Disney Days

Our family reunion at Walt Disney World is finally over, another year in the books. This reunion has become very important to Al's family, as none of us are getting any younger. We are pretty much "the babies" of the group, and it is wonderful to get together with his family and some friends for this 12 days every winter. I will fully admit, however, that 6 days at Disney, a weeks' break, then 12 more days at Disney has put me on "Disney overload"; I truly did not think such a thing was possible, but, there you have it! I think we are finally rested up, and am ready to write about our stay.

The cast of characters, from left to right:

Cousin Denise, BFF Patti, Al's sister Ginny, Cousin Bill, Al, friends Jimmy and Judy, and Al's sister Susie, who, being different, is the only one in front of the sculpture. Absent from the picture that morning were cousins Fred and Kathie, and myself. One day we had a visit from our friends Dan and Jonell as well (who spent time with us here last year).

We always have a great time, going on rides, watching shows, and, of course, going out to dinner! Doesn't it seem as if the older you get, more social occasions revolve around food?? Some restaurants are tradition for us. The first night we always go to the restaurant at Fort Wilderness campground, The Trail's End. It is a buffet, and actually one of the better deals for your dinner-dining budget here in the World. We go the breakfast each trip over at The Polynesian Hotel, at The Kona Cafe, where we have picture-taking fun each year.

Cousin Bill makes sure he has a photo op with each group of cousins, as well as a table of complete strangers! So far, he has always found a table willing to play along with him. It sure has family members not traveling with us scratching their heads, wondering who those folks are :-).

I will say, planning a trip to Disney is getting more and more complicated. The more popular restaurants need to be reserved 180 days in advance, although we've had some luck at short-notice reservations at times. That's mainly due to the fact that many of our favorite spots to eat are off the beaten path, and we do tend to eat at off-peak times sometimes. Plus, many of the table service restaurants are getting darn expensive! We've learned to eat out for a late lunch, then just have a simple meal for dinner back at the campground. We also eat most breakfasts at the campsite, and this year I brought my own water bottle into the parks, partly to make sure I stay hydrated and partly to save money. Really, a bottle of water costs $2.50, so if you buy only one per day, that's $30.00 over the 12 days!

There's also the matter of rides now. Many of the rides are so popular that the wait times to ride them can be obnoxiously long. You can now actually reserve times to go on up to three rides a day, 60 days in advance, if you are staying at a Disney property. The downside to this is that you have to try and figure out WHICH park you want to go to and each particular day, and what TIME you think you want to go on that ride. It's nice to get out of a long wait line, but it really takes away the spontaneity of each day. I haven't decided if I truly like it or not. I am so grateful to Al for taking the time to plan out the schedule for each day, coordinating restaurant reservations with ride reservations, and keeping us all together as much as possible. The 60 day mark comes right at peak season at Amazon, and I can barely keep my mind together just for regular daily functioning, never mind coordinating all that :-).

The nice part of having so many days at Disney is that we are able to spend at least two days in each park, enabling a slower, more relaxed pace. Being Disney veterans of many, many years, we have our favorite rides and shows that we always like to see, and we always try and see any new attractions that have opened over the past year. My favorite this year was in EPCOT, at the Imagination pavilion. The former attraction, Captain EO, was retired, and a brand new 3D movie called Pixar Shorts was brought into the theatre. The animation was wonderful, and I highly recommend going to see it if you headed that way.

A new adventure this year was a trip off-property, to the World of Chocolate on International Drive. I had seen a Groupon for 1/2 price admission, so I thought it would be interesting. The museum was very interesting, with a tour guide telling us the history of chocolate, starting with the first liquid version that the Pre-Columbian Mexicans used to drink. The taste was very bitter, not at all what everyone was expecting! At the end of the tour, you exited into the gift shop and cafe, where there was a myriad of chocolate delectables to choose from. 

Of course, we selected a small box of chocolates to take home, and devoured the most delicious triple chocolate mousse right there in the cafe. I would go back there just for that!

It was a wonderful time, and came to an end too soon, as we said our fond farewells to everyone. We are already planning next year's trip, which we are actually cutting down to 8 nights. We are finding we are getting more and more busy each winter, and, let's face it, Disney is getting pretty pricey. I still love it, but I do feel as if they are really starting to push the envelope with how expensive everything is. We may even, *gasp!* start investigating other areas to have our reunion. Time will tell.

Back home, we've been getting down to business. We had some maintenance to do on the fifth wheel, and stayed at the Escapees campground in Bushnell for a few nights to accomplish these tasks. We really wanted to give it a good cleaning inside and outside. While Al worked on some outside projects, I cleaned and sorted, finishing with a good scrubbing of the wood floors, then moving the furniture off the carpets and cleaning the carpets with a cleaning machine we rented from Publix for the day. It did a really good job. We also had ourselves weighed (the rig, that is) while there, and were quite pleased to find we are well within our limits, and the trailer itself is about 1400 lbs. under the GVWR. The insurance adjuster had come out to inspect the blow-out damage to the sidewall, and approved the estimate for the repair. I was thrilled to death that once the parts were ordered from Grand Design, the repair shop (Register RV in Brooksville) had them in-hand in a week, and we are scheduled next week for the work to be done. I will have to say, I am extraordinarily pleased with the customer service we have received from Grand Design, and so far Register RV has been head-and-shoulders above Lazydays. We haven't had to wait two hours just to speak with a service representative, they have been on top of the work order, and always return a phone call. 

We are currently in the middle of entertaining visitors from New York. My brother and his fiancee arrived last week and stayed for several days. It was very nice getting to know Dottie, and we will be heading back to Long Island in October for the wedding. We currently have our good friend and Al's golfing buddy Ed here for the next week, and yes, there is a lot of golf going on! After Ed leaves, we have a few things on schedule, with Al needed some Mohs surgery on a spot of basal cell on his forehead. We also plan on a day at EPCOT for the Flower and Garden Festival, and March 17 we leave for a week with the trailer for a visit to Curry Hammock State Park in the Florida Keys. 

Our departure date from Florida is set for April 5, and we will be visiting several spots along the coast before heading out west. At this time we have the following plans set in place:

4/5 - 4/8: St. Augustine, FL

4/8 - 4/12: Savannah, GA

4/12 - 4/16: Charleston, SC

4/16 - 4/20: Asheville NC

4/20 - 4/27: Kentucky Horse Park, Lexington, KY

4/27 - 4/29: Lithia Springs COE, IL

Driving....

5/4 - 5/9: Custer State Park, SD

5/10 - 5/13: Cody, WY

Arriving to the ranch around 5/14.

That should bring everyone up-to-date with our activities and plans at this time! We hope the winter is being kind to everyone, and I will have more to post after our trip to the Keys :-).

Family and Friends

January has been a very enjoyable month for us this year, with much socializing. We have seen so many of our friends since arriving back to Florida, and we have had lots of family time. We even managed to get quite a few of the chores checked off our list as well. So, what have we been up to??

Our annual prime rib dinner was held New Year's Day, as is tradition. Our friends John and Carol Herr drove up from Sanibel Island to join us for the weekend.

The 7-rib cut of beef...the star of the show.

The table was ready for some serious eating.

Christmas cookies for dessert. 

Not only was the food excellent as always, but it was a wonderful time as well. Our entire Florida family had gathered, and welcomed John and Carol into the fold. 

The following week we gathered for another dinner with our friends Pat and Diana Brown, Bonnie and Richard Waltman (both RV couples we've met on the road) and old friends from New York, Alan and Sharon Babula. The stories flowed and we had a great time again. I apologize for the fuzzy pictures :-).

In between socializing, we worked on getting some of our problems resolved. Al ordered a new converter and two new 6-volt AGM batteries for the trailer, and spent a day getting those replaced. While he was working on that, he discovered a small leak on our "Kantleak" valves, and got that fixed as well. After doing some research on tires, we decided to replace our Westlakes with 16" Goodyear G614's, which have a higher load rating than the OEM tires we had. We checked around a few places in the area, and after getting a recommendation from a local RV dealer, we had Homosassa Tire do the work. They were competitively priced, and their location was very easy for us to get in and out with the rig. Being as big as we are, that was an important consideration :-). The last item at the moment was getting an estimate for the repair of the siding that the blowout damaged, and we took the rig down to Register RV in Brooksville, FL. The estimate came in just under $2,000.00, so we have put a claim in through our insurance and are currently awaiting for that to be finalized. 

Up next on our agenda was a 6-night stay at Fort Wilderness. My sister and her family were down for a vacation, so we headed on over to spend some time with them. We haven't seen our niece and nephew in well over a year, so we were very appreciative of having some down time to spend with them. Fort Wilderness has to be our very favorite campground of all time. I sure wish we could afford to spend the winter here :-)!!

My sister Amy, husband Mike, Mother-in-law Nina, and Sammie and Johnathan. 

We had a lot of fun meeting characters, Baloo and King Louie were great fun.

Of course, we had to go on all the rides!

Mike ran the half and full marathons, and has the Goofy medal to prove it :-)!

We met the big star himself one night at dinner,

while the chipmunks kept busy harassing Mike after he told them he was "allergic to rodents".

We went to see some shows, and really enjoyed the "Flights of Wonder" show. Hope, an American Bald Eagle, is always a favorite.

We also went on safari! This is one of my favorite attractions, and I found the hippos particularly amusing this time.

All too soon, it was time to say farewell. It won't be quite as long between visits to my family this year, as we will be returning to Long Island in October to help celebrate my brother Bill's wedding. It will be so nice to be back in our home town for a few days, and at the best time of year for visiting the area.

Back home for a week, and we both had dentist appointments (I just needed a cleaning, Al has to have a wisdom tooth extracted), Al had his annual cardiologist appointment (he's doing great), and I started working on our end of year paperwork and setting up the budget for this year. Am I the only one that always goes over budget?? I sure hope not :-). Al's sister Susie from Texas arrived, and we started getting prepared for our next round at Disney with Al's family. We also found time to go over to Chassa Oaks (an RV community about ten minutes away) where our friends Bonnie and Richard own a lot, and take a peek at their new Classy Chassis truck hauler....it's really nice :-). We had our friends Sue and Larry Hatton over one night for dinner, and spent the customary five hours plus with them catching up. 

So, last Sunday we headed back south for another stay at Fort Wilderness, this time for 12 nights, for the annual cousins' reunion. This is a much more laid-back vacation at Disney, as we are all (ahem) older adults and the emphasis is more on just spending time together and catching up than on the rides and attractions. I feel truly blessed to have married into such a warm and caring family. The time we spend together is great fun and we look forward to it every year.

That's all for now. I will get some pictures up of our stay here and the fun times we are having, and then it's on to another month!

!! Happy New Year !!

Homosassa, Florida

Sunny, high 80's :-)

Well, it has been awhile, hasn't it! I guess there's two months of stuff I need to catch up on.

We have finished our fifth season at Amazon, 9 weeks this time, and have made it home for the winter. It was an interesting and busy season at Amazon this year. As I stated in my first post, the Campbellsville facility is switching over from holding just about anything you can imagine in the warehouse, to mainly apparel. You can find everything from the cheapest chinese socks to high-end wedding gowns. The facility was just emerging from a massive renovation job to accommodate this change in product, and my position in the Receiving department provided immediate overtime as we were kept quite busy with incoming product to fill up all the empty bins and racks in the pick mods. I'd been working 55 hours over the course of 6 nights for a few weeks, so I hope that gives me sufficient excuse to have missed writing blogs :-). Around Thanksgiving the influx of product started slowing, but by then the outbound end of things were starting to pick up, so workers in our department were being moved around to assist production in other departments. I worked in several departments this year, being trained in Receive Prep (my original department), Receive (all items already packaged and tagged), Stow ( putting away all those items in the pick mods), ICQA (basically verifying the content of the bins in the pick mods are correct), and finally Packing. Luckily I was never assigned to Shipping Parties, which involved people from our department stacking the orders in the mail trucks during the breaks the regular shipping department took. By December it is an endless flow of packages, so the work never stops! I wasn't thrilled at the prospect as I hate being around those tractor trailer trucks, so I was happy I was never involved in that.

I won't bore everyone with a long-winded description of the season, but we do have a few random observations for those thinking they may want to work there next season.

-The new online application process is tedious and confusing. We haven't worked through it yet for next year, but I'm sure it hasn't gotten any easier or fun since last year. Those of us who have worked there before actually had a ten day exclusive time period to apply for next year, but no, we haven't done it yet. Yes, we fully plan on returning, but don't see a need to get it done immediately, especially while you are still working there and so tired you can't see straight. Now we are in the middle of the holidays with family and friends, so will probably deal with it in a few weeks.

-The drug screening process and start time notifications were horrible this year. We were notified of our start date less than three weeks prior to start. The paperwork for our drug screen came while we were in the midst of traveling, and was difficult to pin down a spot within the three day time frame we had to get it done. It was a real problem this year, and I was annoyed with it, especially in the fact that the nearest place I could get it done was over 2 1/2 hours drive away. We did it, but I'm sure hoping it gets easier next year. 

-I did enjoy my department this year, and felt the training for it was ok; not great, but adequate. There were plenty of nice folks in the receive department as well that were always willing to answer any questions. My managers were great, and always kept things fairly fun, and were very generous giving out gift cards and thanks for doing a good job. This is not so in many other departments. And I found that once we were being moved around to different departments, the training was sketchy at best. If I hadn't already had experience in packing, I would have had a much more difficult time of it. I was pretty lost in Stow, having never worked in the pick mods and pretty much had no clue where anything was. I always felt like a little mouse being stuck in a maze :-). 

-Al had a more difficult time this year in AmCare, in that there was no Area Manager in place when he arrived, so it was hard trying to pin down what his schedule was going to be. About halfway through the season he was finally settled into set nights and hours, for the most part. We ended up without a single night off together this season. That is nice in that the dogs need less pet-sitting, but we end up doing a lot of the chores separately. One nice perk we get now is after we work 320 hours we receive 5 hours of paid time off that we can take, so one night I took off the last five hours of my shift that he was off, and another night he took off a couple of hours at the beginning of shift to go out to dinner with a group of our friends when I was off. 

-Green River Lake State Park was much more enjoyable this year without the tree cutting going on! Once again it was a quiet, beautiful sanctuary away from the hectic world of Amazon. All the people who work there are so nice, we continue to love staying there, and will be back there again next fall. I know a common complaint we hear that it is so far away from the warehouse, but I have timed the commute, and from the time I would clock out from work in the middle of the building until I walked into my trailer was a total of 20 minutes. I don't think that is so awful :-).

-We always enjoy meeting up with old friends, and again we met many new friends. Coming back to Campbellsville each fall feels like coming back to a "homebase". 

Working at Amazon is definitely an interesting experience. Its not for everyone, that's for sure, but we seem to deal with it well enough and it provides a nice cash infusion into the old checking account. So while we are physically capable of doing the job, I feel we will keep going back. Nine weeks is quite long enough, however! 

Green River Lake State Park, our "fall home".

We had a late departure from Amazon this year. Actually, we always sign a contract to work through December 23, but prior to this year we have always been released around the 20th or 21st. Things were proving to be a little different this year, and right up to December 18th we still didn't have a date set for our release. By then we had figured we were going right to the end, so we called our family and told them we wouldn't be there for Christmas Eve this year, and probably wouldn't get there until Saturday. We didn't want them waiting till the last minute with plans, hoping we'd be there, so they could get on with it for headcounts. I consoled myself, figuring there was a couple more days of salary coming in at any rate, and we'd have Christmas dinner when we got there. 

Of course, when I went in to work that Friday 12/18, at our meal break we were informed the next night, Saturday, would be our last night! Al  had a choice, he could leave that night with me, or work two more nights and leave Monday with the bulk of the workampers. Since we had already made the decision we wouldn't be home until Saturday, he worked the extra two nights. We ended up leaving Green River Lake State Park Thursday morning. Wednesday was a terrible weather day that we didn't want to deal with. It all turned out for the best as our friend Laura hitched up to go home and found a leak in her brake line, so we were able to help her out with that and get her truck to a service shop for repairs. Normally we would have been gone before her :-). 

Thursday turned out to be a great travel day, and we headed out around lunch after getting Laura back to town when her truck was ready. We had an easy trip down through Tennessee to Chattanooga, where we picked up I75. I could tell from that point on that we were traveling closer to the holiday as the traffic was much busier all the way to Florida than we've seen previously. We made it to Cartersville GA, just north of Atlanta, where we stopped for the night, figuring to tackle Atlanta on Christmas Day.

The trip around Atlanta went quite smoothly, thank goodness. The whole day was going pretty well, actually, except I was thinking there really was a lot of debris and garbage along the roadway. Everything just looked really messy and dirty, and I figured that was from the first storm front that had passed through that we waited for. We got just south of Perry, Georgia, when our smooth day went awry. Watching a tire blowout from behind is quite horrifying, in how spectacular it looked. Yes, the front driver side trailer tire blew. These things really annoy me, because we constantly check the tire pressure, make sure its right, keep our speed at 60mph or lower, and it still happens. Inspecting the other three tires they all look fine, just as this one did when we left. I'm wondering if there was some debris in the roadway we didn't notice. Being Christmas Day, he figured it would be faster and easier to change it himself rather than call roadside assistance, so that's what he did. I wasn't thrilled, with the way traffic was zipping by and not moving over like you're supposed to, and I tried calling the state highway police for traffic assistance; do you know how hard it is to get hold of the police without calling 911?? Whatever happened to operator assistance? It took me about 20 minutes to finally reach the state highway police department, and an officer showed up just as Al was tightening the lugnuts. He was very nice, and did make sure we were set, then took off after a car that seemed like it had to be doing 100mph as it went by us without moving over....hope he got a ticket!

Alas, it doesn't end there. We got back on the road, then stopped at a rest area that was about 5 miles down the highway just to check everything over good while in a safe spot. At some point I had our iphone out, and apparently left it on the truck bed when we pulled away from the rest area. We had decided to stop in Cordele, just up the highway for the night, and discovered the phone missing when we arrived. We did find it, back at the exit ramp to the rest area, completely demolished. Boy, was I angry at myself for that one! We do have insurance on it, and it has been replaced, but I must say, you feel quite naked without your phone :-). 

We were also having some battery/converter issues with the trailer, and the decision has been made to put in a new battery and converter. Once that is done, I will write about what his decision was and what the replacements are. I'm quite lost with all he has been researching, so I'll probably let him write that :-). So, for Christmas, Santa is bringing us (late) a new battery, new converter, new tires, a new phone, and repair work to the wheel well skirting. Not what I would have liked, but, you do what needs to be done....fix it and move on, as my friend Teresa says!

Saturday was a beautiful day to finish our drive, and we arrived home late afternoon. We have the trailer in storage for a couple of weeks, and are all moved back into the house for the winter. We have been busy fixing things and straightening things out, but are now ready for our annual big family New Year's Day dinner of prime rib that we host each year. All our Florida family will be here, and our dear friends John and Carol Herr are driving up from Sanibel Island to join us for this year's festivities. It should be a great and relaxing time. After that, we have lots planned for this winter, starting with a trip to Disney January 10 to spend the week with my sister's family, then another 12 days at Disney starting January 24 for the annual reunion with Al's family. So January is pretty full, and I'll be dusting off the camera and getting some pictures out here for you. Maybe even a review of our year soon...it was a good one! And we're looking forward to an awesome 2016 :-).