Wednesday, February 6, 2013

A Birthday, Mardi Gras, and Party, Party, Party!

Well, someone's got to do this!  You know, someone has to stay up North in the cold and snow, and someone has to be here in the South, enjoying the sun and warm weather.  Well, O.K., so we've had a few days with rain and wind and cooler temps.  But not one snowflake!  (When we sold our house way back in '07, the "his 'n her" snow shovels remained in their assigned slots in the garage tool rack so the new homeowner could enjoy them.)

Since my last entry, we've been living our standard routine here at Rainbow Plantation in beautiful LA (that's Lower Alabama).  I'm up early most days for line dancing.  I'm leading the Tuesday/Thursday class, so I need to stay on my toes (literally) to keep up with the class.  On Wednesdays, I try to make it down to the Foley Senior Center for the class there each week.   Jim fits in a laundry day every week, and I still use that time to do some cleaning.  We had to do a little yard work here, borrowed the weed trimmer and trimmed things up a bit around our site.  The maintenance guys won't trim right up to the rigs, too much chance of some kind of trouble if they do.  That's OK with us, we'd rather do any close trimming ourselves.

On one of our outings to the water, we came across this fellow:


This picture was taken at one of our favorite spots along Mobile Bay - Mullet Point Park:


Oh, yes, I did celebrate a recent birthday.  Last Tuesday, about 14 of us gathered at our nearby favorite grill, Big Daddy's where we enjoyed a variety of shrimp, fish, hamburgers, and Philly style cheese steak sandwiches.  Our friend, Joann Forsythe managed to sneak a chocolate cake in to the restaurant's kitchen!  Not only was it my birthday, but it was also Ginny's birthday, the day before Roberta's birthday, and Al and Janet's anniversary.  All in all, a great day for a celebration.  Which birthday?  Well, there's a Beatles song that commemorates my age...  one line in the song starts off something like this..."will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm blank-blank-4?

Here's the group at Big Daddy's.  It's hard to see everyone, but starting at the right front, there's Ginny, Danielle, Darrell, me, Joann, George and Gregg.  On the left front is Jack, Judy and Keith.



Another view, in the lower left is Ginny, moving left is Jack, Judy Keith Roberta, Janet and Al.  On the right front is Danielle.


In this area of the country, at this time of year, we're all gearing up for the Mardi Gras celebration as well.  Saturday evening we attended our first-ever Mardi Gras parade over in Fairhope, Alabama.  This was a family-friendly parade with bands, floats and lots of beads, toys and Moon Pies getting tossed our way.  We had a great time and came home with a big bag full of goodies.

This was one of many very highly decorated floats.  We had to pay more attention to what was being tossed to us than how beautiful the floats were!



The rest of our celebrations will likely take place here at the Plantation, as there are dinners, lunches, skits and parades here.  Yes, I'm signed up to take a part in one of the many comedy skits that will be performed.  Maybe I'll be a famous You-tube sensation (gee, I hope not!).

Our friends, Judy and Darrell Patterson, have recently given up their ERPU lot here to take possession of their very own 1/2 acre lot.  With that and one other lot recently given up, we've moved up a whole 2 places on the waiting list - at last check, we're now #14 on the list.  We talked to one of the couples very close to the top of the list, they've been waiting 5 years so far.  Since we've just started our 3rd year on the list, it could be awhile before we make that #1 spot on the list.  That's OK, we'll just keep the wheels rolling for now.

Speaking of rolling the wheels, we're beginning to take a look at our spring and summer plans.  So far, it looks like we'll crank up the Cummins and head towards New Orleans and points beyond around mid-March.  Stay tuned for more details as we figure them out.  I think we've got some fun events coming up!

On the way home from the Foley Senior Center Line Dance Class today, I got a call from Mike over at the Patterson's.  Seems they were whipping up some frozen Margaritas and needed a little assistance consuming them.  Sign us up!  We made it before they melted away to nothing (the Margarita's, not the Pattersons or Everinghams), so we got to enjoy a chilled drink and some really entertaining company this afternoon.

Jim grilled salmon fillets on cedar planks for dinner this evening, just another great time in Alabama!