Villages, Fl February 06, 2019 Thursday Partly Cloudy and windy 80 degrees

Time for a blog update, right Lauren? Yes it has been a while.

Time here meshes into a number of days that make it hard sometimes to remember what day it is. "Saturday you say? What happened to Friday?" But I will trade the few times that I have to look at my phone to confirm the day over being in the working world in which I was always able to know the day - particularly Mondays!!

The weather has been warm and then cool and some days cold (I know - come home to NH if you want some real cold).  But on the warm days we have enjoyed some nice walks around the near by neighborhoods. While we have a pond in our backyard it does not, we believe, have any alligators as residents. I am not sure that I would be overly keen to have them living just over the ridge of our backyard. But I understand this is fairly common and they seem to keep to themselves. But there is caution given to not to let your dog - particularly a bite size one - wonder along the shore of the ponds. I guess that I would have to agree with that advise.

I had to smile at this fellow mowing his lawn - I don't think it was a lawn service. It took him ten minutes to finish his yard - and that mower has a really good "rabbit" setting and he was using it!
 

Well, the Villages maybe the "friendliest village in Florida" but the person who scraped my rear quarter panel while we were parked in the pickleball parking lot apparently didn't want to introduce themselves and say "Hi - sorry I hit your car."  Well there goes the deductible when we get home.

There are many restaurants on the Villages property. We tried the Fenney Grill near to us - it was good and the Admiral got a break from cooking.

And I am still enjoying my half a bagel in the morning with a nice cup of coffee. As it is only a half a bagel I feel OK with adding sufficient PB&J to make it really tasty.

We have enjoyed the walk around the Hogeye trail several times. It really is a nice walk.

And we saw more fox squirrels - they really are interesting.

This red crested heron was very striking

And Bree and Lauren, Mom and Maddy too, we have a new fun card game - Caboose - I can even play it and win once in a while. Will be fun to have on the boat this year.

Several weeks ago we drove over to Vero Beach to visit friends Ron and Nancy from Maine. Yes, I agree I should have had the waiter take a photo of all of us but you will have to settle for some photos of the eclectic restaurant that we ate at.

The restaurant was on the water and we had hoped to eat on the patio and take in the view of the ocean that we had been longing to see for a while. But it was not to be. It was cool and very windy as you can see. The wind was so hard that you couldn't look into it because of the sand that was being driven in the wind.

A week ago we had friends Dick and Phyllis come for a visit - and yes I again forgot to get any pictures. They were our slip neighbors in Longboat Key last year. You may recall that we stopped for a visit at their wonderful home in Maryland on our way home in the boat last spring. We had a great day of catching up and showing them the Villages. We even had time for a fun game of Mexican Train. I won't say who won, but he writes a wonderful blog.
 
One thing that does help with knowing the day of the week is we found a church in Leesburg that we like. On the way there last week we passed another church with a sign that made us laugh out loud.

The Blah, Blah, Blah was funny enough to warrant a picture, but the best part it reminded us of granddaughter Bree's recent comment to her Dad claiming she could deliver the message one Sunday morning at church - upon asking what she would say she replied "I'd say. 'Blah, Blah, Blah - Titus!'" I have to admit that many would enjoy such a short and to the point sermon!

This last weekend we had the wonderful pleasure of having granddaughter Sydney and Mom Jenn, come for an overnight visit. Sydney and I sampled several places for ice cream - this one at the ice cream shop at the Villages Brownwood Square was particularly damaging to my diet - but not my sweet tooth. 

 
We went to Flippers Pizza for dinner.

There was a birthday party with a balloon of the world's ugliest snowman - Olaf - and the gray looks like he was caught in a coal dust hurricane.

Last Sunday there was a model train meet at the Savannah Recreation Center. To give you a sense of the size of the Villages, it took me 30 minutes to drive from the south end where we are to the north end.

This shot gives you a sense of how big this building is - here is the buy and swap room. It took me half an hour just to walk around the displays.

Several items made me smile. I worked for 18 years for Maine Central Railroad (MEC). 

This is a model of the famous Yankee Flyer - a streamlined passenger car train that ran in the forties and fifties from Portland to Boston.  There is a plan to restore it and I have been able to walk through the train that is now in a rehab shop.

 Now that is a funny and creative sign!

And this shows the famous Bangor and Aroostrook  Railroad red, white and blue cars that were used to move long train loads of potatoes from northern Maine to all parts of the country.

Be sure to look at this photo and read the title

And the layout room had some nice layouts. Notice the stage that gives a sense of size of this room.

And you can imagine the kids loved the Thomas layout

And there was even a model of the land of the Ears.

 Even the ladies like sporting the old railroaders hat

This layout is of the CSX yard that is in Wildwood - the town we are in!

And folks travel from far way.

And this week we enjoyed our second week of $5 Tuesdays at the movies. This week we traveled to the Sumter Landing Town Square for our movie - Little Women - last week was 1917 so I thought it was only fair to go to one that Faye would like - and it was good - but there were far more ladies there than men.  Here a few shots from around the waterfront of Sumter Landing

And finally, another food photo. Question - what to do with left over potatoes? Why you make breakfast for dinner of course - yum. And note the splurge on a full bagel - what diet?

And finally, I will close by noting that we have just completed a wonderful evening with Jim and Justine. Lots of laughs, great burgers and fixings and of course a close game of Mexican Train - well it was close until the first round of play - then Jim and I thought it would be great to let the ladies have a win (and I won't add "for once" as that would be far too much a stretch of the truth!).

So as the day light has long passed and Jim and I must get some sleep to sooth our wounded psyches, it is definitely time to say ....................

Good Night and May God Bless