Quote of The Week:

"Retirement life is a game. Happy people are the players. Unhappy people are the spectators. Which would you like to be?
from Ernie Zelinski's How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free"

— Ernie J. Zelinski

Lori arrived safely in Janesville around 5:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve. As we don't have the room in the MH for her, she'll be staying with her grandparents (Jenny's parents). We spent a few hours with her before we headed off to Christmas Eve church, where I had to Lector. We just went back to the MH after the service, as it was almost 10:30 by then.

Lori came over around 9:30 a.m. Christmas morning so that we could have our "family" Christmas. It was really nice, except that Tom, Dani, and Teagan weren't here. Lori pulled another fantastic surprise on us. She exclaimed that all the years that she and Tom were growing up, Jenny and I always gave them Christmas stockings on Christmas morning with little stocking stuffers. She said that because now we were the ones who were "jobless and free wheeling", she was going to give us stockings. It was really neat. She had all kinds of little things in each of our stockings that were special to each of us.

So after exchanging gifts, and letting her get on the computer to update her journal, she left to go back to the grandparents house, and Jenny and I started getting ready to go over a little later.

Jenny's brother and sister, along with their children (youngest are 15), Jenny's folks and her aunt were all there. We all had a pleasant afternoon, an absolutely dynamite dinner, a lot of good conversation, watched a lousy football game (the Packers lost), and then came home.

It was a wonderful Christmas, and we hope you all had as a wonderful day as we did. I've attached just a few pictures to help document the day.


( Christmas Day )

Today was an awesome day, because I went over to my sister's house and helped make lefse! For those of you who are uninformed as to what lefse is, it is a Norwegian traditional treat made from potatoes.

I've attached a number of pictures that documents the process that we used in making the lefse. This is an annual thing that my sister, brother-in-law, his mother, and anyone else who they can get there to help. We have a good time, as there is a lot of joking around, friendly kidding about someone elses's results, and usually some good snacking.

Hope you enjoy the pictures, and don't blame me if they make you hungry!


( Lefse Making 101 )

We decided that since it was the day after Thanksgiving, we’d try to do the decorating of our home. We always tried to do that when we had a house, so there’s no real reason to change those traditions, is there? Of course, it does take us a little less time to decorate the coach than it did the house. I’ve attached a couple of pictures of what we did.

Tonight we’ll be attending a campfire sing-along with Ranger Joe. Seriously, that’s his name. I don’t know how many (if any) will be attending. There aren’t that many campers in the park now. I guess if no one shows up, we’ll just chat for a little while and then come home. Next Friday, we’ll be going to a well known botanical garden called Airlie Gardens to go on the Garden of Light Tour. The entire garden is decorated with holiday lights, and it’s supposed to be quite beautiful. I will definitely take some pictures! And on Saturday night, Carolina Beach has their Flotilla of Lights boat parade. Many of the owners of boats that are moored in this area elaborately decorate the boats and they all parade down through the sound. We’ve actually seen this on some of the Holiday shows on HGTV. We will also take a bunch of pictures of that!

It’s hard to believe that in just a week and two days, we’re done here and will be headed back to Janesville. The time sure has gone quickly. We were discussing this the other day, and it’s hard to think that we’ve been gone for over 2 months. We’ve enjoyed every minute of our “adventure”. Well, almost every minute! We hope you’ve enjoyed coming along with us as well. And we hope you continue to follow our travels. We’ll have lots of things to post while were home for Christmas. After all, we’ve made lots of new friends that aren’t familiar with Janesville, so it’ll be all new to them. So Ken and Linda, Ron and Judy, Bill, Vince, Greg and Terry, Roger and Kathy, Tim and Marcie, lots of other folks and all of our family members, be ready to get posted! Because I won’t be going anywhere without my camera.



( The Decorated Room )

	Carolina Beach State Park Visitor Center & Ranger Station I've been meaning to post a picture of the Visitor's Center. It's a great looking building. It's also the ranger station for the park.
	A Little Holiday Decorating We don't have a lot space for decorating, but we did a little!

Since Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s are our “official” days off, and we lost all of Tuesday waiting for “Mike, we decided to go about some of our sightseeing plans that we had made. We went down to the North Carolina Aquarium, which is at the end of the island. It was really nice. I only took a couple of pictures because I kept getting glare off of the glass on the tanks. After that, we went over to Ft. Fisher, which was a Confederate fort that was intended to protect Wilmington and the surrounding area from Union ships. Unfortunately, the Union Navy, along with Union foot troops, defeated the Confederates and took over the fort. That, too, was very interesting. They had the coolest display. It was a huge 3D map of the entire fort and surrounding area. All of the gun batteries, troop locations, and ship positions were identified by little colored lights. A recording started playing, describing the battle. And as the battle went on, the lights would move and change, so it was really easy to see how troops were moved around during the battle. After leaving Ft. Fisher, we drove up to Wrightsville Beach, which is an upscale island north of Carolina Beach. It was beautiful, and I took quite a few pictures that I’ve posted.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and technically we’re supposed to be here. But we spoke with the Rangers, and they have no problem with us going in to Wilmington to a Thanksgiving buffet meal at the Hilton. We made reservations for 11:30, so we should be back here by 2:00p.m. or 3:00p.m. Surprisingly, they told us that the park can get very busy on Thanksgiving Day. A lot of people will come out after eating their big meals to go for nice walks on the hiking trails. It is supposed to be about 67 tomorrow, so it’ll be a nice day. And then because it’s a 4 day weekend, a lot of people will come out for their last chance to camp for the year. Unfortunately, it’s supposed to be in the upper 40’s or low 50’s after tomorrow, so that may impact people coming out. We’ll see.

The buffet was wonderful! They had the largest cheese and cracker table we’ve ever seen. There was a nice salad table with enough ingredients that a person could have built a fantastic Chef’s salad. The main table had one side with all of the traditional turkey dinner dishes, including a dynamite sweet potato dish. Then in the middle of the table, there was a carving station that was offering prime rib and ham. On the other side of the carving station was a section that offered all kinds of breakfast dishes. And of course, there was a very nice dessert table. It was really nice and very tasty. We talked about having Thanksgiving away from home, and of course, we quickly recalled that we had a number of Thanksgivings away when we were in the Navy. I think the thing Jenny missed was the activity in kitchen while preparing a dinner, and I missed smelling the turkey all day long before the big meal. And of course, we both missed the leftovers. But we’re cooking a small (10 lb.) turkey tomorrow, so we’ll have our turkey sandwiches too.

Jenny and I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that you were exactly where you wanted to be. This is our first holiday away from home, and surprisingly, it hasn’t bothered us too much. Maybe it will tomorrow. Of course we miss everyone that we would have been with, but we’re doing what we’ve wanted to do for a long time, and that feels good too. Jenny said that the one thing that she knows she’ll miss is the stuffed celery. For me, it’ll be the homemade cranberry sauce. We will be cooking a turkey breast in a day or two so we can have our turkey sandwiches!


( Aquarium & Wrightsville Beach Pics )