New Years Eve

We have lovely warm sunny weather for our New Year's Eve party. We gathered under the palm trees at Lorna and Brian's for prime rib on the Ronco and I did a turkey in my Convection oven. Can you believe the 14.8 lb turkey and champagne cost under $9.00! Everything turned out great. It was lots of fun and a nice way to bring in the New Year.

Still Outdoors

We are still enjoying all the activities around here. The volleyball people are still at it. They have had some cooler days but here's Ron serving, Pete, Vicki and Mike. Glenda and I came 2nd in the mini golf tournament after a tie and play off and won the ice cream cones.
More people are arriving every day and we have plenty of get togethers trading stories. Santa and the decorations are coming down now.

Merry Christmas

Today we were invited to morning coffee at Debbie and Peter's. I was designated as the official photographer and had to bring my instructions for the tripod and how to do a delayed camera picture, as I haven't used it since last Christmas. Well, the first thing the instructions said was to spread the legs of the tripod to stabilize it, but then I'd lost a nut to keep the camera platform steady. Thanks to Barry, who helped me find it in the tripod bag, we finally got it organized. Everybody was laughing at me but we did get our official Christmas photograph. We went off to the Augustine Casino, where we had a deep fried Turkey Christmas Buffet. Sounds unusual but this method sears the skin and keeps all the juice inside and all the food was absolutely delicious.

Secret Santa

Shirley, Lois and the girls organized a get together down at the lower clubhouse for our Christmas Eve. Our temperatures have gone down to the fifties, so outside gatherings seem to be on hold for the moment. That's 10 C for you people that speak Canadian, I can't remember any more. The food we all brought was fabulous as usual and the company was great. We all brought a wrapped gift and drew numbers to open. You could then select a gift from under the tree or take the gift from someone who already had one and give them the unopened one. Needless to say, the whole event was quite hysterical. Ron ended up with black rubber coasters in a stainless steel container, which he really liked, but when we read the fine print, when we got home, we found that they couldn't be put on natural wood products/tables. Who do you know that has glass coffee tables in an RV? Roger ended up with white gloves and 3 pair of pink sox's. We certainly all had a lot laughs, maybe not Roger.
Vicki and I ended the evening with a lovely swim, laying back watching the stars and then relaxing in the hot tub. Just beautiful, especially when we think about the extreme weather of snow and very low temperatures at home.

George's Deli

Ron and I, Peter and Debbie and Andy and Sharon drove west on I 10 to Calimesa passing the many windmills in front of the snow on St. Jacinto where you head up to Idlywilde. We went to George's Market, a very authentic German Deli. We had a delicious lunch. Ron had the hot plate with Bratwurst, and I had a hot Reuben with sauerkraut and very nice mustard. Simply delicious. This has become a Christmas tradition for us down here, as Ron's family always had cold cuts, cheeses and breads for Christmas Eve and Ron introduced that to my family, which we loved. Then we shopped and didn't neglect a thing.

Pig Roast at Dillon Roadhouse

We headed over to this Saloon, as they call it, for their famous Pig Roast, which they hold every 3rd Sunday. There is a slow roasted pig, corn casserole, which is just like canned corn with some red pepper in it, potato salad, beans and bread. Our group is now - 30 so it's large if we can't be outside. There was good music, and we had a great meal and good laughs.

A Flock of Chickens

I played in the ladies pool tournament here at Desert Pools on Friday and won an ice cream Sunday prize. Today we played at Catalina and Phil and I came first, winning a hamburger dinner.
Frank came in on his scooter wearing red, looking just like Santa.
We gave a surprise birthday party for Vicki which was a lot of fun. We all chipped in and our gift to her was a flock of chickens, which will be 20 - 50 chickens going to a family in need, anywhere from Cameroon to the Caribbean. This can raise the family's income from 50 cents to $2.00 per day, providing protein, easily fed by household scraps and extra eggs for sale. It was a hit.