Retirement……LOVE IT!

Our basic plan of travel is to go North in the summer and South in the winter.  Neither one of us likes the cold much anymore, and I totally despise the summer mega heat and humidity I have lived in all my life.  When your home is on wheels, you can follow the nice, moderate weather all over the country.

We have been making our “south for the winter” plans these last few months. Because we wanted to stay within a reasonable driving distance so we could spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with family, we looked at some RV parks in the northern part of Texas.  We found several places on the internet that looked really nice that were around the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  We wanted to arrive around Nov. 15-16 and leave around January 10-11.  However, when we started calling around, we were having trouble finding a place that had any class A motor coach RV sites available (next year we will have to call earlier).

A little over a month ago we finally lucked into a place called Wagon Master RV Resort in Sanger, Texas. THIS IS WHERE we are right now! Sanger is a little northwest of Dallas (approx. 50 miles). This location is about a two hour drive from Moore, OK, and the grandkids (and Mike and Jennifer, too!). We drove up to Moore, OK, in the car for Thanksgiving.

Jennifer is a great cook, and we had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with all the trimmings. At the end of the summer, Mike got a smoker, and he wanted to try cooking a turkey in it. Jennifer decided to cook one turkey the regular way in the oven, and Mike would smoke one outside. BOTH were absolutely delicious! I didn’t get any pictures of the full meal, but here are a couple of the turkeys.

The smoked turkey BEFORE and AFTER:

When we arrived Wednesday afternoon, the grandkids had started working on a 1,000 piece Christmas puzzle. It was a pretty hard one in my opinion. We all worked on it at one time or another. Some of us were better at finding pieces that fit; others of us were frustrated at times and had to leave the table. We finally finished the puzzle about an hour before dinner was ready. Here’s a couple of pictures:

We are not big on Black Friday shopping, so we stayed at Mike’s house and watched a “traditional” movie then helped decorate their Christmas tree. Can you guess the movie? Actually, we watched Christmas movies all day long while decorating!

Yes, that’s the Griswald family in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation!

Yes, that is the movie The Elf on the television!

Last Christmas while we were at my parents’ house, Mike found an old train in mom and dad’s mega collection of Christmas decorations. Mike told my dad (unknown to me) that he had always wanted a train set to go around the Christmas tree. My dad said they had not used it in years, so he gave it to Mike. Mike was like a little kid when he got the box out to set up the train around the tree! Here it is in all it’s glory (click the picture to watch):

I think the video was turned when I uploaded it. Hmmmmm? 🤔 I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA why that video turned sideways. Maybe some day I will actually figure it out. Oh, well…..

We will drive up to Moore, OK, in the car again for Christmas, and our oldest son, who lives in FL, will fly to OKC to join us. After Christmas Day we will all drive on to Springfield, MO, to have Christmas with Jack’s family, and then on to STL to have Christmas with my family.  Jeff will fly home to FL after the New Year, the grandkids and family will drive to OKC, and we will drive back to Texas.  It will be a long drive back to Sanger, TX, but it will be worth it to see all our family at Christmastime.

Back in June (while we were still living in our house in Dexter) we discovered that some friends of ours who had just purchased an Airstream trailer were going to spend two months in the Phoenix, AZ, area this winter.  They asked us what our plans for the winter were, and when we said we weren’t sure, they asked us to join them there.  So we called the same RV Resort where they had their reservations and made our reservations. Therefore, we will be in Buckeye, AZ, from Jan. 15 – Mar. 15. Starting Mar. 15, we plan to spend about four weeks exploring New Mexico.  Then we will be coming back to the STL area some time mid-to-late April to stay another month.

St. Louis is kind of going to be “home base” for us.  I can help with my parents, and Jack can run down to Springfield to spend time with his mom.   Then, some time in late May, we will be heading north for the summer.  Exactly where we will go up north hasn’t been decided yet. We are thinking Michigan or the Wisconsin Dells.  We will need to get busy, make our plans, and get reservations real SOON! I’ll let you know where we decision in the near future.

So, for now …. “On the Road Again!”

Betty