Thanksgiving

I had my monthly visit to the Farber on Monday.  All my numbers still look good!  My iron results are still great after my Dextran infusion last month.  I have noticed a distinct increase in my energy level.  While I still sleep a lot (10+ hours a night), I haven't been tired during the day, so I haven't been napping much lately.  Here it is about 11:30 pm, and I am still pretty wide awake.  Yahoo!

We got our first snowfall of the winter this past week.  I wasn't quite ready for it.  I have a cord of wood sitting in the driveway waiting to be stacked in the garage, and there are still some plantings to be cut down for the winter.  At least I finally got most of the leaves blown away or scooped up with my mower before the snow hit.  I've been a little bit lazy about getting all this done.  Maybe it's because I know it's the last time I'll be doing this here.  Or maybe I'm just lazy.  Anyway, I hope to get these things out of the way over the next couple of days.

We had a nice, comfortable Thanksgiving.  Because our family is dispersed, only Jeff and Christine, along with her mother and sister were here.  I roasted a 16-pound turkey on the grill and Gretchen worked her usual magic with all the fixins.  Everything was delicious!  It has always been our favorite holiday, and it was special to celebrate it here for our last time in this house.

Yesterday, we had our special friends, Bobby and Cathy, along with their children and spouses and granddaughter, for our traditional Christmas Tree hunt.  We do this every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  We went to a local tree farm and selected Christmas trees to cut down.  Afterwards, we come back here for gumbo and chicken enchiladas.  Delicious!  This year, Gretchen and I thought we might not have a tree at all, since we will be moving soon, but we then the decided to get a small tree.  We found a tree that looked a lot bigger than what I thought we were looking for, but Gretchen really liked it.  OK, so I decided to cut it down.  Jeesh!  The saws they gave us must have been really dull, because it took me about 10 minutes to cut that sucker down (pant, pant).  We struggled to haul that thing on a sled all the way to the front to pay for it.  When we got there, we realized that this tree was actually much larger than we had thought, so we pleaded with the owner to trade it in for a small tree at the entrance that was already cut.  Gretchen did the talking, so they agreed, and we now have a nice small tree.  All that work wasted!  But I'm really glad to have a small tree for a change.

On Wednesday, Gretchen and I are flying to Orlando, Florida for 5 nights.  This is a reprise visit from our last visit in the spring to look at buying a timeshare from the Marriott.  We still aren't planning to buy one (Hello!  We just bought a house), but we still have to sit through a 1-hour presentation while there.  Jason and his girlfriend, Jessica, spent this Thanksgiving with her parents, but they are both coming to Orlando with us this week.  That should be a lot of fun.  She has never been on a plane before (!!), so this should be a real treat for her.  I just checked the weather and it looks like it might be in the mid 70's for the week without much or any rain.  That would be awesome!  They (and I) like adventures, so we may go to Universal Studios, and then perhaps drive to Clearwater Beach for a day.  Who needs to pack for a move, right?

Speaking of moves, we are proceeding with getting a mortgage and are still planning to close on January 2, 2015.  The owners of our future home, Ed and Claire Flaherty, have decided to put their furniture in storage and rent a place on Salisbury Beach on the Ocean for 6 months.  They got that idea from us, as we were thinking of doing that before Nancy, the new owner of our house, offered us a very reasonable rent to stay here.  They plan to move out before Christmas!  Well guess what, we aren't ready to move yet.  We have no intentions of rushing around trying to pack everything before the Holidays, so we are just going to chill for a bit.  I mean really, let's not get our bowels in an uproar over this.  Everything will happen in due time.