The Brasil's in Gulf Shores

On the 27th Randy headed back to Michigan, Judy and I back to Gulf Shores and the Brasils followed us a few hours later.  Seems packing up kids takes a long time.  Don & Zola offered the use of their fifth wheel while they are back in Michigan for Christmas.  After spending two days with us the kids are off to Mississippi to visit Renato's brothers and families and his mom.

We took them to Foley and the train museum, who doesn't like trains?

 

 

 

                   Well, who's going in first?  I double dare you!

It was two days of shrimp, a regular shrimp fest.  We ate shrimp at the Shrimp Basket, Mikees and Steamers.  There were some oysters in there a coupe of times too, but NOT for Judy and I.  Of course they were all you can eat shrimp.  Renato had 5 orders at Mikees!  The rest of us stopped at 3, maybe 4.

Christmas in Flowery Branch

The beast is on guard duty.....no one messes with the presents!

Judy & I traveled to Jody & Renatos's home for Christmas and Randy came down from Onsted.  We all arrived on December 23rd.
Renato's daughter Maria from Brazil is with them for two months during her school's summer break.

 One of the first items on the to do list was making Christmas cookies.

Santa arranged for one gift to be delivered early Christmas Eve morning........................

Dustin & Brianna didn't quite know what to think about this.................

But they figured it out pretty quick, Maria was the first King of the Hill.

 

Uncle Randy reminded them that all the local cats will appreciate the sand pile too.  The weather was great so a pontoon ride was in the days schedule.

Renato loves to cook and has lost quite a bit of weight too.  I'm not sure if this is breakfast or dinner....

Who said sand piles are just for kids?

And the BIG day arrives.....................

 

 

 

The turkey has been in the oven so it's time to get started on all the fix'ens.

 

And now it's my turn to get into the show, I've been waiting for this!

But we can't forget Devyn who's with her mother this Christmas!

            We hope everyone had a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Where has a month gone????

Since the last  post a lot has happened.  I haven't been keeping the blog updated often enough to keep our activities in order so I 'll just ramble on and probably get things mixed up. 
On November 19th we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary... We're not fancy so we went to Krystal's for breakfast.  I am so lucky that Judy said "yes".  We have no idea where 50+ years went.

             And for dinner we went with Don & Zola to Pizza Hut....

                                                Then home for some cake!

We spent Thanksgiving in Flowery Branch with Jody & Renato and the kids.  During this time Brianna learned how ride her bike!

After I took these pictures she was off and riding by herself.  I did have pictures BUT my Dell laptop died and along with it I lost 2 weeks of data that I didn't back up. 

While we were there we celebrated my 70th birthday.  Renato and Jody have both lost a lot of weight so the kids were excited with having cake, me too!

 

 Getting back home we prepared for Christmas by putting the tree up and decorating it..................

                                          The weather has been excellent..................

In addition to my laptop dying we also has a slow leak in a tire.  Getting it off was easy but Judy and I struggled to get it back on after the valve stem was replaced but persistence paid off.

                              Randy and Devyn also put their tree up.............

                                         Meanwhile in their front yard.........

We have seen the Blue Angels a few times zipping up and down the beach and one day while Judy was out alone she spotted a Marine Osprey at the Jack Edwards airport here in Gulf Shores.  If you didn't know better you'd think it was a small drone.

I went along with three of my poker playing buddies to a casino in Biloxi for a Texas Hold'em tournament.  We play here at the campground four times a week (Hold'em twice and dealers choice twice) and I really enjoy it so I thought I'd be brave and take the next step.  The buy in was $60 and there were 58 of us at the casino, I was pleasantly surprised coming in 4th and winning $296.  Time to hid the tournament circuit?
One Saturday we drove to Navarre, FL to visit with my cousins Larry and Mary and Mary's daughter Kelly.  Mary lives there around and Larry splits his time there and in Michigan.  e had a great visit and hadn't seen them since Aunt Margaret's funeral many years ago.

Renato's daughter Maria has arrived in Flowery Branch for several weeks (school break in Brazil) and the three kids went to see Santa................the Brasil family is all together and happy his Christmas.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

After church Sunday we grabbed some food from McDonalds and parked at the beach to eat and watch the Gulf.  Guess who showed up?

I managed to get a picture of Santa with one of the local kids................

We have been busy getting into the winter routine playing poker and euchre and socializing and eating out with our winter friends and HitchHiker friends who spend time here.  Today Judy is in Biloxi at the IP Casino on a bus trip she organized, she schedules one a month and 50 some snowbirds here at Gulf Breeze RV Resort go to a casino.