Happy Birthday Dad

Today is Rick's dad's birthday. He is 78 and doing ok. He has a few health issues but is working on them and he sounded good today. He hates the cold. Every time we talk to him, he ask us when are you headed this way. We told him not till April. They have had a very cold and snowy winter this year. That is not normal in OH. Usually you would get a cold spell or a snowy spell, but they would not last for weeks on end. Glad we are here. We don't really complain about the cold snap down here in Florida because we know what we are missing up home. Well, today we are officially residents of OH again. We had to switch back from South Dakota because of our medical insurance. It's a long story but we now have Ohio tags on our vehicles. Now we really fit in at this park. They have more Ohioans in this park than anything else. We are in the majority! I know, who cares. LOL!! I talked to my grandson last night and he is excited about his new school. This school is closer to his house. This way he is not spending hours on the bus. I hope he does well. I did get pictures of the resident pair of birds of the park. But I haven't found out what they are called yet, so when I do, I will post the picture. We had lots of rain last night and this morning, but clear skies are back. They have some of the prettiest sunsets here. They come real close to the ones in AZ. Tomorrow, I think we are going to go to Lakeland to find the Sams Club there. We talked to Mike and Denise from Mansfield OH and they were to leave today to head down here to FL. We will visit with them for a few days when they get settled. They will be in Bradenton. I think. It will be good to see them. Mike just retired as chief from the Mansfield Fire Dept. So those of you who know Rick, know that him and Mike have a lot in common. They are very good people. Well, is everyone ready for the Super Bowl? We are getting a little sick of hearing so much about it, since it is here in Tampa. But we will be watching come Sunday. Not sure who we will be rooting for yet. It was hard to root for Pittsburgh earlier. Oh well, we will still enjoy the game. Will post more later.

Snow in Ohio

We just got a call from friends up north telling us they are under a winter storm warning. She is expecting over a foot of snow. They went out today and stocked up on water and made sure they had wood in the house and enough food for a while. This is the first winter in a few years that they have not been in Florida. I'm sure they wished they had come down here. I bet next year they do. Yesterday, we washed the 5th wheel and boy does it look good. Today was laundry day. The breeze has been blowing all day which has helped with the heat. It got up to 78 and tomorrow we should hit 80. I love the sun! Even if it is cloudy and warm, I will put up with that also. This past weekend we had friends from back home call and say they were in the area. He drives for Fed-Ex and had a load in Tampa. They were waiting on a load back out and came over to see us for a while. It was good to see Stan and Nada. Stan and Rick worked together at Ford. They were glad to be down here where it was warm. It has been so cold for so long back in OH. I talked to my sister-in-law and the funeral for my brother-in-law was attended by a lot of people. They had to extend the calling hours to accommodate everyone. He was well liked. The military part of the funeral was a real tear jerker. They always are. He served in Vietnam. His granddaughter took it real hard and so did my mother. I guess going to another funeral so soon after my dad's was hard on her. But she insisted that she wanted to go. So continue to pray for my sister and her family.
We have been hanging out and doing a whole lot of nothing. Relaxing and enjoying meeting people in the park. I need to get the camera out and get pictures of a pair of birds that are constant visitors to the park. I need to look in my bird book to see what kind they are. And in the evenings around here, the men go bike riding. They have their bikes all decorated with lights. The lights are on the handle bars and in the spokes of the wheels. It is really neat to see them go by. They are very festive. We have been looking at a lot of workamping jobs for the summer. We were going to spend the summer in MI, but Rick wants to workamp for the next couple of years to pay off the camper. If nothing pans out for us, then we will spend the summer in MI. We will have to wait and see. For all you guys up north, stay warm and safe. For all you guys in the south and southwest, enjoy your weather.

Very Sad News

This morning I got a call from my sister in PA. She called to tell us that my brother-in-law Charlie died in his sleep last night from a heart attack. He was in his mid 60's. They live in OH. I have 5 sisters and 2 brothers and this is the first that we have lost anyone of the siblings or spouses. What a shocker. He had no prior symptoms at all. But this type of thing runs in his family. His mom died the same way. I was able to get in touch with my sister Chris and talk to her. I am so glad that she is a christian and can rely on God to get her thru this. She has 2 grown children and a 16 year old still at home. Please keep her and her kids in your prayers. We have been kind of down all day. Only the Lord knows when it is your time. Buddy and Shelley came up today and we went to lunch. That was a bright spot in the day. They are leaving tomorrow for the frozen north for their son's wedding. Luckily they are flying and will not have to drive in the yucky weather until they get there. We have been getting all kinds of offers to workamp this summer. Our problem is we have to spend some time in OH visiting Rick's dad and getting our doctor's appts taken care of. The one we really loved was out in Washington state. But we could not get there in time. We did call them and explained what was going on and asked if they would keep us in mind for the following summer. She said they would. I can't believe how fast the time is moving by. We had the truck worked on at a local Ford garage. They replaced some fuel sensor. I don't think it corrected the problem completely. We will have to keep an eye on how it runs. It has been cold at night around here. This is a little unusual for them. We are having hard freeze warnings and we have plugged the truck in last night and tonight. I know anyone up north would love to have our 30 degree weather. They have been in the teens and single digits for so long. But that is why we are down here. The down side to our life style is that when there is an emergency back home, it is hard to get back there.

Glad we are in Florida

Brrrr! It is cold up north! We have been bombarded with photos from northern OH from our friends and family of all the snow. Within the last week, they have received about 15" of snow. This is unusual for us on the west side of Cleveland. The east side is the one that gets most of the snow. Now they are dealing with the bitter cold also. And when people from up north call us, we just can't help telling them about our weather. Even when it is cooler down here, it is still in the upper 50's to lower 60's. They get so mad at us. I can't figure that one out. LOL!!! Anyway, we sure are glad we are here. All that snow and cold is why we left to begin with. We spent the beginning of the week taking care of getting some paperwork together to send north. I will explain more at a later time. Then on Wednesday, Jack and Cathy Montgomery picked us up and we went to Tampa to the RV show. We have never been to one this large before. The price of the ticket is for 2 days. And you need every bit of 2 days to go thru it all. We ended up going back the next day and spent all afternoon there. We got home after dark. It is really neat to see what all the new designs are. We were surprised that the prices hadn't come down as much as we thought they would. But it was fun anyway. Plus we got a lot of info on parks here in Florida. Today Buddy and Shelley came and we went out to lunch and then spent time just gabbing. It was good to see them again. Tomorrow our park is having a garage sale and a bake sale. The only problem is, it starts at 7:30. They really are early risers here. A lot of their stuff starts early. Tonight I went and did laundry. I still can't figure out how 2 people can get so many clothes dirty in one week. But it doesn't take me very long to do laundry, which is nice. The washers and dryers are very efficient. Tonight is supposed to be the coldest night and then we are going to start warming up again. I don't think we will get down to freezing. That is well north of us.

Catching up

It's been awhile since I last wrote. We have been keeping busy. On Monday the 5th, we went to St Petersburg to Rick's Aunt and Uncles. We took Buddy and Shelley with us. The reason we went was to book our cruise for Feb. Rick's Aunt JoAnn found us a really good deal and they will be going with us. It sounds real fun. As soon as we pulled up at their place, they had us head to the neighbors house to see their visitor. This guy had been in there park for about a week. He had gotten loose from his owner and was just hanging around. They were trying to chase him and he went onto the porch for safety. I had never seen one of these Iguanas up close. When he was on the little island he was green to blend in there. The next day this guy came for a visit on the porch of JoAnn and Jim's place. Apparently, Jim fed him the day before so he came back for more. Jim was at the doctors, so JoAnn went out and fed him. Bet he comes back tomorrow. JoAnn loves to entertain and her and Jim are great cooks. We had a lovely meal the first night of roast with all kinds of veggies and a real nice salad. Rick got up the next morning and took pictures of what you can see from the back yard. The reflections were really neat. After booking our cruise at AAA, we went to the Legion for lunch by the water. Jim and JoAnn love to laugh. They are a really fun loving couple. Buddy and Shelley just chilling out waiting for our order to come. After lunch we went to John's Pass Boardwalk. The dolphins are gone since they are doing more bridge work. We did not see a one. But we had fun walking around. We had to stop at Bubba Gumps restaurant. Notice the suitcase and box of candy and look at the size of those tennis shoes! After walking around for a while, we took Jim and JoAnn back to their place and got our bags to head home. But I forgot to show you the grapefruit we all had for breakfast. This is called a melalope or something like that. This is sweeter than a regular grapefruit and it has a lot less acid. It was good. I don't normally eat grapefruit because it is sour. But this was good and it fed 5 of us! We found it at the little fruit and veggie stand close by. They have several kinds of oranges there also. We bought the red navels. They are real good, sweet and juicy. Next we are going to try the golden oranges. They were sweet and juicy also. Friday we went golfing with Buddy and Shelley and their friends from Cross Creek at a place called The Bluffs. We didn't do real good but at least we got out to hit a few balls. I used the new driver that Rick had just bought and I love it. After using it a few holes, Rick went back to his old one. So this one is in my golf bag for now. Wednesday, I think we will go to Tampa to the RV show. Hopefully it won't rain because it is outdoors from what I gather. Talked to our daughter and they got hammered with snow. We even got pictures from a couple of friends back home. One text us and the other e-mailed us. Glad we are here instead of there. The snow is pretty from a distance.

Dinner with friends

Tonight we went out to dinner with Buddy, Shelley, Cathy and Jack. We went to the Sebring Diner. The food is good here and the prices are really reasonable. We talked and laughed like we did back in AZ. It was good to see Cathy and Jack again. I had the waitress take a group picture and she cut Rick out of the picture and it didn't turn out very good so I'm not putting it on the blog. After we left there, we stopped at a shopping center and went into a few stores. I found a nice shirt at Beall's for only .54. Can you believe it? It was 9.99 with 95% off. What a bargain. I love finds like that. During the day today Rick spent most of it on the phone. He went down his phone book and started calling people. He had a good time. I only talked to our daughter, my brother, and my sister. Tomorrow I will call my Mom.  She is doing real good. Monday we head to St Pete to visit with Rick's aunt and uncle. Sounds like a good time. Buddy and Shelley are going to go with us. Rick's aunt and uncle love to entertain. It was a gorgeous night tonight. Not to cool and it's a little after 8 now and it is still about 68 outside. We love that. The next few days will be in the 80's. Not bad for January. LOL!!!! That is why we are here in the winter time.

Starting the new year

On Thursday, we got together with Buddy and Shelley. They had just gotten back to Florida on New Years Eve and I new they would be wore out so I had them over for dinner. We then watched football, (What happened to Penn State?) and talked about everything under the sun. This morning after breakfast, we went for a bike ride around the park. We talked to one lady who had just came from the exercise class. I think tomorrow I will go up and exercise and then do laundry. We then needed a few items so we decided to go into Frostproof to the Family Dollar. This town is very small and we will probably be going into Avon Park to do our shopping. We then did go into Avon Park because we needed diesel fuel. We paid $2.219 for fuel and we were very pleased at that. This has been the lowest we payed in a very long time. I hope it keeps on coming down in price. On the way back we stopped in to say hi to Bud and Shelley and ended up staying till almost 7:00. We found a really nice place to eat that has good food and good prices down in Sebring. The four of us will be going back tomorrow to meet up with Jack and Cathy Montgomery who are staying in Lake Placid. That will be fun to get together with them. The nights have been a little cool here but it makes for good sleeping weather. The days have been great. I will take pictures tomorrow at dinner.