Living Our Dream

Heading to Pittsburgh for Christmas

Pittsburgh, PA - Events of Wednesday, December 17 to Sunday, December 21, 2014

On Wednesday, December 17, we left Blueberry Hill around 3:00 a.m. and drove the car straight through to Pittsburgh as we usually do for Christmas. Because of the potential for bad weather in the north, we leave the motor home in Florida at and stay with Lora and J. Michael. The drive was about 15½ hours and was fairly uneventful with light traffic, relatively warm temperatures and sun most of the way. The reason we leave at 3:00 a.m. is so we can arrive early in the evening and have time to visit and grab a bite to eat before we head off to bed.

Lydia, who is now 5 months old, has really changed since we saw her in September. She has a whole bunch of new facial expressions, and she has big smiles for everyone. She also is starting to explore the world around her - the sights, the sounds, the touches and the tastes.

Speaking of taste, Lora recently introduced Lydia to cereal - her first solid food. Lydia wasn't too sure about it and ended up spitting most of it out, but Lora will keep trying. It's all part of the learning process.

Lydia and her first taste of cereal

Because of Lydia's growing interest in the world around her, J. Michael created a winter wonderland in their basement family room. In addition to the Christmas tree they have always had in the past, he added overhead lights and built a train platform so he could set up the Lionel train that used to belong to Paul when he was a kid. Lydia likes to see all the lights and to watch the train go 'round and 'round.

Lydia and Lora watching the train

After Lydia watched the train for a while, J. Michael helped her hang a special ornament on the tree commemorating her first Christmas.

J. Michael helping Lydia hang her special ornament

Lydia's Christmas ornament

Even though it was still several days before Christmas, Margery gave Lydia her first gift. She crocheted Lydia a blanket to keep her warm in her car seat. Lydia would be needing it soon as you wil see in our next post.

Lydia's new blanket for her car seat

On Thursday, we took Paul's step mom to lunch at Atria's in the North Hills.

Atria's

Margery, Lora and Paul's step mom

Atria's has sandwiches and lunch entrees from about $9 to $12. Margery had a fillet of cod sandwich, and Paul had a rotisserie chicken wrap. The cod was panko breaded and came with a choice of fries or house-made potato chips. The chicken wrap had lettuce, tomato, mayo, sweet pepper chutney and pepper jack cheese. We both had the house-made chips. Everything was delish!

Rotisserie chicken wrap with house-made chips

On Friday, we headed to Colussy Chevrolet to pick up our new truck. It came in several weeks ago, and they have been holding it for us. While we'll miss our Equinox, the truck is very nice and very comfortable. It rides amazingly well for a vehicle with a payload capacity of over 5,000 pounds. However, it will take a little getting used to the size. It's about 6 inches taller, 12 inches wider, and over 2 feet longer than the ½-ton Silverado Paul used to have before we went full-time.

Our new Silverado 3500HD dually

Paul ordered splash guards and a tonneau cover before we left Florida and had them delivered to Lora and J. Michael's house. He got to work installing the splash guards on Saturday.

New splash guards installed

It was quite cold on Saturday, so Paul waited for it to warm up a couple of degrees and for the sun to peek out a little on Sunday to install the tonneau cover.

Paul tightening the clamps for the tonneau cover side rails

Fastening the Velcro along the sides of the tonneau

We wanted to install the tonneau while we were in Pittsburgh because we didn't know if all our luggage would fit in the back seat on the way back to Florida. This way, the tonneau will help keep the bed dry in case we need it. The cover can be rolled up behind the cab when we're towing.

On Sunday evening, we took Lydia out for a Christmas adventure. We'll tell you about it in our next post.

Merry Christmas

Wishing all our readers a blessed and Merry Christmas.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

Bushnell, FL - Events of Wednesday, December 11, 2014

On Wednesday, we took a walk in the afternoon as we frequently do when we hang around the rig all day. We noticed a big increase in the amount of Christmas decorations from previous years, so we decided to take a rare, after-dark walk that evening to check out the decorations at night.

Now that many people have signed up for the 6-month rate and have sheds in which to store decorations, some have put up some pretty elaborate Christmas displays. Inflatable decorations featuring Santa or snowmen are popular. One site had an inflatable "Merry Christmas" RV in front of their 5th wheel.

Inflatable RV in front of an RV

Spiral Christmas trees are also popular.

Spiral Christmas trees

Speaking of trees, one site has a tree made from see-through ribbon that was lighted from the inside.

Lighted ribbon tree

Many sheds have been decorated with lights and wreaths. The shed in the photo below has a fireplace complete with stockings.

Shed decorated to look like a fireplace

Some of the owners of park models in the campground have always had fairly elaborate Christmas decorations, but now that the RV owners are also getting into the act, a few of the park model owners seem to be stepping up their game. The park model in the next photo has a Christmas tree on the deck, another in the front window, lights on some of their shrubs, and it has a spotlight shining on the large prickly pear cactus in front that is decorated with ornaments.

Park model with decorations on their cactus

The next park model has not only lights all around the roof and deck railing, but it also has a collection of 6 or 8 inflatable decorations off to the right that include Mickey and Minnie.

Park model with lights and 6 or 8 inflatable decorations

The biggest light display has enough lights to read by.

Biggest light display

And where else but Florida would you see a lighted flamingo with a Santa hat as part of a Christmas display?

Lighted flamingo

We enjoyed our after-dark walk, but it was chilly. We headed back to the rig to warm up and watch some TV happy in the knowledge we can enjoy other people's Christmas displays without having to take down and store such elaborate decorations ourselves. Check back after Christmas, and we'll tell you all about our holiday.

Restaurants Revisited

Bushnell, FL - Events of Friday, December 5 to Tuesday, December 9, 2014

At the end of our last post, we mentioned we had already been to most of our favorite area restaurants since we first arrived in Florida a little over a month ago and that we were hoping to hit a few of them again. Well, we made good on that promise.

On Friday, Margery had a hankerin' for fried fish. Beef O'Brady's has a pretty decent fish 'n' chips basket, so that's where we headed for lupper later in the afternoon. It was our second stop of the season at Beef O'Brady's.

Beef O'Brady's

Margery, of course, had the fish 'n' chips, but she substituted onion rings for the fries and had cole slaw for her second side. Paul had a Philly beef and cheese with fries. Everything was yummy as usual.

Margery with her fish 'n' chips onion ring basket

We mostly hung around the campground over the weekend and Monday. On Tuesday, we headed to OakWood Grill with Pat and Mike. It was our third meal this year at OakWood.

OakWood Grill

As we have mentioned, OakWood has a full rack of baby back ribs Sundays through Wednesdays for $13.99 (regularly $15.99), so that's what Pat, Mike and Margery had. Paul decided on a two-meat combo dinner ($11.99) with chopped pork and smoked turkey. He LOVES the turkey, but he was curious about the pork. Pork is usually our "go-to" meal at barbecue restaurants, but neither one of us has never had it in all the many, many times we have gone to OakWood Grill.

Mike, Pat and Margery

The ribs were fall-off-the-bone tender and as delicious as usual. The chopped pork was smokey and tender, but it had a little more fat in it than Paul would have liked. The turkey was outstanding.

We headed back to Blueberry Hill and to our respective rigs after lupper. We'll have another update soon, so stay tuned.

Thanksgiving and Decorating for Christmas

Bushnell, FL - Events of Thursday, November 27 to Monday, December 1, 2014

Although Blueberry Hill had Thanksgiving dinner at the clubhouse, we continued our Thanksgiving tradition of going to Cracker Barrel for dinner. We were happy Pat and Mike could join us this year after a one year hiatus.

Cracker Barrel

Cracker Barrel has a Thanksgiving special that includes turkey and ham, sweet potato casserole, cornbread stuffing, cranberries, biscuits, your choice of one additional side, a drink and pumpkin pie. This year the price was for Thanksgiving dinner was $10.99 - up from $9.99 last year and up from $8.99 the year before. However, it's still a bargain. The food is good, there is plenty of it, you don't have to get up at the crack of dawn to put the turkey in the oven, and you don't have a big mess to clean up afterward.

Cracker Barrel was crowded as it usually is on holidays, but we were seated after only about 20 minutes, which is the fastest we remember ever getting a table in all the years we have been going to Cracker Barrel for holiday meals. The wait for a table is usually about 45 to 50 minutes.

Mike, Pat, Margery and Paul

Dinner was delish! We were all so stuffed, we took our pie with us to enjoy later.

We have kept our Christmas decorations very low key since we have been full-timers because we don't have much storage space. However, now that we have a shed, we wanted to do just a little more decorating for Christmas. We decided to put a wreath on the shed, so the shed turned out to be not only a good place to store the decoration, but it also ended up being a good thing to decorate.

Margery came up with the design idea for the wreath, and we picked up the materials on our recent trip to Old Time Pottery. We started work on the wreath a couple of days before Thanksgiving.

Paul wiring ornaments onto the wreath

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Paul put the wreath up.

New Christmas Wreath

We even added a spotlight to highlight the wreath.

Wreath at night

We did our weekly cleaning chores on Saturday, went to church on Sunday, and pretty much just relaxed the rest of the time over the weekend. On Monday morning, we had a couple of errands to run including a stop at Camping World of Ocala to pick up a new clothes drying rack for the back of our RV. We had an expandable rack that hung on the ladder. It was starting to deteriorate and got rust stains on some of our clothes, so it had to go. The new one is bigger, and the rods that the clothes hang on are stainless steel.

Later on Monday afternoon, we headed over to Beef O'Brady's in Bushnell with Pat and Mike for Burger Monday. Beef O'Brady's is a chain of family-oriented sports bars with over 20 locations in central Florida. On Mondays, Beef O'Brady's features their Build Your Own Burger for $4.99 (regularly $8.99). The price includes one side.

Mike, Pat, Margery and Paul

We have been hungry for burgers since we got to Florida over a month ago. They were as good as we remembered them.

After lupper, we headed back to Blueberry Hill and to our respective rigs. We relaxed with an evening of TV

We are enjoying our time at Blueberry Hill. We have been hanging around the RV relaxing quite a bit; but we have also been working on Christmas projects, working on improvement projects around our site and working on slowly cleaning out the motor home. In addition, we have already been to most of our favorite restaurants in the area, and we're looking to hitting some of them again. Stay tuned.