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First Grandchild!

As I type this, we are celebrating the 1/2-year birthday (6 months) for our little Oliver! He was born on December 17 and is our first grandchild! His parents of course are our daughter Audrey and son-in-law Brandon. What a joy and a blessing.

After our being married for over 50 years, we were not absolutely sure that being a grandma/grandpa would actually come into being, but in this stage of life we are thrilled.

I had forgotten how quick they change from day to day. It has been awesome to watch his development to barely focusing his vision to now having two bottom teeth and beginning to sit up on his own. He is also a very happy and outgoing child, never missing an opportunity to smile and laugh.

Audrey and Brandon are both incredible and caring parents. It is very sweet to see our little girl become a caring and nurturing mother. Raising a child is not always and easy road but there are so many rewards as you help them celebrate their successes in life.

We are looking forward to many more years of spoiling this child!

Thank you, Lord, for this little blessing!

God Bless and take care y’all.

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I’m Back – Blog Update

It has been a minute or two since the last update! Life has been either very busy or else we have been in the full retirement relaxing mode. And too many hobbies keeping me scrambling! One of my hobbies is to document our travels for family and friends and particularly for us to look back on the “active” phase of retirement. And I do really enjoy writing. Not sure what the next phase will be but probably less travel.

I plan to do a few brief updates of the last six months. It has been a brisk timeline. Including International travel, two cruises, birth of our first grandchild, a wintering as snowbirds in Florida, and a return to our home in the Blue Ridge mountains of southwest Virginia.

Back at our Virginia home, we have many projects and quite a bit of maintenance to keep the place up. So along with some summer fun trips we have a plateful to complete a few home projects. But we are very excited about some incredible travel plans coming up that we will share with you in the near future. Hopefully, I’ll keep this train on the track.

That’s all for now! Thanks for following along! Leave a comment, we love to hear from our readers. God Bless.

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Travel Day to Lisbon, Portugal – Day 1

This fall Pat and I planned a guided tour of the back roads of Portugal and Spain. The tour company (Overseas Adventure Travel – OAT) has been highly recommended by its prior customers. I did sound like an interesting tour traveling from Lisbon Portugal (southwest coast) to Madrid Spain in the center of Spain. The route was a southern one that included may small historical towns and the real gem was staying in old historic castles or monasteries. Of course they have been mostly updated!

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Appalachian Trail – “Creek”

I had planned to continue writing about our winter in Florida, but have a new real time event that I wanted to share. I enjoy many of the local Virginia hiking opportunities either on the Appalachian Trail (AT) or any of the hundred other mountain wilderness trails. My idea of a good hike is three-four hours on the trail followed immediately by a good restaurant meal somewhere, then back home to shower and rest. We are blessed in this area to have a plethora of hikes available! This week, I joined an AT Through Hiker for a few hikes, including one that was very challenging!

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Three Weeks in Virginia

In this post we have returned back to our home in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains from our fall trip to Europe. We have so many things planned in the next three weeks including a family get together at Christmas. This will be our first Christmas at our home in eight years. Since before I retired and we sold the prior house, bought an RV, and took to the road. Let’s see what we accomplished in three weeks!

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