Elaine and Jean-Marie visited us last week from their home in Houston. They arrived late Monday afternoon, checked into their hotel and went straight to bed, so tired from their long drive. We met them Tuesday morning for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, then brought them back to Palm Creek to spend the day. It was their first time to see Uncle Joe. We took them on a tour of the amenities here in the park, then just visited until toddy time when we went to Macayo’s Mexican Restaurant for toddies and dinner.


Wednesday they came over after breakfast and we visited some more.  After lunch (leftover Mexican food) we went to the local mall to look around a bit and to the outlet mall to look around some more. The local mall is huge but spread out so that it is difficult to see it all; the outlet mall was a huge disappointment as hardly any stores still exist there and the ones that do didn’t have much in the way of merchandise. At dinner time we adjourned to Chili’s.

Thursday we met again at the Cracker Barrel (love those grits), after which they began their long trip home. We were happy to hear that they made it back safely.

Yesterday we drove to Tucson – about 75 miles – to celebrate Christmas with my sister Suzy and her family. Suzy and Bob have a park model home at The Voyager RV Park where we will spend February and March. They have three daughters, all of them married and with two or three children each. There were a total of 18 people for dinner. Quite a crowd, but Suzy had organized it well and everything went smoothly. Not only that, everyone seemed to get along well too, no fisticuffs! We enjoyed the day very much. Paddy had not seen the children and grandchildren since my mom’s funeral about 13 years ago. Shadow managed to get in some begging at the table, so he was happy too.