A long-delayed vacation, the first "real" time away since we sold our business almost a year ago!  We flew to Florida one night early and spent some time in Ft. Lauderdale before boarding the Regal Princess.  Ports included an island owned by Princess Cruise Lines called "Princess Kay," as well as St. Thomas and Antigua in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Christal joined her mom and aunt Linda for a very lively time in Michigan visiting the gravestones of her side of the family and collecting as much family history as possible. Rest assured, I was just dying to be with her, though!

We had so much fun installing the dishwasher that we went back to Florida to see what else we could install, organize, fix, or simply purge.

​In June, our two grandson’s from California came for their summer visit – this time for five weeks!  Fortunately (or unfortunately depending upon your point of view), our prayers for a great new job for son Christopher were answered, and oh, darn… the boys had to spend much of their five weeks at our house.   If you are a grandparent, you’ll understand…

​We visited our old stomping grounds of Amador County in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California just to see our grandsons play a baseball game!  We’re retired!  We can do that now…!  Don’t judge us!  Our first night's Airbnb was located right on the California coast, so of course, we took pictures of the ocean.  The home also boasted a turtle pond!  From there, we took the BART to San Francisco where we spent time walking the streets with two very close friends.  You may have heard the streets there are very hilly.  So actually we didn’t walk all the streets of San Francisco.  OK, so maybe it was mainly just a few by the pier where we watched the walruses snorting and sleeping.  The drive to Amador County was amazing as was the baseball game we watched.  Jayden's team won the game and their little league division in one fell swoop.  We "borrowed" the boys for an afternoon and visited one of the California Caverns that was just down the street from our previous home.

​In March we visited Christal’s mother in Lady Lake, Florida!  What was meant to be our first-ever visit without “business” on our minds turned into a week of remembrance for Christal’s uncle who passed away as we arrived.   Rest in Peace, Art Ollila!

Once upon a time...
OK, that sounds a bit corny!  But it was the way I started virtually every story I ever told to my boys as we put them to bed.  And it seems only appropriate that we start this blog the same way. In all actuality, I wanted to set the beginning date for this blog page to be back when I first met my wife-to-be...  (It happened to be a cold December day when Christal visited Peace Lutheran Church where I was employed as a teacher.  I met her in the parking lot afterwards, talked a bit, and the rest, as they say, is our history.) 
So Once Upon A Time.... (Stay tuned for future updates).