Christmas Day Fun

We had a wonderful time the Ryan, Najla, Emma and Trevor. We spent the whole day with them. Emma got up about 7AM and started opening her presents. What fun! There were LOTS of presents.

 A few minutes later Trevor joined the fun.

  One of the presents we gave Emma was a Mr Buckles backpack. Boy did she love that. She didn't take it off and wore it while opening her other presents and riding her shooter.

                                         Trevor loves to bounce so we gave him a riding elephant that he can bounce up and down on, ride or push. We think he liked that too.

                               Maryann got Emma a giggle doll and Emma really loved it, but the video I took is too long to post here, so I will put it on YouTube under tails From Tennessee with some others.

            Later in the day we went over to the neighborhood playground and the kids had a great time playing on the swings, Emma is fearless when it comes to climbing and will tackle anything.

Christmas Eve Day Fun

We had a great day, Ryan and the family came over to the CG in the morning and played with the kitties. We went for a nice walk through the CG.

This is such a nice CG. On one side is the Coastal HWY and the Atlantic ocean and the other St John's River. 

At the backside of the CG on the St John's River is a nice fishing dock with a fish cleaning station

Next to the fishing dock is Aunt Kate's restaurant where we had lunch.

Our meal there was fantastic. David had fish tacos with cheese grits and they were really good. The fish was fresh and perfectly prepared. The menu and service were top notch. Evidently this restaurant dates back to the time of Henry Flagler and is quite a tradition in this area. We would eat here again for sure.  http://aunt-kates.com/

                                       Emma enjoyed her shrimp and FFs.

After lunch we walked over to the playground and both Emma and Trevor had a wonderful time.

We had a great Christmas Eve even Bentley..

A Fun Day in St. Augustine

We had a great day in SA with Ryan, Najla, Emma and Trevor. There's just so much to see and do in downtown SA. We walked around the older area, but there was more to see than we could see in one visit.

 This is the hotel Casa Monica. A very beautiful and expensive hotel indeed.

 This is part of Flagler College,

                                                                      Lightner Museum

This cemetery s from the 1700's

We took a fun horse and carriage ride through old SA. The driver was very nice and had a special relationship with his horse, Chip. It has to be tricky driving a carriage in the middle of all 

the traffic and people. This time of year it was particularly busy. 

After our carriage ride we went for lunch at Meehan's Irish Pub.

Afterward, we went back to the house. While Emma napped, Trevor was showing off his new walking skills.

St Augustine

Sunday night David, Maryann and I went to Bone fish Grill for another great meal for David's birthday. We always have a great meal there.

Monday was a lazy day. We had the morning to do a few things before getting ready to leave for St Augustine. We took our time going east towards the coast on hwy 40 and up I 95 to SA. Our first stop was at Enterprise to pick up our rental car and then on to the campground. Bentley insisted on riding along on the MH dashboard all the way to the campground for all the world to see. He had a great time looking at all the traffic, passer-bys and views along the St Johns River and beach.

The campground here is North Beach Campground Resort and each site is very roomy, secluded and private There is lots of trees, between each campsite so you feel like you are in a nice wooded area. Across the street in the front of the CG is the beach and The Reef restaurant. In the back of the CG is Aunt Kate's restaurant which sits on the St John's River with a nice dock for fishing. When we checked in the lady in the office was very friendly giving us lots of information about the CG and St Augustine. She also invited us to the party they were having tonight. She said the owner was preparing the food and everything, food, drinks were free, I told her we were here to visit our son and she said bring him too. A very nice lady.

We got to our camp site and got all settle in and fed the kitties. They all know when the slides go out it's time for them to get their food. Such good kitties.

For dinner we met Ryan and family at the Floridian restaurant for dinner. The food was very good and we sat outside on the patio to eat and watched all the trolleys and horse drawn carriages go by. The trolleys were all full of people singing Christmas carols and waving as they went by. Emma had a wonderful time waving at all the people,

Every time the trolley or the horse & carriage came by she would get so excited and jump up to wave.

                                                              I think David had fun too.

There are just so many fun places here in SA and lots to do . This time of year the downtown area is covered in lights and hundreds of people walking about. We are going to enjoy coming here to visit for sure.

On To Ocala

We spent Friday night in Tifton at the KOA CG. It's a nice stop for us on the way to Florida. Not too far from Chattanooga or from Ocala which is the next stop. We like this CG. It has a farm next door where Bentley can go visit the horses and cows. This trip it was cold and rainy so no visits for Bentley. Maybe next trip.

As you can see, the boys really enjoy their bunk. They each have a bed there and a window to look out. Life is good for our kitties.

On the way to Ocala we stopped at a quilt shop in Lake City, Fabric Art  Shop  https://www.fabricartshop.com/  They have been around for many years and in all my trips back and forth to Florida I have never had the time to stop. They are also an Innova dealer and I wanted to stop and talk with them about the Innova and the modification I am getting ready to do on my machine. Unfortunately no one there knew anything about the machines and the one person that might was not there. Oh well. It was a nice large shop aside from the purple building. They had lots of patterns, fabric and unusual things. They had a large selection of various types of threads, buttons, embroidery floss, Perle cotton, beads, paints, tatting supplies and Floriani items. Every where I turned there was something different. One very striking item was a display of beautiful hand made Christmas ornaments. They were not for sale, but they were absolute show stoppers. I should have taken pictures, but I didn't want to be rude. Wish I had now, because I can't even describe how beautiful they were. A very nice stop indeed. I did find a couple of mini quilt patterns and postcard pattern for $2.00. The fabric selection was very nice, but no reproduction or Kansas Troubles, or 30's fabrics.

We arrived in Ocala and met Mary Ann for dinner. She wanted to take David out to dinner for his 72nd birthday which on the 21st. She took us to a restaurant right around the corner from the CG on the top of the Holiday Inn & Suites. What a terrific place. Very unusual for Ocala. Very elegant and an Asian Fusion restaurant called Sky. http://www.ocalasky.com/default.php
The food was fantastic. We each had something different so that we could try more than one dish. Very, very good and we all ate too much. We would definitely eat there again.

Back to the MH for a good night's sleep.

ON THE ROAD TO FLORIDA

Normally when we travel we pack every thing into the motor home earlier in the day, except for the cats. We have dinner, then pack up the kitties and load them into the MH at the storage facility. We pull out of the parking spot where the electric hook up is and spend the night in an open area.In the morning we can head out early and the kitties are all relaxed and at home by the time we leave. Since the temperature is supposed to be 31 degrees we didn't want to spend the night without electricity or run the generator all night long, so we made reservations to stay at the KOA in Ringgold.

Before we left for the MH we had to give Finnigan (aka the puker) his ACE. He did very well and was very relaxed. No puking!!!!!! (which is unusual for him).  We had a great night. All was good.
We had a great night's sleep.

We were scheduled to leave for Tifton, Ga at about 9:30 in the morning. We got everything unhooked, picked up and ready to go except for moving in the 3 slides. Did a kitty count and Finnegan was missing. We thought he had walked to the bedroom, but he was no where to be found. We looked every where: under the front chairs, in all the cabinets, in the bedroom closets, under the bed, sides of the bed, behind the 4 pillows, behind everything in both bunks. We even lifted up the mattress on our bed to see is he could have gotten in there some how. There just wasn't enough room for him to get under the bed and we couldn't find him with the flashlight anywhere. We took out yummy kitty treats. Out came Nicky, out came Bentley, but no Finnegan. We took out catnip. "Yum" said Bentley and Nicky, but no Finny. Last resort was to vacuum. Finny will run the opposite direction from the vacuum cleaner. No Finny. We had already spent 30 minutes looking for him. Where could that cat possibly hide? I looked behind the pillows for the third time. THE PILLOW MOVED. Finnegan had crawled inside the pillow case on the bottom pillow . We couldn't believe it.
We spent so much time looking for that cat. At least we found him. Silly kitty. Or silly Mommy. Shouldn't you know to look inside the pillowcase?

There have been great travel kitties today,

The scene of the crime.

 Finnegan says he's sorry he created such turmoil. (Not really, he was probably laughing at us the whole time).

 Nicky says he's happy Finnegan got in trouble. Ha Ha

Nicky and Bentley love looking for squirrels in this campground. What a good spot.

More travels tomorrow.