Visit to Lake Placid

Last night we drove over to Lake Placid to meet Rich and Donna for dinner.  I have missed Donna so much since they moved into their house.  I got used to seeing her so much this summer and enjoying her company, that it seems hard to believe it has been months since we have really spent time together.

After arriving at their house and seeing a few of the new changes/additions to it, we drove over to a Mexican restaurant near their house.  Here are Donna's pictures of the place:

We loved catching up with them!  Donna and I mostly talked about house stuff, which is still very strange to me.  I guess very soon it will seem very normal again, but we are still transitioning.  I am glad she is at the point she can answer a bunch of questions for me and did.  Thank you, Donna!

The food was fabulous!  I wish we had a place this good near where we were moving to!

The time we had together was wonderful and it flew by.  We are making plans to hopefully get together when Lake Placid has their next Farmer's Market.  Hopefully it warms up by then!

Our First Happy Hour of the Season

Jack and Diane let us know when we arrived last night that there was a Happy Hour today.  We were thrilled that we got here in time for it, and this made it our first one of the this season.  Diane is known as the Happy Hour Queen and with good reason.  Nobody throws a better party than Diane!

There was great food and great company to chat with while eating.  I got to see the inside of their beautiful rig and to admire their newest four legged family members.  Rene brought his cornhole game and we either played or watched others play.

I planned to bring tortilla chips and spinach dip but saw a flavor of ice cream that my cousin recommended on Facebook, so we brought that instead.  It was very yummy!  We had a fun night and look forward to many more this season.

Dinner With Friends at Oakwood Smokehouse

This past week has been quieter than normal as far as doing activities here in The Villages.  Rich and Donna have been house hunting and are now the owners of a beautiful house in Lake Placid!  That means I have had more quiet time at home.  I have been able to do tons of scrapbooking, so I have been quite content.

We have managed to get out and play pickleball, deciding after a day at Mulberry to return to Churchill.  They are very friendly at Mulberry, but nothing beats the fun level at Churchill.  

We also managed to fit in another dinner with Buddy and Diane who are still in the area.  This time we chose Oakwood and took advantage of their rib special.  They offer a full rack of ribs, two side dishes and garlic bread for $10.99. All of us did not have the ribs, but we all agreed the food was delicious.

We are winding down here for our time in The Villages.  We are enjoying every minute we can in the next few weeks, being sure to not waste any time before we do have to leave!  We have not had rain every single night for this past week also, so knocking on wood that it stays that way until we leave.  When it doesn't rain, we can sneak in pickleball at night and play twice a day!

Living the life in wonderful Florida!

Dinner's at Cody's Original Roadhouse

Tonight we got together to take advantage of Fajita night at Cody's Original Roadhouse.  We planned to go last week with Tim and Marlene and cancelled when we learned there was a big event there.  It worked out well for us because this week Buddy and Diane were back in our area, so they got to come join us!

The food was just as good as last time and we enjoyed the company too!  We don't have a whole lot more weeks to do dinner here so we are enjoying the last few times we have.

Silver River State Park

After eating our lunch, Donna and I decided we had plenty of time to do something else before heading home.  We tossed around a few ideas and then decided to go to Silver Springs.  I have never visited there before and am very much wanting to see it.  We drove over there, only to see they were closed!  After August 18th they are only open on weekends and holidays.  We passed Silver River State Park and decided to try that instead.  I asked the girl at the front gate what was at the park and after her giving us the run down we went inside the park.  We parked and saw the Cracker Pioneer Village and Silver River Museum, which are only open on weekends and holidays.

We looked at our map, then saw a sign for Sinkhole Trail and decided the sinkhole sounded interesting.  We started down the sandy hiking trail, with flip flops, and decided very shortly after that it was hot and we didn't have the best hiking gear on.  I also saw on the map that this path was 70 minutes long and we still wanted to do the trail to the river, so we turned around and backtracked at that point.  We then took the River Trail so we could see the Silver River.  We arrived at the river and I saw an alligator right near the boat ramp.

You can barely see him, but he is to the left of the wooden post.  We hung out here a bit, catching our breath and giving my aching calves a rest and listened to all the sounds of nature around us.  Then we headed back.

Just as we began to head back, it started to rain.  That should have been no surprise to us because we had noted that it felt like it was going to rain, saw clouds and heard thunder.  We must have thought we could beat it still, but we did not at all.  Since we were so hot and sweaty, the rain felt nice.  We were worried about our cameras but once we situated them in dryer spots we laughed the whole walk back to the car.  I am borrowing Donna's picture to show you what we looked like when we were done with the trail.

This was not the adventure we were expecting, but then again, they rarely are!  It was a great day.  Hopefully we will manage to get a few more day trips in again before we head back to Peace River!

Sholom Park in Ocala Florida

Today was the girls turn to do a day trip, so Donna and I headed out to find some fun things in the area to see.  We were going to a botanical garden in Gainesville, until I realized last minute that it was the one that Nathan and I had already visited.  So we scrambled a bit to figure out what else we could do.  We ended up visiting a place listed on a website for botanical gardens in Florida, a place in Ocala named Sholom Park.

The park was built to capture a place of peace and was named Sholom to honor Sidney Colen's grandfather's name.  The place was in fact very peaceful.  It had many paths to walk along and everywhere we went it was peaceful.

It is the kind of place that if I lived nearby, I'd go there often to just walk to get a little bit of exercise and the chance to unwind.  After visiting the park, we headed over to Chick-fil-a where Donna ate her first ever meal there.  I didn't have my camera inside with me so I did not get a picture of her eating her first chicken sandwich there.  We then headed out to see what else we could find to do.  More on that in the next blog post!

Nick and Tonyia Visit The Villages

Nick and Tonyia came to visit Rich and Donna this weekend.  We made plans to get together at our place Friday night, but ended up moving it to Saturday.  Ava had fun catching up with Rich and Donna and Nick and Tonyia.  Donna brought a mix, and Nathan got to work making us some yummy frozen drinks.

We visited on the lanai for a bit, until it started to rain.  Nathan also made us some very yummy fajitas.  Donna brought two different kinds of chips and salsa to add to the dinner.  We had plenty to eat and it was nice to have a table that we all fit around.

After dinner, we got out the Phase 10 game and played that until quite late.  Only half of us had played before so we played a practice hand to teach the others and then we were off and running.  We were neck and neck at the end with Nick being the final winner.

This morning we met at Golden Coral and then Nick and Tonyia had to head back out.  It was a great weekend that went by much too fast!

Anniversary Celebration

This year we got to celebrate our wedding anniversary here in The Villages.  Which means we did not have to go far or work hard to make it a fun day.  We started out with a lazy morning, hanging out at the house with Ava.  Then we headed out to Spanish Springs for a movie.

I have wanted to see "The Heat" since I saw a movie promo a few months ago when we were in Virginia.  I love Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy is really funny too.  I was hoping this would be as funny as it looked in the trailers.  I'm happy to report that it was.  Nathan is a hard sell when it comes to comedy and he said as we left, "Most movies have some funny parts.  That movie was funny the entire movie".  So I guess that means we both gave it two thumbs up.

After the movie, we walked around the Square for a bit, headed over to the Ay Jalisco for a plate of chicken nachos and then drove over to Orange Blossom so Nathan could see the houses over there.  I am telling him how much I would enjoy having a house here.  He is ignoring me so far!

Next we headed south to the Havana Country Club.  I heard about this place online, but then had a first hand recommendation while sitting on the bench at pickleball yesterday morning.  The woman who had visited there said the food was ok but the experience was really unique.  They have a singing waitstaff there.  So we invited Rich and Donna and made reservations to see if it was as neat as she said.

We were seated right away when we entered and I noticed we were right next to the piano, which I was hoping meant we would be in the middle of the entertainment.  As it turns out, the waiters and waitresses moved around while singing, so there was not a bad seat in the house.  So how was it?  I'm happy to report that this place was another win!  We all enjoyed it, including the guys.  Our waitress, Veronica, was wonderful.  We all enjoyed our food.  It was much better than ok.  And the singing was top notch, with some very talented people entertaining us.

Donna has nice pictures and descriptions of the food on her blog here: Florida Picklers  The portions were big enough that I brought home half my meal, to enjoy for lunch the next day.  It was loud while the singers were performing, but there were breaks in between songs, so dinner conversation was still possible.  I really enjoyed our time there and it made it a nice treat for our anniversary.

While we were leaving, I was snapping pictures of the outside when a gentleman asked if I was trying to get a picture of him.  I told him that I sure was, so he posed for me.

 The rest of his party was as amused by him as I was.  What a fun group!

We had a wonderful day, and it was made even better by sharing it with special friends.  Happy Anniversary honey!  Here's hoping for many more years together!

Turkey Feast at Rich and Donna's

Rich and Donna invited Nathan, Ava and I to their place for dinner.  Dinner doesn't really cover it though because she really made a full Thanksgiving feast.   She had so much there, I could even fully remember all she cooked for us so I took this from her blog:
Hors d'oeuvres included fresh carrots, celery and tomatoes with ranch dipping,  and crackers -and cheese.

Pre - dinner cocktails: Your choice of  straberry dacquari, pina colada, marguarita, wine or beer 

Dinner include a 13 lb turkey, beautifully browned and perfectly moist with sausage stuffing, ( that's the dish with the foil still on it!)  mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, fresh rolls and cranberry bread, and cranberry sauce. 

Unfortunately I had to take the pictures from her blog also, because they were not on Nathan's phone when I went to get them.  Not sure what I did wrong there, but I sure am glad that she had some.

This was a wonderful treat for me, because I did not get Thanksgiving dinner this past year due to having strep throat on that day.  Donna more than made up for it because everything was fabulous!

After dinner we headed to the pickleball courts which is always an interesting experience for Donna and I.  We hobbled along, while the guys barely broke a sweat.  We had great fun though!  I love nights like this and we sure have been spoiled by them since we have been at The Villages!

On a completely unrelated note, our poor girl came back from her nightly walk with green feet!  I'm not sure what was on the grass to make her feet look this way but she was not a happy camper and I imagine it is probably not a healthy thing for her to be walking on grass that produces this result:

Buddy and Diane Visit Us at The Villages

We had a visit from some of our favorite people in the world: Buddy and Diane.  They came during the week that Nathan and I went back down to Wauchula, but luckily they waited for us to get back for a night out with them and Rich and Donna.

We headed down to Wildwood to eat at a place that Rich and Donna had been to before, the Cotillion Southern Cafe.

We had dinner reservations at 4:30.  We arrived early enough to peek at the menu that had sitting out front.  It looked like a wonderful country cooking menu to me.  Once we were inside I could see how unique this place really was.  The decorations were so down home and relaxing, right down to our mis-matched dishes at our table.  Most importantly was the food there.  It was very good!  We ordered a variety of dishes and we all agreed that our food was wonderful.  I highly recommend this place to anyone in the area.

We enjoyed our night of fun, food and most important of all: Friends!

Another Fun Night with Rich and Donna

It has been so great to have friends here at The Villages.  It has given me someone to do things with during the day while Nathan works and it has also given us a fun couple to do things together with when Nathan is not working.

Tonight is a great example of that.  First we went out to eat at Olive Garden tonight, enjoying their 2 for $25 special.  Afterwards Rich and Donna invited us to their place this time, and Donna spoiled us with pumpkin cheesecake for desert.  It was delicious!

I think we might have found a game that Rich enjoys, or at least tolerates for the rest of our sake.  Nathan is hoping we will move to Rook shortly because that is his favorite card game.  In the meantime, I am enjoying a game that I sometimes have a shot at winning.

What We've Been Up To

With hundreds of weekly activities available here at The Villages, the hardest part of being here is picking and choosing just what to do each week.  Last year while visiting, Donna introduced me to Bunco.  We have continued playing that together this year.  We have played at Mulberry, Seabreeze and Bacall and Donna has played at Churchill.

We are tackling line dancing, which comes very easily to Donna due to her professional dance background.  Even though I am limping along compared to her, I am really loving it.  Donna snapped this picture the other morning as we were heading out.  We started at 8 am that morning and danced until almost 11 am.

 I have finally moved from the bench to the court with pickleball and my muscles are feeling the effects of that.  It is so dreadful hot and the level of play is so much higher here, so between the two-it is exhausting to play each day.  It is great fun though and I hope that it will improve my game quite a bit.  I can see a huge difference in Nathan's game and his weight already so hoping the same happens with me.

We have enjoyed playing Mexican Train several times, which allows us some "down time" from time to time and is a nice filler in between other activities.  And all of that is just the daytime fun.  At night it is more Bunco, Pickleball and of course-going out to eat.  I am sharing two more of Donna's pictures from some of our eating out trips together.

We are really loving our time here so much!  It was a good decision to spend the summer here!

Happy 4th of July

Earlier this week, we made plans to celebrate Independence Day with Rich and Donna.  That was great news for me because I really enjoy celebrating holidays, and having others around makes it that much better for me.  Last night Aric, Austin and Brittany came to stay with us making my day twice as wonderful.

After the kids arrived, they and Nathan played rook while I started party foods for today.  Today I finished up a few food items, Nathan made pulled pork BBQ and when Donna arrived, she provided three delicious homemade salads to top it off.  We ended up with plenty of good food for everyone.

After our meal, we hung out on the lanai and chatted a bit while the kids played with sparklers.

Next we headed over to Mulberry Recreation Center to play some pickleball.  Miss Ava was so happy that she smiled the whole time.  This is her first visit to the courts since we came here.  Unfortunately we only played one full game and one half game before it started raining.  After Rich and Donna left, we watched a movie together and then ended the night with some Phase 10 fun.  It was a long day, full of fun things and good memories with some of the people we love the most in this world.

Living the life in The Villages!

A Night at Spanish Springs

We have enjoyed our first week here in The Villages.  Nathan has been able to play lots of pickleball and I've been having fun playing bunco and Mexican Train with Donna.  Last night, we finally got to meet up with both Rich and Donna at one of the Town Centers here.  There are three Town Squares here and each one has its own theme.

We had a great dinner at Ay! Jalisco.  Then we walked around Spanish Springs, where the night's live music and dancing was going on.

One of the unique things about The Villages is the golf carts here.  Golf carts are one of the main modes of transportation here, so it is common to see this outside of businesses.

It is so nicely decorated and laid out, that is is pleasant just to walk around and take it in.

After our time here, we headed over for dessert at Ollie's.  It was wonderful and I think we will have to visit both places again while we are here!

YUM is exactly right!  It was a great first week here!  Looking forward to many more.