Florida, Orlando - Sunday, December 29, 2013 - Elite RV Resort

Christmas Day was a travel day from Jacksonville to the Elite RV Resort in Clermont, just outside of Orlando.  I haven’t gotten out to take pictures yet, will have to do that before we leave on January 2.  We are only 18 or so miles away from the condos where the rest of the family is staying but with traffic it takes at least half an hour to get there.

Christmas Day afternoon Robyn, Jason and Maddie came out to our place because the condo wasn’t available yet.  So we got to have a nice visit sitting outside in the sunshine while Maddie played with her ball.  Even though we are on a corner lot with a good sized yard, it was just too tempting to not throw the ball underneath the coach so she managed to get herself into a “time out”.

 

On Thursday we fixed spaghetti at the condo for the Jones group of the Crosley clan and the grandkids opened their Christmas presents from us.  Jackson had called ahead while they were on the road and talked to Papaw Greg about this because he was concerned that we might forget this very important part of the visit.

It got a little hectic.  We had originally thought we would have the kids all come to the coach to open gifts, glad we didn’t we wouldn’t have had nearly enough room and the noise might have gotten us thrown out of the RV park.  We thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

 

The grandkids were able to get in the pool for a while on Friday, but blue lips soon set in.

Friday the family had a euchre tournament going on when we arrived.  We took the grandkids to the playground so they could run off some steam.  The whole group (24 in total) went to Sweet Tomatoes restaurant for supper.  This restaurant has a ridiculously large salad bar in addition to pasta, bread and desserts.  The only problem was we had to park about half a mile away in a dark area behind a local Burger King and then walk to the restaurant.  Traffic is just bumper to bumper in this part of town and getting around is a real pain. 

Saturday evening we went to the town of Celebration just outside of Orlando.  This is a beautiful little town that was originally part of Disney.  I’ll have some more facts on it later.  Greg and I are going back on Monday while the rest of the family goes to Sea World.  We ate at the Celebration Town Tavern on the square.  Greg had a lobster roll and I had a scallop roll, we were both pleased with our selections.

Today we stayed home because of the rainy weather, watching football on TV, reading and napping.

Florida, Jacksonville - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - Pecan Park RV Park

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY MOM.  She’s an amazing lady and I’m proud she’s my mom.

This was a “me” day today, I took time to give myself a manicure and pedicure and read a book, Summer’s Child by Diane Chamberlain – very enjoyable.

The weather here has dropped to 60 degrees with a good bit of wind so no riding today.

We treated ourselves to beef filets, twice baked potatoes and some bubbly wine for dinner this evening.  Couldn’t have been any better if we had been at a five star restaurant.

We’ll be moving to Orlando tomorrow to spend a week with the kids and grandkids.  Really looking forward to that.

Hopefully after the first of the year we’ll be coming back here to finally get the fridge fixed

In case I don’t get to post tomorrow, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.

Florida, Jacksonville - Sunday, December 22, 2014 - Neptune Beach

We had talked about going back to St. Augustine today since the weather was supposed to be in the 80s.  Well, the weather was in the 80s but the wind was blowing pretty hard so we decided to enjoy the sun a little closer to home.

We headed to Neptune Beach instead and spent a wonderful day.  The wind was kicking up a few more waves than the last time we were here.

 

I did get brave enough to get my feet wet.  The ocean water felt pretty cool but several people were out in it.

A family just down the way from us got into the Christmas spirit and built a snowman.

 

We stopped for lunch at the North Beach Fish Camp.  The fried green tomatoes we had for appetizers were really good although they were fixed a little differently than we were used to.   They had some kind of a sauce, herbs and goat cheese sprinkled over them.

I’ve got to admit that goat cheese hasn’t been a staple in our kitchen but I might have to rethink that.  We followed the tomatoes with shrimp buns which were a generous helping of shrimp salad on a toasted bun-very good.  Eating outside on the 22^nd of December was wonderful.