Thanksgiving at Ocean Resorts

November 23, 2007

Our Thanksgiving was a little different this year. We weren’t in Texas, we weren’t at Mom’s (Delton’s or Joni’s). We were totally away from family.

Joni’s Mom went to see her brother, Rich, and his family in New Hamphire for one and one half weeks during the Thanksgiving holiday, so even though we were in Florida and close to Mom, we were alone (not with family).

Ocean Resorts has become our family this winter. A big Thanksgiving diner was held in the recreation hall, so we signed up to go. It was very nice. There were about 30 people there. We all contributed to buy 2 huge turkeys and we all brought a dish to share. Delton was asked to say the blessing before we ate. We got to meet a lot of new people, we may have been without family around but we were not alone by any means.


Of coarse, Delton also got to watch football. See Delton by the window.

Mom enjoyed her visit to New Hampshire. She got to spend time with Rich, his wife Adele, and their kids, Justin and Ryan. Then they all went to New York and Mom got to stay with her sister, Connie and Connie’s family. Joni’s son, Jim and his fiancé Barbara, drove out to Aunt Connie’s from NYC and got to visit with Grandma and Rich. Mom also spent time with Adele’s family. She had a very full and busy trip.

We were able to drive Mom to and from the airport, which made things a lot easier for her and we stayed with her for 3 days after she came back.

Ocean Resorts, Vero Beach, FL

November 6, 2006 – March, 2007

It was very hard to leave Nettles Island. In the 2 weeks we were there, we made a lot of friends. Sometimes, you just “click” when you meet someone new and that’s what happened when we met Bill and Louise, and Gene and Marge (at Nettles). We promised to stay in touch with them.


Ocean Resorts is similar to Nettles Island, but on a much smaller scale. After spending 3 weeks at Ocean Resorts last season, we knew we wanted to come back again. Mary Jane and Dave Mulaski will join us here in January, 2007 and we are looking forward to our tennis games, kayak rides, bridge games and bike rides with them.

We continued to visit Joni’s Mom on a regular basis, every week or week and a half. She seems to be doing well and is starting to get used to life without Dad. We brought her to Nettles for a day and want to bring her to Ocean Resorts also. It was good for her to see our new “life style”, although she still thinks we are crazy to be doing this fulltiming thing.

Since we will be here all winter – almost 6 months, I will break our stories into separate posts about our life here at Ocean Resorts and introduce you to many of our new friends.

Nettles Island, Florida

October 23 – November 6, 2006


 
Before heading to our winter spot in Ocean Resorts at Vero Beach, we decided to check out a place which was recommended to us by our friends, Mary Jane and Dave Mulaski. We traveled around Florida with them last winter. They have spent time at Nettles Island and thought we would like it as much as they do.

They were right. Nettles Island is great! It’s a very large RV park where all the sites are privately owned. Pictured is one of the canals in the park. Homeowners on the canal have private boat docks behind their homes.  
Many have homes built on them and some remain as RV sites.   


Nettles Island has 2 tennis courts, a putt putt, a marina, 2 large pools (one which is located right on the beach), shuffle board, horseshoes, bingo, bridge, poker and much more.  
All activities are open to all owners and renters.

 
We made instant friends when we played in the open tennis round robin held daily from 7am to 9am. We were welcomed very warmly into the group. Tennis abilities varied greatly as did ages. It is very exciting to see people in the 80’s playing tennis and riding their bicycles. We will be just as active when we get “old”.


We were fortunate to have picked an RV site right across from Bill and Louise VanTongeren, long time residents of Nettles Island and loved by everyone.  
They welcomed us into their “family” of friends. Bill is an avid golfer, so Delton and Bill got along great right away. Pictures are Bill and Louise, Marge and Gene (tennis friends), and us.

  

Nettles Island residents hold church services every Sunday. Pictured is the Nettles Island Church Choir – which we decided to join for our short 2 week stay. We attended and met even more people. Notice Delton and I singing in the choir. The empty seats are for the choir - church was actually full.

Marge and Gene invited us to their home for a prayer meeting, to pray for the coming elections. We were happy to attend and meet even more Christians. Although the elections did not go as we had prayed, we know God is in control of everything.

It was hard to leave Nettles Island, but we had already made plans to stay in Ocean Resorts for the winter. Ocean resorts is only 20 miles away from Nettles Island, so we plan on keeping in touch with our new found friends.