More Christmas Fun

We had such a great time with the family in St Augustine.I'm going t try to post some of the videos we took. Many are too large to post here so I'll have to post on my Tails From Tennessee Youtube page.

https://youtu.be/Ma1pwhmyIN0

Maryann sent Emma a new baby doll and she loved it.
https://youtu.be/X5Bw6GNEhXQ

We gave Trevor a Thomas the Train and they both had a great time with it,
https://youtu.be/bQGjBUCpPNE

More Thomas
https://youtu.be/paJPyBi1Wd4

David Meyer gave the kids an electric car and they had great fun with it.
https://youtu.be/9wv6VeuXBrE

https://youtu.be/XmmAjEXK-4I


I'll try to post more pictures tomorrow.

A Wonderful Christmas

We arrived in St Augustine on Christmas Eve Day. After picking up our rental car we headed for North Beach campground. As you can see Finnegan and Bentley enjoyed the ride.

We love this campground. It is woodsy and close to restaurants and both the river and the beach. We could only get 3 days here, so will will have to move to another CG on out last day. All the CGs are full due to the holidays and the snowbirds. We had reserved a Toyota Corolla at Enterprise, but when we got there they said they were out of smaller cars and would we mind taking a Lincoln SUV. I told them they might have to twist my arm, but OK. Nice ride.

We walked over the Aunt Katie's for lunch after checking in the CG. The food and the views are always good here.

We were anxious to see Najla and Ryan's new house. It is so nice, lots of room with a separate playroom off the family room for the kids. Fully fenced back yard for the kids and pets. Four bedrooms, and lots of space.

Christmas Eve was very nice. Najla's parents live in JAX and came down to spend the holidays. It was so nice to see them again. Christmas morning all the presents were there from Santa and everyone opened their gifts. What fun.

 We gave Emma a Princess nightgown which she wore all day. This is one of many Princess dresses she has and wears to a frazzle..

                                     
                                                     GiGi sent her a new baby doll which she loved.

Trevor is taking a break from opening his gifts. That's really hard work.

Santa brought them a dollhouse and they can both play at the same time. I love Ryan's Indian head dress feather.

                                            Emma got a new bicycle with training wheels.

 
    Trevor, after his diaper change went streaking thru the house and outside.

 More pictures later.

GETTING READY FOR CHRISTMAS IN ST. AUGUSTINE

We will be headed for St Augustine for the Christmas holiday. You can see how much Nickie is anticipating the trip.

In preparation, we are making a batch of our traditional Crock Pot Christmas Crack. Lots of it to share with friends and family.

Bentley and Nickie waiting for us to pack up and get started. Finnegan is no where to be found.

It took us most of Tuesday to get everything loaded into the motor home. Multiple trips to the store for items we needed to take, groceries and kitty food. We decided to load up in the storage facility, spend the night there and get an early start on Wednesday morning. We thought this might help Finnegan to get all settled in before we hit the road. We were wrong. Getting him into the kitty carrier and to the motor home without throwing up was unsuccessful. He threw up on the way and again the next morning. Poor kitty. He's just so nervous, but once he settles in he is just fine.

We drove until we reached the campground in Lake Park, Ga at about 3 PM. This was a new campground for us and very, very nice. It is at Grassy Pond which is the Moody Air force Base recreational facility. It is open to the public and has lots of amenities. The prices was about half of what we normally pay and was a very quiet relaxing campground. Due to all of the rain everything was very wet so we couldn't take Bentley for a walk. It is definitely one we would stay at again.

Lots of space between camp sites, large mossy oak trees. There was a 3.1 mile walking trail through the woods. The sign below says to watch for snakes, alligators and poisonous plants. YEP now we are almost in Florida--just 5 miles from the State line.

Next door there was someone in a trailer that lives there full time based on the number of plants and outside patio items. Also, their little black and white kitty came out to see Bentley and Nickie sitting in our bedroom window. The little black kitty kept blinking "hello" to our 2. He must have been happy to make some new friends.

Finnegan was all stretched out on the back of the couch in his favorite spot.

For dinner our first night out we had homemade chili and cornbread. Great camping meal for a rainy night.

Thursday we are headed to St Augustine.

Delayed Posting of St Augustine Trip

Since I've been under the weather, I never finished posting about our trip to SA.
 On Sunday the kids came over to the campground and we did hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. We sat outside on the picnic table while the kids played on  their trikes & bikes.

It is so cute how Trevor does everything that Emma does.

We had a very large campsite this time, so there was plenty of room for the kids to play in the dirt. Even 2 of the kitties were out in their play pen watching it all.

Tuesday was Najla's birthday, so Monday night we wanted to take them out to dinner with the restaurant being Najla's choice. She decided on Columbia Restaurant.

This restaurant and the one in Tampa has been around since 1905 and has a lot of history.

 I had never eaten at the one in Tampa, but now this is twice for the one in SA. It does not disappoint.  The decor is beautiful with white tablecloths, paintings, statues,and Spanish tiles. The waitstaff was excellent and the food wonderful. Najla's parents Pam and Randy were able to join us for dinner also. It was so nice to see them since we hadn't seen them since the wedding.

We had a great meal and a great time in SA. There is just so much to see there and we really didn't see much of what is has to offer. We did have a great time visiting with the kids.

The next weekend Najla and Ryan went to Washington Oaks State Park and sent us some pictures of the kids. I just have to post a couple since we did such a lousy job getting good pictures of them while we were there.

                                           Trevor's idea of "smelling" the flower. Love it.

And so we bid farewell to SA until our next visit there.

A Great Visit to St Augustine

We had a great visit to St Augustine except for the fact that I came down with a horrible cold or the flu. It started with a sore throat, sinus congestion, chills, fever and a horrible cough which is still hanging on. I thought it was just a cold at the time, so I tried to limit my time with Ryan, Najla and the kids so I wouldn't share all of that fun with them. We did get to see them however.

On Friday night we went over to their house. Najla was off that day and she and the kids were making pizza for diner. The kids had on the cutest little aprons to help make the pizza. Too bad I didn't get a good picture of that. I did get a picture of David reading Emma a story. She is just so cute.

On Friday David & I went to St George St, a pedestrian street with lots of small shops, restaurants and people. We had lunch at the Columbia Restaurant which had authentic Cuban cuisine. David had a Cuban sandwich and I had a meatloaf sandwich. Even though we ordered sandwiches they brought each of us a half a loaf of Cuban bread. If you've never had fresh baked Cuban bread it is wonderful. By the time our sandwiches came with were full of bread and water.

David also enjoyed a bowl of black beans & rice.

The restaurant had some great tile work. Good quilt inspiration.

On Saturday they all came over to our MH and we went to lunch at Aunt Kate's. Maryann came up from Ocala to join us. It was an early lunch and we ate out on the porch. Afterward, the kids played a little in the water.

Saturday we went to A1A Aleworks for dinner. Being Saturday it was a bit of a wait, but the food was good and we had a nice view of the Lion's Bridge.

Trevor a Emma really enjoyed their mac & cheese followed by ice cream for desert.

St Augustine Visit

We left home headed for St Augustine for a few days. The kitties took a little while to settle in, but are now totally relaxed. Nicholas had a fun time enjoying his video in his bunk.

Last night we had dinner at Aunt Kate's which sits on the back property of the campground we are staying at. We had a great meal and walked out onto the dock to take in the beautiful views.

Today, we'll try a little site seeing.

The Miller Moth Infestation of 2015

We stopped at a KOA CG in Wakeeney, Kansas on our way home. It  was a nice CG with few trees and NO SHADE because it was in the middle of the Kansas plains and pretty hot and boring. The CG was OK, your typical CG, but due to the heat we didn't sit outside with the kitties at all.

David noticed a couple of moths in the grass, but no big deal. He didn't think any thing about a couple of moths on the Kansas prairie.. Well, it was a huge BIG DEAL. The next morning after we pulled in the slides and started heading for the next stop in Oak Grove, Missouri we noticed more, and more and more moths inside the MH. They were at the windows, the door, on the ceiling and flying around the MH. We opened some windows to let them out, swapped them and did whatever we could do to let them out. Little did we know this was the tip of the iceberg. It was a very frustrating drive because no matter what you did there were more and more and more of them. If you got rid of 1 there were 10 more to take it's place. They were hiding in dark areas in the MH or in the windows.

When we stopped in Oak Grove David went out to hook up the MH. When he opened the bays thousands and thousands of moth flew out of each one. It was like a swarm of bats coming out of a cave or a swarm of bees. Unfortunately they were not all flying out. Thousands more were hunkered down inside of everything we had stored in the bays. Some were dead, but most were just asleep or looked dead until something stirred  them up and they started swarming about. And that was on the outside of the MH.

On the inside a similar scenario was going on. When we opened the slides we found hundreds of them that were inside under the slide section. We spent hours vacuuming up as many as we could. they were hiding every where. They were around all the windows, behind everything and on the ceiling. As soon as you thought you had them all there were hundreds more. This went on most of the evening.

We read on the Internet that since they were attracted to light, if you put a bowl of soapy water underneath the light they would fly into the bowl and drown. We set this up in the kitchen and within minutes had a full bowl of them. This is when we THOUGHT there were only a couple left in the MH. We did it again and caught about 75-100 more. We went to bed thinking we would catch the rest by morning.

The kitties got me up at 5:45 and when I went into the kitchen there were 12 or so still flying around the light with hundreds dead in the water. As soon as I went to add more water to the bowl hundreds more flew out from around the window.  We set up a new bowl of water, but now it is daylight and many of them are more interested in the windows than the bowl.  UGHHHH I guess will be entertaining moths for the rest of the day at least or better put THEY WILL BE ENTERTAINING US.

It could be worse. It could be bats, or cockroaches or mosquitoes instead of a million Miller moths..

Headed Home

We left Colorado Springs yesterday morning headed back to Tennessee. It was sad to leave this area. There are just so many areas and things to see there that we did not have time to visit. We have decided that this is a place to visit again on our way out west.

Right now we are in Wakeeney, Kansas and will be leaving this morning for Oak Grove, Missouri, the same CG we stayed in on our way out.

The big change is the temperature which was 85 yesterday instead of the enjoyable 65-75 during the day. Back to the lower altitudes and summer weather and flat landscapes (UGHH  Kansas). No more snow topped mountains and cool breezes.

No pictures to report today.

Another Fun Day in Colorado Springs

Colorado Springs is a nice town with lots of nice restaurants, nice downtown area and little historic communities to visit. We would love to come back here again and visit more of the areas. One thing missing on the entire vacation was a major lack of wildlife. We expected to see lots of elk, moose,, and other animals, but we saw very few. The kitties have found something to entertain them in every CG. In this CG it is bunnies and boy did they love looking at little gray bunnies. They couldn't take their eyes off of them.

After breakfast we drove over to the Garden of the Gods. What a beautiful park and the scenery was spectacular. Being Sunday morning and the fact that it was going to pour down rain in a couple of hours everybody and their brother was there sightseeing just like us while the sun was still shinning. The traffic was just too much and we didn't get out and walk most of the trails because we were trying to see everything we could before the rain set in. We made it through, but would love to be able to visit one day and spend more time walking the trails there.

                                        You can see Pike's Peak in the distance in the picture below.

                                  We were too close to get a good picture, but this is balance rock.

After Garden of the Gods we drove to Manitou Springs to visit the Miramont Castle Museum. At least if it rained we would be inside.

The Castle was built in 1895 as a personal residence for Fr Jean Baptiste Francolon and his mother. When he returned to France the Sisters of Mercy purchased it to be used as a sanitarium.

The castle has 30 rooms, 14,000 sq ft along with a small garden.

                                              The formal dinning room.

                                           The Sisters added the Chapel.

   Below is a personal pocket dosimeter used during WWII to measure radiation exposure. What these items have to do with the Castle I don't know, but there they are.

We had a very nice tour and there were lots in interesting artifacts to look at. We returned to the MH for a large, noisy thunderstorm and lots of rain.

We decided our last  dinner would at Jack Quinn's Irish Pub downtown. The hostess sat us in this little segregated room/booth with stained glass windows. It was a little strange. David said he felt like he was in a confessional. We didn't see the rest of the restaurant which I'm sure was very nice. This was the view out our door.

                                                 David pondering the menu.

                                           David had Fish & Chips and I had Chicken Boxty.

                                       Back to the CG. This is the view from our CG of Pike's Peak.

And the kitties saw more bunnies.

                                         Our view of Garden of the Gods.

                                                  Better view of Pike's Peak.

We will be leaving tomorrow to head towards home. Colorado Springs is a city we would definitely like to visit again.