The Holidays

Merry Christmas to everyone!

This will be our third Christmas as full timers away from our family, we will not be alone at Christmas, no there will be lots of people around here, other snowbirds and full timers. Some are part of our extended RV family, and others are friends and acquaintances from the parks and the area, no it’s not the same as family but we will have holiday FaceTime and calls with family and others. Of course we miss our family’s at this time of year, but this is a life choice we have made, and we still have no regrets.

There is just something special about laying back in my antigravity chair, enjoying seventy degrees of soul warming sunshine, and a ice cold cocktail in hand, that is oh so very hard to beat. We lived in an area that would often have snow on the ground for Christmas, but there is a lot more world without snow for Christmas than there is with. There is something about Christmas under a palm tree that is just about as special as Christmas under a snowy pine tree…just saying.

We see lots of snowbirds that head home for the holidays, and while it would be wonderful to see family, it also puts you in the middle of all the Christmas traffic and overcrowded airports, no I can’t see that being very enjoyable on any level. Then there are the snowbirds that don’t head south until after the holidays, leaving in cold winter weather with possible snowy or icy conditions. No none of these options much interest us at all, right now our overnight lows are about the same as the daytime highs back up north.

But what is happening in our lives is something that we never expected, as we set out to be nomads, you know break away from all those traditions that have always been in our lives. This issue really started to show up our first year, but is becoming a much bigger factor. It is this RV family that is becoming a very big portion of our lives, it started in January of 2018 when we met the Bannon’s for cocktails at “Beer Bellies Adult Day Care” in Quartzsite AZ. I had know Bob for a number of years like ten or more, but our wives had never met, now add to that that in the last five years or so we lived about 10 minutes apart, oh yah one more little detail, they had decided to sell their house and take an extended vacation, just a couple of months before we did. Now we are great friends and Laurie and Shari are as they say “RV sisters”, then there was Robert and Susan from Newfoundland, opened there live and let us in and they have become part of the family, and visited us a couple of times over this summer, again they are new full timers. Now last Christmas was spent with Bob and Shari on Sanibel Island in Florida with Bob and I enjoying a Caesar, while the girls scoured the beach for sea shells. And last winter added to the RV family with the addition of Ray and Karen full timers from Tennessee and Butch and Betty snowbirds from northern Ohio.

Now we find ourselves planning our travels and stops to include visits, even if it’s just for an extender four hour lunch, and if our plans appear to be not working out, some one steps in and plans a surprise gathering. Just a note, we have seen most of our RV family in the past three months, and are planning a little Quartzsite rendezvous in January, we are meeting Teresa and Anito for a week in LasVegas in mid February and hope to get together with Butch and Betty in April on our return trip back to Niagara.