2024 Annual Christmas Letter

Merry Christmas to Our Family and Friends,

I hope this letter finds everyone doing well and enjoying the holiday season.  We have certainly found some great places here in Florida to celebrate Christmas.  Last weekend, we met Sue and Greg in Winter Garden for the Farmer’s Market.  They have this huge market every Saturday and it is always enjoyable walking around and checking out the vendor booths.  The main street in town reminds me of a Hallmark Movie - just the perfect street with lots of cute stores and great holiday decorations.  In addition, the town has a variety of holiday events happening every weekend.  Definitely a great place to get into the holiday spirit.

views along Plant st. in winter garden

i had to get a picture with santa

After the weekend, we took a short Christmas vacation and headed over to St. Augustine for 3 nights.  I love visiting that town any time, but at Christmas, it is just extra special.  Their Night of LIghts celebration is world famous, so I had to go see it.  Unfortunately, after we booked a non-refundable trip, the weather prediction was for rain on all three days we were to be there.  We headed into town on Monday night to see the lights hoping the forecast was right and the rain would stop by 7pm.  Unfortunately, they were wrong.  It was barely drizzling as we drove around looking for parking, but then started pouring as soon as we found a spot.  We began walking around town in the rain to take in the lights.  When it got to be too much, we ducked into a bar for a glass of wine.  When we thought the rain stopped, we started walking again, and you guessed it, heavy rain as soon as we got about a block away.  Oh well, we tried.  

even with the rain, we got some pictures to share

Luckily for us, the rain finished by late morning on Tuesday, so I was able to take the trolley tour around town and also took a boat ride at night to enjoy the lights from the water.  The lights were spectacular to see from the boat.  Tim was unsure about Trent on a boat or if he could take him easily on the trolley so I did those and he got to relax at the resort.  It probably was a good decision; as much as I enjoyed the trolley ride, the seat was not comfortable and it was hard to climb in and out of it.  I think the boat would have worked out fine so we could try that sometime in the future.  

bridge of lions was beautiful

the tour boats were also decorated with lights

Other than enjoying the holiday season, we are still working on setting up our home base at Three Flags RV Park.  In case you don’t follow the blog online, we signed an annual lease at this park and plan to spend about half of the year here.  The rest of the year, we plan to travel to see some of the states we haven’t gotten to yet, as well as spend time in Pittsburgh with family and friends.

This past year, Tim and I spent quite a bit of the year traveling in the RV.  We started the year in Arizona and ended up visiting many areas of Arizona, southern California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio before heading back to Pennsylvania for the summer.  On our way south in the fall we also stopped in West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia before we got to Florida.  It was a whirlwind year for travel, so we are now very happy to stay in one place for awhile.  Traveling is wonderful, especially getting to see so much of this beautiful country but it does get tiring.  

Our family is doing well and keeping busy with their lives too.  Katie, Jon and Rosie are still in Pittsburgh and we have a room at their place to stay when we are in town. Whitney, Ian and Alec are also in Pittsburgh so it makes it easy to visit with them as well when we are back home.  Kim and Greg are in Cincinnati, and we try to spend a couple weeks each year near them during our travels.  We miss them all when we travel, but technology allows us to stay in touch.

I love doing video calls with the grandchildren and seeing how they change and grow.  Rosie is turning 3 in a few days and she is so entertaining to talk to. She has quite the vocabulary for a 3 year old.  Alec being much younger, doesn’t talk as much but he loves playing with the phone during the calls.  I love how much he smiles at us; just melts your heart.  Grandchildren are the best.

it doesn’t look like rosie and alec were excited to see santa

While it is hard to be away from our family over the holiday, we plan to have a holiday meal with Sue and Greg this weekend and spend Christmas and New Years Day with Aunt Tish.  Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Deb and Tim