Nov – We spent 2 weeks just “chilling out” in Destin. We stayed in a military RV park on the Santa Rosa sound. We didn’t have access to the water, but we could sit in chairs & enjoy looking at it. We did take one day at the beach, which was very nice.
Destin is a lot like the Caribbean with it’s white sand & clear water. The temps weren’t bad, but there was a lot of wind & it just wasn’t beach weather.
On Nov 7th we dropped the RV off at a local repair shop for some minor repairs & drove to Tampa to celebrate my mother’s 86th Birthday. I spent 3 full days just with mom, taking her to lunch, cleaning out closets & drawers & going shopping. We really had a nice time with our one on one time.
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| Collins & Mom |
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| Karen, Mom & brother Larry |
While we were in Tampa, we made arrangements to meet our daughter, Collina & granddaughter, Lexi. They live outside Orlando, which is a couple hours from Tampa. We decided to meet half way for dinner. It was a really nice evening. Our granddaughter is growing up so fast.
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| Lexi, Collins & Collina |
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| Collina, Lexi, Collins & Karen |
After returning to Destin & our RV, we were on our way to Biloxi, MS. We decided to go there because we had about 3 weeks before we wanted to arrive at our friends, Sue & Dan Hollingsworth, who live outside Houston, TX. We had never been to Biloxi. We went to the beach one day while we were there, but again, it was very windy & getting cooler. We spent some time driving around the area, which still shows signs of the Katrina devastation. There are a lot of casinos there, we went for a couple hours one afternoon & made our donations. Most of the time we just hung out at the RV park. We did go to the gym about every other day. We met some nice people at the park. When we had some work done on our tow dolly in NC they miss wired the lights so the guy next door decided to help us figure out the problem. When you turned on the turn signal in the RV both lights on the RV & the trailer flashed. Here is a picture of the guys around us “helping” to fix the problem.
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| Karen & Snuggles were cold |
Dec- We had decided to leave the RV in storage near our friends' Sue & Dan’s home in TX. In 2012 we’re going to the West Coast so we thought that would be a good starting place.
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| Dan, Sue & Karen |
Our trip (about 7 hours) was totally uneventful until we got about 10 minutes from their house. It was dark & we had just gotten off the expressway & were on a 3 lane highway. It was Sat night about 6:30 & I was driving. I looked at the rear view camera & saw sparks flying everywhere. There was no shoulder & no where to pull over & I sure wasn’t driving any further. Collins jumped out & ran to the back. We had a blowout on our tow dolly tire & were driving on the rim – thus the sparks. There was nothing to do but pull out the emergency lights & try to figure out how to solve the problem. When the tire blew, it caused the front end of the car to drop over the front of the trailer, so we couldn’t back it off. We called Sue & Dan to let them know where we were & Dan came right over. After about an hour of tying up traffic, & much frustration we were finally able to get the car off the tow dolly. We put the dolly in the grass to the side & drove on to their house. At that point Collins said he’d had it & we were buying a new car we could flat tow. Collins, Dan & several of their neighbors took Dan’s trailer & went back for the tow dolly. The ironic part of the whole thing is we had purchased a tire monitoring system this year. It’s supposed to tell you when something is wrong with a tire. The day before we left Biloxi we were going to check our tire pressure so we tried to turn it on & it wouldn’t. So we had to return it to the company. If we’d had it working it would have sounded an alarm as the tire started having a problem. Sue & Dan live on 15 acres outside Houston. Dan probably owns every tool made & I’m sure he has duplicates of many. He was really helpful to Collins in getting the RV ready for storage. 
While Collins was doing all the outside stuff, I was packing for IL & Punta Cana & getting the inside of the RV ready for storage. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find indoor storage, so we had to settle for covered. It’s a pain trying to pack for 2 totally different climates. We got it all done & left for IL on Dec. 11th.
It took us 2 days to make the trip. Would you believe, we were 10 minutes from my brother’s house, when we noticed 2 cars parked on the side of the road & the car in front of us pulling into the other lane. Unfortunately, one of the cars had hit a deer & we had no where to go & couldn’t stop in time, so we ran over it. Luckily for us, it did no damage to the car but we were certainly in need of a car wash. We certainly had our share of end of the trip incidences this year. Lucky for us, none interfered with our travel plans & were able to be remedied in a short amount of time.
It was nice to see our family again. The grandkids have grown a lot in so many ways. I was able to attend one of Danny’s & one of Becca’s basketball games. All our grandkids in IL are very active in sports. Katie, the 9 yr old wanted to know if we were going to make Gingerbread houses again this year. I realized it doesn’t take much to start a tradition. Even Tyler (10) & Ryan (11) were interested. This year I bought a house & a train. We convinced Becca (13) to help & everyone was creative & we had a lot of fun.
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| Tyler & Ryan with finished gingerbread train |
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| Katie & Becca with their finished gingerbread house |
We finished our hard work with a trip to the local Dairy Queen.
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| Becca, Katie, Ryan & Tyler |
Staying with my brother Rob, his wife Lisa & their 3 daughters, Megan, Kelly & Courtney, was a lot of fun. Collins & I truly appreciated them having us stay there. We were able to make ourselves at home there & Kelly was very generous about giving us her room. Kelly & Courtney are in college & Megan graduated in May & is teaching this year. I forgot what it was like to live with girls. They kept things interesting. We all took a night to cook dinner (yes, even the men) so no one was stuck with that task every day. We have spent Christmas Eve dinner with Rob & family for many years, so this year was no exception.
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| Rob, Lisa, Courtney, Megan, Kelly & Collins |
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| Lisa & Courtney Christmas Morning |
We also enjoyed Christmas morning with them as they opened their gifts & Santa had even left a stocking full of goodies for us.
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| Megan & Rob on Christmas |
Christmas afternoon & dinner was done at Paula & Dave’s house. That tradition passed to her a couple of years ago & she has made it a very nice day. The grandkids are growing older so they don’t get quite as excited about the gifts as they did when they were young, but we all had fun opening them.
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| Aaron, Pam, Ryan & Katie |
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