AC. It wasn't cooling well and the cost of electricity was climbing. We were glad we did it when we did, a couple weeks later the humidity went up with the temperatures. We stayed cool and the bill went down.

The kids came here in July to go to Disney. It's the last year our oldest grandson will be home, he's heading to college. We had a great time and it was great seeing them again. We were glad to have the extra bedroom for them.

My sister comes down to Okeechobee every summer so we did a few things together while she was down. We created a work space for her hubby's hobby of painting. He's very good and he needed some room. It took a lot of work between the two of us to get it put together.























The highest temperature on the east side of the house.



It stays that way from July to September.

The summer Olympics started in August, for two weeks we were in front of the TV watching most of it.  We also had new flooring and the kitchen remodeled. We didn't do the cupboards but the rest was upgraded by taking out one huge cabinet and overhead fan above the stove.

Before


After


November was busy. The craft fair I chaired was a success.  There were 36 vendors with all kinds of crafts. The date for 2017 is October 21.













We went to North Carolina for Thanksgiving. The family had everyone over this year. There were 23 for the meal but there was a lot of food left over.


The rest of the year was going to functions around the park and to movies. There weren't as many movies this year as in the past, just not many we wanted to see. The objective this summer was to stay cool. We had a year of doctor appointments and starting a new chapter in our lives buying a house. It's time to bring in the new year.

The crochet critters I have left.



A squid. Something for the Navy people.


See you next week.