Catching Up With the Boldts

We haven‘t posted for a while and we said we were going to post regularly. Why you say? The reality is we are enjoying our daily retirement lifestyle and don’t seem to find the time to write. Yeah, yeah, I know---lame excuse right? So let me get you caught up with some of our great times we are having.

I (Barbie) have been walking regularly with about 4 ladies almost every day. We walk at 8:30 am and walk a mile and talk. It is hard to believe I can walk and talk at the same time.  I get up at 7:20 and get dressed and take Kozmo for her walk which usually lasts 25 to 35 minutes and then come back and make the coffee so it will be ready by the time I get back from my walk. So I really am getting more walking than usual in and having a great time with the ladies while walking. Plus, all the gossip and park news we share!

Our great friends Linda and Bill Forrest who live in Auburndale came over for the day last Saturday, December 8, and we had a great time! I used to work with Linda when I taught math at Mann Middle School in Brandon, FL. She finally retired this past June and loves retirement also. We exchanged our Christmas gifts and went out to eat at Dan’s Clam Stand in Crystal River rather than Dan’s in Homosassa. The service was fantastic and Jeff and I agree that the food is better at the Homosassa location though. I guess we like the intimacy of the Homosassa place as opposed to the Crystal River one. Linda is purging all of her magazines and books and I have done the same so we have been exchanging our stuff before getting rid of it all. She gave me a Taste of Home food magazine and it is a great one. We both use our portable scanner and scan it and then put it on the computer into our files. I am going to save them on CD’s at some point in time to make sure I don’t lose all of it. We both have so much stuff that we are organizing and getting rid of it so we feel better. They are headed for Ohio to visit their son and family for a week for Christmas. Bill hasn’t retired yet because he loves what he is doing so Linda volunteers at Mann every other week and enjoys her retirement while he works.

We put up Christmas decorations inside and outside the rv last week. See below what some of them look like. We put up an artificial 4 foot tree in one corner by Jeff’s man cave and a ceramic one to the left of the TV on the entertainment center area.

  

We also have some snowmen inside who look kind of neat.

 

We put up lights around our 8 x 16 foot garden and then put bulbs on the front of the fiver that change colors. We still have a huge blue wreath that we had up last year but don’t know if we will put that up. We finally got into the Christmas spirit and it makes us more content and more into the holiday season. There are lots of people around here that have decorations up. It is amazing the decorations some rvers put up. I often wonder how they find the room in their rig to keep it all stored. One in particular here in the park has too much up in our opinions, but who are we to judge? They must want to win the campground’s site decoration contest.

Since Jeff and I don’t exchange gifts anymore we decided to buy what we wanted on the internet. I have been looking for some walking shoes and have not been successful. So I went on this site called Onshoesshopping.com and found two pairs that I really thought I would like. One is an Easy Spirit walking shoe and the other is a Propet sandal. I always wore SAS shoes before but the one pair that I have been wearing for the past 4 years is one they discontinued. Both shoes that I ordered came in last Wednesday and I love them both. I usually don’t order shoes on line because I have to send them back if I don’t like them immediately because they don’t fit well. These two fit great! Jeff’s shoes came in on the same day but delivered to our site rather than the post office like my two because they came UPS. His is a Dunham brand deck shoe and they are great looking and great feeling shoes. So we both lucked out on shoes.

Speaking of Christmas gifts I am looking for an apron to wear when I cook indoors. I have been getting my shirts really dirty when I cook and the stains are aggravating to get out. I haven’t worn an apron since I was 17 years old but they do have some great ones today. I am also going to get a Kindle cover for my Kindle. Since Linda gave me a gift certificate from Amazon. com I will definitely put it to good use.

I went to a candy making class last Friday in the clubhouse. There were only 7 people who were there but we really enjoyed making peanut butter cups.

 

They are so simple to make. The ingredients were confectionary sugar, peanut butter, vanilla, and Ghiardelli dipping chocolate. I think I will use milk chocolate when I make it and try Smuckers natural brand peanut butter rather than the Skippy brand and Ghiardelli dark chocolate. Needless to say they are delicious!!! They had a class the previous week in which they made white chocolate bark with whatever ingredients you wanted to put in it like peanuts, M & M’s, pretzels, etc… They said it was very good and simple to make. Next week they are making truffles but we don’t like truffles that much so I won’t be going. The couple that teaches the class, Jillean and Tom, are from Wisconsin and are great people who just retired in October and have made Rock Crusher their winter home right now. They have a 1984 Barth motorhome and it is nice with wrap around windows with no slides.

We went to a new place in Crystal River called High Octane Saloon. We had heard that it was a biker’s bar but the night we went was very unique. They have two gigantic rooms that they use for dancing and music. On is used for live performers and the other for DJs. This particular Tuesday night was 50’s and 60’s night with a guy that looks like a cross between Wayne Newton and Elvis Presley. He was singing oldies, but the music also had background tracks singing in it. The crowd was unbelievable because there wasn’t anyone younger than 50 that we saw. The place was packed and people were dancing up a storm. They also have food which is made outside in a kitchen. On Mondays the food is $1.00 for things like chili, fries, fried pickels, and other stuff. On the outside of the big building is another building where they have the Internet Café and they were doing a nice business. We will definitely go back there.

We went to our stix-n-brix house for the first time on November 28 and stayed one night. I did 6 loads of laundry which seemed to have taken forever since two of the loads were blankets. We cleaned and brought back stuff like magazines, crafts, and Christmas ornaments to look at and possibly throw out. We don’t like going there but we have to get our mail every two weeks or so since they don’t hold it now because we had it forwarded for 6 months earlier. Eventually, we will get all the stuff out of the house by throwing it away, giving it to Goodwill or keeping it to sell later on. We still don’t feel like we are in a hurry but it is an inconvenience to have the house since we consider ourselves full-timers now.

We met Donna and Ralph (Our Adventures With Tassie blog) a few weeks ago. They are staying here until May. They have been sick or visiting their family in Pinellas County, so we haven’t gotten together yet. If you are reading this Donna and Ralph, we will get together soon!

Kozmo still loves this place, especially the squirrels and tortoises that she encounters daily. The weather has not been cooperative lately so we haven’t been able to sit outside for long periods of time due to the showers and the temperatures being on the cool side. But the weather is forecast to change and hopefully we will get some sun so it is not too dismal.

‘Til next time….