petting dolphins

 

Devyn & Maria got to visit some dalphins and get a kiss.

Christmas day

On Christmas Renato's family all came over for a Brazilian meal.  Renato got a pork hind leg to BBQ as he has done lots of beef and wanted to try pork.  Randy was giving Renato a helping hand as he likes to cook out too.

 To cook the leg they made their own cooker using a bottomless grill on top of a cement block base in which they burned the wood for cooking.

Renato's mom and his two brothers and they wives and kids were at Jody & Renato's for Christmas dinner.

Christmas Eve

                                               Christmas Eve was a big night for Maria.

Christmas time is Kooken time!

Randy and Devyn came down to Biloxi to join the rest of the family for Christmas.  Renato's daughter, Maria has flown up from Brazil for a month long visit, Renato is a happy fellow.  It's summer in Brazil and the kids have a long school vacation.  Here's the group getting down & dirty mixing up a full batch of Lubkuchens.

 

Well, now that they have been mixed up, it takes about 4 hours to bake the 200 to 300 cookies.

 

 

 

to join

Late December

HitchHiker friends at Steamers chowing down on shrimp and other goodies.

 

In mid December we made a trip to Atlanta for a gathering of Clayton's family and Judys.  Here's Mark doing some juggling in his front yard.

 

 

We all helped Clayton celebrate his #71!  Happy Birthday fella!

 

I made a trip to Michigan and got a picture of Devyn with Randy's & Devyn's Christmas tree!

                                   Yep, it still snows in Michigan during the wither, Randy's home. 

                The horses didn't seem to mind the winter weather, they came up to say "Hi, got an apple?"

I drove by our former home on Wamplers Lake, Judy and I both agree we don't miss it but had some great times there.

 

 

 

Odds and ends

                                            Here's Patches in her spacious single story ranch home.

 

                                         Here's patches in her cozy get away week end cottage.

                             The two love birds snuggled up when we were there for Thanksgiving.

 

Renato likes to cook and he's VERY good at it.

 

 

Judy relaxing on a typical nice afternoon.

 

 

After Thanksgiving but before Christmas

The tulip tree across the street has decided to bloom in late November.  It looks like a decoration on the top of a Christmas tree.

The pressure is off, some might think like Clark Griswald (Chevy Chase in National Lampoon Christmas Vacation movie) that if your neighbor decorates we have to out do them, nope not us.Tony, our next door neighbor from NY, has really lite up the neighborhood so we don't have to so won't!  The park has a riverboat float they use for the Christmas and Marde Gras parades so they went through the park all light up (ya can't see it in my picture with the flash) playing Christmas music.

Get your pecans now......

We took Rudy & Linda with us today to the Broken Branch pecan ranch where we always get our nuts.  $3 bucks a pound and we get 10 pounds of cracked pecans which we'll shell and place in our freezer, they will last until we return next year.  The cracker looks like it's from the 1950s but still going strong.  We were told that this years harvest is WAY down, about 10,000 pounds compared to 45,000 pounds last year.  A spring hail storm and a class 1 hurricane did the damage.

Trick or Treaters

I wish the flash would light up the street for a block so you could see the hundreds of kids out here plus parents.  They were thicker than the mosquitoes.  Last year Jody & Judy ran out of candy after 300+ kids.  This year there were prepared for the 521 kids that came to their house.  There were 2 bags of Snickers left.  The one I liked I was not prepared for, a little lad with 20 some balloons all over him, he looked like the grape guy from Fruit of the Looms, he couldn't even reach his bag, mom had to help.  Hilarious!