Lots of Stuff

I can't believe its been a month since I last wrote!

The week that my sister, her husband and my brother were here just flew right by. Having so many hands helping made the task of cleaning out my mother's house so much easier. The hardest part was deciding what to keep and what to let go. Looking at the myriad of pictures also took a lot of time, and brought back many childhood memories, as well as several "who is this?" questions. At any rate, once we packed up our memorabilia, sorted out the trash, there was still a lot of used but functional items. I called the local Habitat for Humanity chapter, and they sent over a truck and took everything we didn't want to keep: furniture, clothing, kitchenware, knick-knacks. It was one of my mother's favorite charities so we felt good that so many of her things would be helping other people. After having the carpets cleaned, and the house and driveway powerwashed, the house is now ready to be listed for sale. A major hurdle is jumped at this point, and I am so glad my siblings were able to take the time to come down and help out.

Our Solitude fifth wheel spent almost three weeks at Lazydays being serviced and having some warranty items fixed. Unfortunately, we had to pick it up to leave on our Disney family reunion before everything was completed, so it had to go back today. The jury is still out on how satisfied we are with Lazydays' service; we are not happy with how long it took them to deal with Grand Design, especially as we had already laid the groundwork in communicating with their customer service department the issues we have been having with the light fixtures and the theater seats. Plus there were some items on the servicing that were supposed to have been done that didn't get done. Upon our return of our rig to the service department today, we made it known that we are not at this point satisfied customers, and expect all items to be completed promptly. We shall see.

I had all intentions of writing blogs during our family reunion at Disney World; it didn't happen :-)! I also had all good intentions of taking my camera along every day; didn't happen :-)!

We always have a wonderful time getting together with Al's cousins and our friends. Jim and Judy, friends from New York who have relocated to North Carolina, have survived the 2014 reunion and are now "adopted" into the group. And this year we had RV friends, Dan and Jonell Anderson ( Liv2RV) join us for our second week. They too are now officially "adopted"! Jonell is starting to write about their experience visiting Disney World as first time visitors, and I urge you to tag along with her, she is a wonderfully entertaining writer.

Disney seems like it is a perfect place to gather. The campground at Disney, Fort Wilderness, although pricey, is the nicest campground we've ever been to. Sites are big, spacious and private. The grounds are immaculate, comfort stations squeaky clean. We have a nice, 1.7 mile loop walk with the dogs twice a day, and for those puppies that enjoy romping in dog parks, there's a really nice large one here for them. Casey is too much of a chicken to run around dog parks, so we don't take him there anymore! We all enjoy spending time at each of the four parks comprising the World, and spend many a good meal together in the myriad of restaurants on property. We also have an enjoyable Superbowl Sunday get together at the campground, having a potluck dinner and watching the game. And Disney is pretty good exercise; for those folks following along the current activity of "counting steps", we averaged between 18000 and 21000 steps a day without really trying :-)!

The cast of characters: Al's cousins: Fred, Kathy, Bill and Denise. Al's sisters Ginny and Susie. New York friends Jim, Judy and Patti. RV friends Dan and Jonell. The Beast was our host for dinner at the Be Our Guest restaurant in the Magic Kingdom. Reservations for this fine French dining experience must be made 180 days in advance as soon as the phone lines open for the day and are difficult to come by. 

We all went on rides...

saw shows like Finding Nemo

and Festival of the Lion King.

The Safari is always a favorite attraction.

We enjoyed many great meals, like this shrimp tempura dish at the Yak and Yeti restaurant.

Several of our group got their thrills on roller coasters such as Expedition Everest...not me!!

One night a few of us joined Dan and Jonell over at the Magic Kingdom for the 

Main Street Electrical Parade. This parade has always been my favorite and I love seeing it.

Fireworks over the castle, a great way to end an evening.

But, one of my favorite things of all.....Disney cupcakes!!!

This was really just a quick, random sampling of all we see and do while at the World for 12 days. As an RV traveler who enjoys getting out into the country, hiking and kayaking the solitary trails far from the maddening crowds, it may seem a little odd that we love the crowded mass that is Walt Disney World. But for sheer fantasy, fun and letting go of the "real" world, Disney does it for us, for a short while. I guess that's why we keep going back :-)