Winter here in Mission, Rio Grande Valley, is not as nice and warm as the past two years we have been here. We have been having some cold and rain and everyone around is hoping it will warm up soon. I am sure it will as winter can't last too long around here. I just keep telling myself that it is not as cold as it is in the North and we can live with this. We did have some very cold nights, below freezing and a warning was put out for the fruit corp. Since we have two ruby red grapefruit trees and 4 orange trees, we had to do something. We were told at the park meeting that if it gets below 28 degree for more then 6 hours it would ruin the fruit and it would be best to pick the fruit. We did just that and then got out our juicer and made orange juice and froze it. We were lucky that the place we are buying has a very large freezer in the shed and that is where the juice ended up.

From 2010 - January

All the parks are filling up and all park and valley activities are in full swing. I am still doing computer club on Monday mornings. Over the Christmas break, we offered informal computer help instead of the class like setting we do. That format went over very well. The skill level of seniors are so different and it is hard in class to make sure everyone is understanding what is going on and what to do. Then too, we have new people arriving new each week and if they are new to computers, it is a catch up to what we have covered already in class. Thanks to one of the instructors, he has offered to open up the meeting room and have that informal one on one help for 3 days a week and some of us go up to help with that. My other big activity is line dancing and if I get a chance, it meets four times a week. Due to my having a cold or sinus problems the past week or two, I have not been attending line dancing but hope to get back to it this week.

On Friday the 8th we had an appointment with our lawyer and cosed on our new place. We are now the proud owners of our next home. I still do not have photos to share with you of the inside, as the couple we bought it from are still there. We will be getting it on March 1st. We have spent a lot of time with them and feel like old friends. They are from Canada and we have agreed on March 1st as they want to spend more “warm time” here. We have started to move some things over to the new place. We had some things at our place in Bentsen Grove that we wanted to take with us and since we are selling it furnished, we needed to change out a recliner. We took Roger's new lazy boy over to new place and brought one of their recliners over here. We also had an area rug we had bought last spring and we wanted to take it with us. When we show the place at Bentsen Grove we felt we should have the things in it we are going to be leaving, not have to tell them “ and we are going to take this, replace it with this, we are going to take that, etc. Also, it doesn't hurt to declutter. Now Roger is wondering what he is going to do with all the things he kept when we sold our place in Stanwood. We have a storage garage rented and I must say, it is full. When we get back to Iowa this spring/summer we will have to go through things and do some more sorting and thinning out. When you buy a furnished place, you just don't need all the things you thought you needed.

After waking up Christmas morning and opening our gifts to each other, Roger decided to take the trash to the dumpster and drop our plates off at the hall so we could get our place for dinner. After going outside to get his bike, he came back inside and informed me someone stole his 21 speed bike. We ended up calling the Sheriff after dinner and making a report, but it seems there have been many, many bikes stolen from this park and others in the area. Who ever it is, crawls under the fence, finds the bikes and throws them over the fence where they are loaded into a truck and then they are back under fence and gone. We did do some looking at pawn shops to see if it showed up, but that didn't do any good. Spent a day checking out new bikes, but decided to wait. Our friends (Larry and MaryAnn) from the park next to our, called us and said they had friends in their park who wanted to sell a 7 speed bike. That is what Roger had decided he wanted. He never did use all the gears on the 21 speed. He ended up buying it and is now back to riding his bike.

From 2010 - January

We are keeping busy despite the cool weather and the time seems to be flying by. Still have our place at Bentsen Grove up for sale and seem to show it a couple times a week. With all the people arriving in the valley, we are just waiting for that right person to come look at it.