BACK HOME IN FLORIDA

Happy New Year to everyone! We have returned to the sunshine and warm temperatures of Panama City, Florida. We flew home to Minnesota for Christmas and I wanted to have snow when I was there. There was none. Until last night when we were sitting on the plane at the gate for over an hour. Then it snowed so they had to plow the runways and de-ice the plane before we could take off, over an hour late. Naturally we missed our connection in Memphis, but we were inpressed with the organization and precision of the rebooking process. As we stepped off the plane they directed us to gate 35 where they had already printed new tickets, new boarding passes, and coupons for a night's stay at the Holiday Inn, and for dinner and breakfast. The motel was quiet, and we heard no New Year's Eve celebrating at all. (And I was awake so if it had been going on, I would have heard it.)

We had a sorry excuse for breakfast, complete with bad coffee, before heading to the airport for our flight to Panama City. It was a small plane, and we were seated in row 2, so even the turbulance didn't bother me as much as it did in the back rows of the bigger plane. We had met a young Air Force man last night who was also heading to Panama City, and we hooked up with him again this morning. He was from Morris, Minnesota, had gone to college in Duluth, and we found out he was a WELS Lutheran. He was the nicest young man and he offered us a ride back to our RV storage place, saving us the $30 cab ride. We eagerly accepted and he drove us right to our truck and RV. Thank you so much!

So today was going well, we thought. Then I got into the RV and was so upset I cried. There was evidence that a mouse had enjoyed our RV while we were gone (I refuse to say the plural of the word) and it immediately threw me into cleaning mode. All the counters and other flat surfaces have been scrubbed down with bleach. Hubby vacuumed. I changed the sheets on the bed and cleaned the sinks. We headed to WalMart and bought two kinds of traps, the sticky cardboard kind, and the regular snap kind. We have set up 8 traps in our little space, and I will leave them up until we catch someone or at least until we have made sure that no one is still around. I absolutely hate those critters!

The campground has filled up considerably in the last two weeks, and we had to take a spot with just electricity and water, no sewer connection. I understand that several rigs are leaving in the next few days, so we should be able to move back to a full connection site. Tomorrow we will head to the commissary to replenish the frig and cupboards. We gave away all the butter, salad dressing, ketchup, etc that was in the frig, so are sitting on empty now. We bought the making for spaghetti when we were at WalMart so will have that for dinner. And we have wonderful chocolate bars for dessert. Thank you Chris! Love that dark chocolate!