1/18/07 (Thursday): As promised, I'm going to try to catch everyone up on our happy, busy life.

We spent last weekend with Wiley's parents. On Friday, his mother and I did a little shopping. On Saturday, we picked strawberries at a local strawberry patch.

The picking is fun, but the eating is even better! Strawberries are at their best when warmed by the sun and eaten with a light sprinkling of the sandy soil they grow in. Yum!

We went to the Black Hammock Restaurant for a great seafood lunch. This place has been around for many years. It's right on Lake Jesup.





Of course, while we were so close, Wiley had to get in a little fishing. This pelican was very interested in what he might catch and kept up a vigil from a nearby perch.


When we got home, we made a delicious strawberry pie with the bounty of our labors. Also some homemade strawberry ice cream. Somehow I don't think our labors burned up nearly as many calories as we took in!






On Sunday, we drove out to Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge again in hopes that Wiley's folks would have as good a time as we'd had a few weekends before. The birds were not quite as plentiful this time (and there were no scrub jays), but there were lots of manatees. We had a great picnic lunch, too.
As I mentioned in my last post, we've made some exciting decisions recently. I'm turning 62 next month and will start receiving Social Security benefits. Our investments are doing better than we expected, so we've decided to buy a newer RV. We want to sell the one we have to someone who wants it for short vacations, because it was not built to withstand the rigors of full-time living. We're going to the RV show in Tampa this weekend. We'll probably wait and buy a used rig, but sometimes there are some very good deals at the RV show, and we know exactly what we want.

We're also considering putting our house on the market. Our tenants' lease is up at the end of March and the housing market in our area has not declined as much as in some parts of the country. We haven't made a final decision about this yet, but we've definitely decided that the full-time RV lifestyle is for us. We still have some stuff stored in our attic and we rented the house partially furnished, so it would be nice to get that taken care of while we're living nearby.

I just got word that my cousin, Candi, is in the hospital in very serious condition. She's just 51 years old. I hope everyone will hold her in their thoughts.

I'll post something next week about our adventures at the RV show. Keep those comments coming!