Celebrating with Friends and Family

Since returning from Hawaii we have been celebrating and visiting with friends and family. I must have suffered from camera overload while away (1200 pics) and, even though I have both a camera and an iPhone, I failed to take pictures at many of these gatherings. We had Allen & Sharon and Linda & Mike to our place for dinner and evenings of conversation. On Christmas Eve we had dinner with the ballooning Liberti family at their home and we had Christmas brunch with Allen & Sharon. Nanc organized a traveling happy hour in the park with RVers Rene & Suzanne, Keith & Lorraine and Dick & Lynn and it was a good thing the traveling method was walking and not driving by the end of the evening. These are all the times I did not take a picture. I will have to get back in that mode as we hit the road. Because we have been so busy here we extended our stay at Sun Life by a week so we could get together with friends a few more times.

One gathering where I did get pics was dinner at Red, White & Brew with several 07 mates who were passing through the area. Top are Linda & Ron and Joe & Marcia; Bottom are Mike & Sandy and Steve & Sandy. It was great catching up on all our travels and we are looking forward to seeing all of them at the 07 reunion in Quartzsite.

My brother Rick and his wife Denise flew out after Christmas for a short stay with us. We did a day trip to beautiful Sedona with them. Their Christmas gift to us filled another day with a spa visit at the Royal Palms and a fabulous dinner at T. Cooks. IT WAS FANTASTIC!!!!!!!!

The trip to Sedona was to visit with Nanc's sister Michelle and her husband Keith who were there visiting his mother Pauline. We had a great time getting up to speed on what has been going on with all of them. Above is Rick, Keith, Pauline, Denise, Nanc, Michelle and Jim. As I say so often, getting to see friends and family while on the road is the best part about our traveling way of life.

Here we are ringing in 2012 at the Masquerade Ball in the park. The theme was Mardi Gras so we wore our beads and got primed for our return to Louisiana for this year's celebration.

Lorraine, Nanc and Suzanne all dressed up and ready to party.

Keith, Jim and Rene after a night of fun, fun, fun.

We also did two ballooning events with Mike and T. We crewed on Christmas Eve morning for a couple who were on their first flight. The local balloonists have a tradition of flying in the afternoon on New Year's Day. We joined Mike and T along with several others, but sadly we did not get to soar into the new year because, as you can see by this balloon, the wind was too strong. Only two of the pilots chose to fly and, while we would have loved to, even with our very limited experience we could see that conditions were on the edge for a safe flight. We want to send a special thank you to the Liberti family for the wonderful balloon experiences and for welcoming us into their family. You know what I say about friends, family and our lifestyle.

We will be leaving here on Monday and heading to Quartzsite for a couple of weeks in the desert for the 07 reunion. We will then sprint east to Louisiana for a two month stay at our favorite spot, Betty's RV Park in Abbeville.