Time to Unwind and Rewind

So my son and family were here for the holidays. They arrived the night of the 22nd after spending a couple of days at Busch Gardens in Tampa. They have been coming here every year at this time since 1998. They also spent a couple of years with us when we would rent a condo at Pointe Santo for Easter break. The kids don't really remember not coming here. Last year, Mr. Snowbird and I were able to sleep at our neighbor's across the street because they head north for Christmas. Unfortunately, this year they escaped without us getting permission to use their place so all 6 of us had to find bunk space in our trailer. Luckily we have a bed and 3 futons so it wasn't too bad.

The weather was perfect while they were here. As Ann said, she couldn't remember, ever, having had weather this warm the whole time they were here. We ate most of our meals on our deck, thanks to the weather. We even had 10 people here for Christmas dinner. Would you believe I didn't get one picture of that???


Periwinkle Park, where we live, does it up great on Christmas Eve. Most of the streets put out luminaria. Then Santa comes around on a front loader. For two years now, I've tried to get a picture of him on the front loader and for two years now, the pictures have come out blurry. Hmmmm. There must be a reason! Anyway, then everyone goes down to the main street of the park to sing, get cider, and have the kids see Santa. (I have to say that most people go down to see Santa. The people on our street don't seem to get much further than the house at the end of the street where people congregate and have horses duvers (Hors D'oeuvres for the uneducated) and lots of adult beverages. That happened to us last year. But this year, with the kids, we bypassed the party and went down to see Santa.) But I digress. From there we went over to visit some friends of my son and his family. They met John, Jean, and Jesse 10 years ago here at the Park and have met up with them almost every years since.

That night, Erin, my 11 year old granddaughter, had to put out stuff for Santa and the reindeer. She informed me that she had had the "Santa talk" with her mom some years ago so she understood that this was just a formality. As you can see, Santa got lots of cookies whereas the reindeer got broccoli because we didn't have any carrots or whatever. Sure hope Rudolph took that in good stride!

Since we have a 12 foot wide trailer and a 10 foot wide Florida room, there isn't much room for a tree much less all of the presents that go under it. This was taken before all of the presents were under there. And we cut back this Christmas. Yeah, right!

Thank goodness the kids are 11 and 15 now so Christmas morning doesn't come quite so early. Our tradition is that mom (that would be me) gets up and bakes cinnamon rolls before we open our gifts. That way we can have breakfast and open presents at the same time. Both of my kids have carried on this tradition too. Anyway, this is Sam with our gift to him. He is a HUGE snowboarding fan and loves Shaun White who won the Olympic Gold medal in the last winter Olympics. He got an autographed photo of Shaun at the Olympics. Look, Sam is smiling!! This doesn't happen much anymore when you point a camera at him.

So, the major part of the trip, time was spent in front of the TV or the Wii

or in front of the TV or the XBox

Or in front of the TV or the computer. No pictures of Ann relaxing since she spent her time on the beach or bike riding.

We did go out to eat a couple of times. We went to Cheeburger, Cheeburger, Mimi's in Fort Myers and of course we had to go to Hungry Heron so Erin could get her crablegs.

She loves her crablegs but isn't quite so enthusiastic about Oysters on the half shell. I can't say as I blame her on this one. I can hardly watch people eat them much less try them myself.

Our family left this past Saturday, the 3rd, to head back to the frozen north. Dave and Ann had work yesterday and the kids go back to school today. We had a great time with them but now we are kind of taking a breather and unwinding for a few days before we rewind and head out to San Diego on Thursday to visit our daughter, son in law, and my other three grandkids. I think I will need a vacation from vacation after all this!!