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| Our Driving Day from Harvest, Alabama to Hot Springs Village, Arkansas. Darrell at Our Lunch Stop at a Mexican Restaurant. |
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| Screenshot of Our Grandson, Quinn During Our Weekly Video Call. |
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| Cyndy, Darrell's Sister, Doing Her Regular Leg Circulation Therapy at Our Hot Springs Village Airbnb. |
Saturday. 22. Check out of our Harvest airbnb. We do our morning routines: floor exercise and breakfast. Clean up breakfast, the airbnb and pack out. We are out by 9:20am. Our destination, according to google maps, is 6 hours and 40 minutes of driving. The day is beautiful with blue skies and sunshine. We decided to take turns driving every 90 minutes. We stopped for lunch and for a few groceries before arriving to our nice townhome around 5pm. Cyndy and Mom arrived about 20-30 minutes ahead of us. Cyndy had texted me the comment, “It’s beautiful!” I texted back, “yay!” We walked through and decided on who’s sleeping where. Mom appreciated the single floor layout and the ensuite with a shower she can get in and out of and use her chair in. Darrell had almost finished unloading by the time I got back and knew which room was ours. We stayed in for dinner and had sandwiches. We discussed our time to leave for worship in the morning and our Sunday schedule for lunch out and then grocery shopping for our Thanksgiving week. We made a menu with everyone’s favorite Thanksgiving meal components. We built a shopping list and split it between Cyndy and us. We decided to cook a full Turkey meal with all the trimmings on Monday, and eat it through the week. There are only 4 of us! Lol.
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| Walking Next to the Golf Course that Our Airbnb is at. |
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| Our Long Cast Shadows |
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| More Golf Course and Pond at Hot Springs Village, Arkansas |
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| Video Call with Owen and Esther as They Ride in Their Car. |
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| Great Grandma Saying Hi to Owen as He is Holding the Phone and Asking All Kinds of Questions. |
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| Darrell Making His Fabulous Turkey Dressing. |
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| Selfie with an 8 Pound Turkey Ready to Bake in an Oven Bag. |
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| Cyndy Preparing Fresh Beans. |
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| Our Fabulous Feast with Mom in This Picture. To Think, That Mom Used to Make All of This Herself! |
Sunday. 23. Worship in Hot Springs with a nice group. Fantastic class and sermon today. The preacher is Adam Kindall-Ball, and we have met his Dad a few times in our past. They are from Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe. Adam had a sermon on thanksgiving in prayer and how it means grateful language. He began at 1 Thes 5:17-18. Three people after worship told us about a local light display in Garvan Woodland Gardens that we should consider going to enjoy. We had lunch at a steak house and then went to Kroger to shop for our Thanksgiving feast items.
Monday. 24. Darrell is great to make pancakes for breakfast as usual for us, and to share with his mom and sister. In the morning we each set to our tasks to prepare our Thanksgiving meal. I baked the Turkey and set out cranberry sauce. Darrell made dressing and gravy. Cyndy made mashed potatoes and green beans. We ate around 2pm and enjoyed our small group and delicious meal. We talked of memories of times past when Darrell’s mom, Shirley, cooked the whole meal for her family of 5 children. I told her this is why her kids grew up loving these flavors and this together time. Now we each have learned through the years to enjoy our traditional feast and to cook components all together as an added joy. One memory when our 4 children were in junior high-college, each one selected something that they wanted to contribute and make for our Thanksgiving feast while living in Burlington, North Carolina. I remember that Samuel wanted to bring punch. He found a recipe online and made us all punch! It was a fun component we had never had before! Jeremy (I think) made green bean casserole that was from a recipe online with upgrades of all fresh items and all from scratch. It was topped with chopped fresh tomatoes and was amazing. Everyone's dishes were really top-notch and we had a feast and played games all day long together! Outside today the rain is coming down hard. We are all glad to be inside. We had a call with our grandkids Owen and Esther. Owen held the phone and asked questions that were so sweet and engaging. He said, “Where are you? Is it far away?” Then, “We are going to Costco to get things to make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving!” Esther chimed in a couple of words but mostly looked like she was taking a rest during her carseat ride to Costco.
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| Our Lovely Airbnb Patio Looking Out on the Isabella Golf Course, One of Nine Courses in This Very Large Gated Community. |
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| Cardinal in Bush. |
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| Parking at Garvan Woodland Gardens Light Show |
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| Getting Started on the Light Show Walk. |
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| Mom and Cyndy on the Path at the Light Show. |
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| Us |
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| Lighted Pandas |
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| Light Show Reflection |
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| Light Show Dragon |
Tuesday. 25. The rain subsided and we had some sunshine today. This is to be our warmest day within the week forecast. We are considering going to the Garvan Woodland Gardens tonight. Darrell and I had our 1pm online Bible study with the English church members we know. We had a presentation by John of Luke 10:17-42. His application that this is a collection of stories where the people are focused on the wrong thing got me to connect to his point earlier. The point in verse 18, where he says, “I saw Satan falling…from heaven…” I thought of this as Jesus saying, I see and know amazing things, but I am not focused on that. Jesus stays so focused on his task of teaching and preparing his disciples for his eventual death and resurrection. He’s amazing! Of course, he’s Jesus!
Wednesday. 26. Hanging out at our airbnb together. Enjoying the quiet together. Cyndy on calls with her three daughters in Colorado. Also on a call for her youngest daughter’s possible college tuition aid from the state of Texas. Darrell and I go for a walk. We leave at 5pm to drive 30 minutes to Hot Springs for grocery shopping and then to the mid-week church meeting with a singing tonight.
Thursday. 27. Today, we enjoyed having our pancake breakfast with Darrell’s mom, Shirley, while his sister slept in later. For lunch, I baked some chicken thighs and Cyndy made mashed potatoes, and broccoli. I refreshed the gravy and dressing with some of the baked chicken drippings. We enjoyed our Thanksgiving day feast for a 4th day. Tomorrow we plan to have Nachos and tacos! lol.
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| Darrell, Sister, Cyndy and Mom, Shirley at Hot Springs Village, Arkansas Airbnb. |
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| Bye to Mom and Cyndy. |
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| Met Dave and Gail on Our Recent Cruise During Dinner. |
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| Getting a Ride in Their Classic Car! |
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| Gail and Me in the Back of the Classic Car. |
Friday. 28. Cyndy, Darrell’s sister, decided to leave at 4pm today. She’s driving 6 hours back to Denton, Texas, north of Dallas with Mom, of course. They come as a package. Mom and Dad have lived with Cyndy for several years. She’s made a space in her home for them and they have been there even before as a close-by help for her raising her 3 girls. We enjoyed our final morning visits together along with breakfast and lunch. Cyndy and Mom loaded up for their drive home to Texas. Darrell and I came back into our huge and quiet house. Seems so different now with only us. Darrell reminds me about calling Dave and Gail, who live in this community and we met on a cruise ship in October while seated with them at dinner. I look up Gail and map that we are 15 minutes from their house. I call her up and we decide to come over before dinner and visit with them for an hour or so. We arrived. We get reintroduced and start visiting. They are all decorated for Christmas! They’ve lived here since 2001 as their retirement home and life. Dave invites Darrell out to the garage to see his museum quality classic car from the 1930’s!! They’ve owned this car for 13 years and it has become one of their biggest pastimes. They meet up weekly with other classic car enthusiasts. He offers to take us for a ride. Of course! What a treat! We all pile in and go for a long drive with Dave’s skillful handling of this old steering. He uses his brakes often on the curvy, up and down roads. Gail and I visit in the backseat. She loves telling me about all of her connections and activities in this community that they’ve grown to love and be involved in. We visit a little more at their house and then say, ‘goodbye.’ Dinner at home is easy with plenty of good leftovers.
Nomad Notes. During this week I’ve had some emotional lows, but I have seemed to come out of that funk feeling into feeling well. We are looking forward to our trip to Brazil on December 9th. I’ve gone back and forth on texts with Andrea about gifts. We’ve shared some good laughs over failed gifts like some creepy clown dolls that she got at a White Elephant gift exchange many years ago! She said that Jeremy told her that she couldn’t bring them into their house because they might kill them in their sleep! I remember that odd gift, and got a good laugh all over again!
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