Visit to Family - Christmas Decorations and Parties

(Auburndale, FL) Hi 72 Lo 57 --  The snowbirds have arrived. The traffic is congested and the restaurants are packed. We aren't going to complain, the northerners bring in an income so we don't have income taxes. We just have to remember to add time to anywhere we go.

Jim's cousin, Andy and wife Dee lives about an hour and half to the east. It was time for a visit so we headed that way last Saturday. (Click on the pictures to enlarge).

Andy and Dee




















They grow their own pineapple. They have several pineapple that aren't ready to pick



We spent the whole day Sunday decorating the house. The biggest problem was getting electricity to all the lights. A couple of trips to Ace Hardware and it got done. We have a lot more lights planned for next year.

The tree is all the crafts I've made through the years. I had them in the RV, but most were too big for our tiny tree. Now I can show them all.


We have the little tree from the RV in the kitchen.


I'm in a card group called Bunco. Our Christmas party was Tuesday night. About half way  through the games the lights went out. We lost power for over an hour, so we quit and everyone went home. It was hard cleaning up and getting kitchen things put away in the dark. We found out later a transformer caught fire and took out the power.







One of the things living in central Florida, we get to see some of the launches from Cape Canaveral. We tried to get pictures of the launch and got a spot in the sky, but in real life view it was a bright fiery orange glow for several minutes. We had a clear sky and well worth the view. We'll watch for more.



 We had a bit of excitement for awhile in the house. We went walking around to see lights and came back sat down and had the little bugs that fly around when the wind is from the south. They're called blind mosquitoes, they're white looking mosquitoes but don't bite and there's  millions of them. We looked on the widow and it was black, then noticed the ceiling was covered. I had forgot to shut one of the windows and they were swarming in. I wish I would have taken a picture but we were fighting on getting them out of the house. You have to take a sweeper to get them along with bug spray. That was something different. I'm not opening that window anymore, it's got a gap in the screen.  We'll  be getting our windows redone in the spring.  While I was cleaning windows we found two lizards that got caught in-between the window and the screen. It's hot in the summer and they were fried.



Last night we got together with Lorne and Sue again before they start heading west. We went to our favorite BBQ restaurant, Hog Heaven Grill. We all enjoyed an evening of visiting and eating.  Thank you for meeting with us again.


Tonight is the HOA Home Owners Association Christmas party. That's for next week.