Tourist Chronicles: What Happened?

Our lives have been like a blur for the past few weeks. We flew home mid-December and promptly both Pam & I came down with the flu. Wicked is the best way to describe it. Of course Pam recovered quicker and was able to corral the whole Christmas preparation project that we had hoped to accomplish at a more relaxed pace. I finally came around and then had my back go out on me while watching a football game. Go figure!

One item we didn't get to was sending out any Christmas cards. We apologize to those of you on our traditional list but we felt it better to not send out a germ laden card just to spread the joy of Christmas. Thank you to those of you who sent us cards. We'll try again next year.

We did manage to get all of the holiday gatherings attended including the now traditional chicken sh__ dinner on Christmas eve at our house and the KFC lunch at my parents house on Christmas day. Yumm! Then back to our house for Pam's family get together.

We made it into the hinterlands of Iowa to see the progress on my sons house and had time to host a small New Years Eve gathering at our house with a delicious prime rib prepared by Mike & Nancy.

Of course we did get to spend time with the grandkids, although the flu limited that time and caused a complete no show on our part for Grandson Drew's gig in Cedar Rapids. Also the bug lingered around long enough for Ryan to catch it and take it back to Denver where he gave it to his girlfriend Ainsley.

And just to give us something to worry about Pam's dad became ill and made an emergency room visit before we headed back to Florida.

We got out of the Midwest just in time before the cold spell hit. We drove back skirting the cold front but hitting the slush and rain all the way from home to south Georgia. Traffic was heavy once we hit I-75 where we saw a couple of firsts for us. One was a Nissan burning along the side of the road and the other was a loud bang followed by rubber flying from a blown tire from a semi trailer just ahead of us. We dodged that and made it safely back to Ft. Myers where it was 83 degrees. Nice!

A few pics of our time at home.