December 5 - 18, 2009

We drove from Orlando to south Florida, actually the town name is Weston. It is a bedroom community and we thought rather high priced. I about choked when I was charged $65 for a hair cut. We walked through the shopping area each morning. I worked on paying end of the year bills and we went looking at IKEA. We wanted to check out the bookshelves that we want to put in the house. We were able to see our friends Joe and Yvonne Bruce when we found that they lived only 2 miles from the resort. We left our van at their house while we were gone the next 3 weeks. We also drove to Doral to see Corinna and little Daniel.

Corinna is one of the Thai girls that worked for me in Chiang Mai and she married Joe who is in the US Navy. It was great to see them.

December 11 we flew to Aruba and stayed at the Marriott Ocean Club.


We were able to take a bus from the resort into town for groceries and shopping. We went to a local cultural center for an evening program and thoroughly enjoyed local singing, dancing and especially the steel drums.




It is the best $5 program we have seen. It lasted 2 ½ hours.


This is the view from our balcony

and the beautiful sunset one evening.


We spent time at the pool


as well as did our friends.




The weather was warm but there is a constant breeze that helps to keep you cool.



One day we rented a car and explored the entire island. One of the first stops was the lighthouse.




Then we stopped at this church

and also toured the aloe plant.




The goats were walking along the road

and I was really enjoying the bright color of the houses. Which one would you choose?




There were many folks climbing up this rock but we just looked.

We did go to a park but couldn’t drive in very far because the car bottomed out in the very deep dips. Aruba is a beautiful island and the people were very friendly. It is small and of course had lots of shops for tourists. The cruise ships also stop here.

Orlando - Thanksgiving 2009

From Destin we drove to Orlando and spent two great weeks. The first was at Wyndham Bonnet Creek which is actually on Disney property.

I can’t wait to stay here another time. It was Thanksgiving week so we decided not to join the throngs in the park. Debby arrived on Wednesday night and Thanksgiving morning we participated in a Turkey Trot at the resort. It was still a stretch for me to do but it was fun.

We went to the resort hotels to see the gingerbread house displays. They were unbelievable. The list of ingredients was in pounds.



We spent part of a day with Jim Goodwin and Karen McKinney. It was great to see Karen and meet Jim who proposed to her while they were there. How exciting.

The second week we stayed at Marriott Cypress Harbour which is our home resort.

And we went to Disney World.

We did Magic Kingdom



and Epcot staying for the fireworks.



We spent a day at Hollywood Studios which used to be MGM. It was great as we went to most of the shows. One evening we did a special event that was Mickey’s Special Christmas Party and we were in the park until midnight with many special Christmas shows.


We had always wanted to see Disney at Christmas and it was awesome as well as fun. We went to a Christmas Presentation one evening in Epcot by area choirs and the Christmas story was read by Steven Curtis Chapman. Each song followed the Biblical account. It was very beautiful and uplifting and we were thrilled that it was even allowed to be presented.


We shopped at Disney Marketplace and stopped for Ghirardelli chocolate. Yum!!

November 2009

Yes, I know that this is over a year ago but I decided I still wanted to post what we did so I will try to finally get it up to date. I am making an effort to post at least one week each day. Enjoy!

We stayed in a Bluegreen timeshare Club La Pension in the French Quarter.

It was very small with a living room, walk through kitchen and bedroom and a balcony. It was cool most of the time and we had some rain. We took a cooking class at New Orleans School of Cooking and learned how to make gumbo and pralines.



The instructor cooked and then we got to eat what she made. We toured the World War II Museum. This is one of the best we have been to. We had been before but I didn’t get to see the Pacific part. Of course we had to eat beignets at Café du Monde and have oyster po boys from Mother’s Restaurant.

We learned about this restaurant from Donna and Chris when we were here a few years ago. We went to Chalmette Battlefield which is part of the Jean Lafitte National Park.
They were having a ground breaking ceremony to begin a new visitor center.


We drove east toward Florida and stopped at a rest area as we entered Mississippi. To our surprise there was a tour bus leaving in 5 minutes to go to the Stennis Space Center for a tour. We didn’t even realize that it was in the area. What an interesting tour. This was where the Saturn V was tested. We saw the test sights and then toured the exhibits in the visitor center.



The next stop was the Jefferson Davis home, Beauvoir, in Biloxi, Mississippi. It was damaged by Hurricane Katrina but had just reopened after refurbishing.


Many items were lost but the house was preserved. Then of course we stopped at the lighthouse in Biloxi.


Our next stay was a week at the Wyndham Majestic Sun in Destin, Florida. This week in Destin was very uneventful and we really didn’t do much except walk each day.