Thanksgiving and our many blessings

Thanksgiving is such a good time to reflect on your many blessings.  We spent a wonderful holiday surrounded by family at Harry and Jackie's house (my brother and sister in law).  Everyone brought some delicious food and beverages to share!  Jackie and her sister's and Mom really put together a splendid meals for all of us to enjoy.

Here is my brother carving the delicious very fresh turkey! Poor bird had been gobbling just a few days prior. 

 Debbie is busy making the cauliflower.  BTW-she makes the best guacamole in the whole world!

The cousins and friends enjoyed playing video games and ping pong in the lower level.  Some of us watched football and movies until late at night.

Jen was able to come from North Carolina.  She had a rather eventful trip complete with landslides, but we were so happy to see her. She arrived just in time for dinner.

Martha (John's sister) called from Sao Paulo, Brazil.  We passed the phone around so everyone to talk to her.  Her son, Daniel, called later from Seattle.  So, some more passing of the phone occurred.   Dan was cooking quite a "non turkey"  feast for some of his friends. 

We all posed for a group picture...including Jimmy, Buddy, and Max.

We stayed over night and the next day traveled back to Indianapolis.  We spent the next few days with Jen and enjoyed every minute of our time together. It was fun to go out to dinner, do a little shopping, and talk and talk.  I cooked her favorite dinner complete with a lamb roast and yorkshire pudding on Saturday.

Jen has been very busy with her job and going to school full time.  It was sad to see her go, but she really does love living in North Carolina.  We laughed a lot about how much she hates the cold weather. Just before she left we encouraged her to go through each room of  the house and make a list of the furniture and items that she would like to have after we sell the house.  We loaded up her car with all kinds of Christmas decorations and she traveled back to Charlotte..

It was a wonderful holiday! This song by Louis Armstrong sums it all up!

Preparing to sell our home

Last year we talked with a recommended realtor to get some advice as to what needed to be done to sell our home.  He was very helpful and gave us lots of suggestions and advise.  We wrote everything down (five pages of notes) and have worked very hard this year on the "to do" list.

He came back this week and seemed very impressed with all that had been accomplished.  Through research he was able to give us an idea of the market.  Our plan is place the house on the market in late January.  We still have a few more things to accomplish but feel much more confident that our home will look great.  We have really loved this house and hope to find someone who will love it just as much.

We took a few photographs of the outside to use for the listing.

T - 365 days to retirement

Today is John's birthday and another great milestone towards full-timing has arrived.  He can retire from the Post Office exactly one year from today.  He started his count down about 4 years ago.  On any given day you could ask him...how many days to retiring and he'd reply for example "Two years, 6 months and three days...but whose counting" Today it's T minus 365 days!

We are not exactly sure if he will retire on his birthday next year.  It depends upon a few factors-

• Our home selling
• Finding a good rig within our budget
• Obtaining a workamping position
• Being debt free

Today we are celebrating John's birthday and are looking forward to this trip around the sun.  We soon will be wandering.  After all - "he who wanders is not lost".

Sometimes life throws your a curveball

For some time now we had thought our full timing rig would be a fifth wheel pulled by a diesel truck. I planned to follow in our Jeep Cherokee as we traveled from site to site. It would also be used for touring and errands. We especially liked the "homey" feel of the fifth wheel and it is considerably less expensive. Many of our friends at the RV Dreams rally owned them and we really liked Mobile Suites and the New Horizons models.

Our plans suddenly changed after an  appointment with my eye doctor. Yikes! We are so glad that we hadn’t purchased one yet. I had a peripheral vision test today that was rather sobering. My eye doctor gently tried to explain that I will be very uncomfortable driving in unfamiliar areas and probably will not be able to drive for much longer. That was some tough news. So, it looks like a motorcoach (Class A) will now be in our future.

John has taken the change of plans in stride and says that he loves to drive and has always liked motorcoaches. We will just tow the Jeep. It will take me a little bit of time to process all this information and come to grips with losing some of my independence. I read today that letting go of fear can be liberating. My girl friend says that I will enjoy being a diva!