Another Year Begins....

Today is my birthday. Yep. I am 64 years old today, but hoping that 64 is the new 44 (sigh), but the wrinkles on my face (however routinely exfoliated and moisturized) and my sagging ass tell me that 64 is merely the same old 64.

Quite a few things have happened over this last weekend.

We've started working on the house again, but with much greater purpose. We have finally decided it's time to make the move to Florida. We've wanted to move there for years, but just haven't done it ... obviously. Well, now we will.

I don't know how long it will take to finish the house; most likely most of the summer. We'll put our house up for sale when it's done. In the meantime, it will be my full-time job and Tom's weekend job.

Why Florida? We've been vacationing there since the 80's and have loved it from the moment we landed on Florida soil the very first time. It's a lot like California, only warmer in the winter and hotter in the summer. It has a very diverse population. You'll hear an array of different languages spoken in the grocery store, of all places. While on any one of our vacations there, we've met people from Canada, England, Germany, Sweden and many more countries, in addition to people from all across the United States. I really miss cultural diversity. There's not a lot of that going on here. And the atmosphere is very laid back and casual, much like California.

We will also be within a reasonable hour or two driving time to at least one of our sons. Chris and Kelly and the kids are moving to Gulf coast next month, but have been living in Savannah for the last 12 years or so. It's a 14-hour drive to Savannah (significantly closer than Mike and Kathy on the west coast), but still not as close as when we all lived in southern California or when we lived at Lake Tahoe (2000 to 2001) at the same time as Mike and Kathy.

Zak, our oldest grandson, is 19 years old. Although he would visit us for a week or two most summers, we haven't lived close to him since 2001 ... since he was about 11 years old. His two younger sisters, Zoey - 6 and Lily - almost 9, have only experienced our grandparenting by long distance and during holiday visits. We've missed birthday celebrations, bike rides, school plays, all the personal, one on one, face to face interaction ... we have missed so much.

The same goes for Chris and and his family. Jacob, the oldest, is already 17 years old, then Tommy, then Hagan. All three of them play sports, but we've only attended a few games that they just happen to be playing during a visit. We've missed Grandparents Day at their school, Hagan's first play, Jacob and Tommy's 8th grade graduations.

I'm tired of missing so much of everything. At least if we live just an hour or two from Chris, our time-off that would be usually split between Mike and Chris can be spent more often with Mike.

So there you have it. That's our plan and we're sticking to it.

Tom and I will be celebrating my birthday at home.....if you can really call it celebrating. We bought lobster tails to steam and romaine for Caesar Salad, and Tom is making Limoncello Champagne Cocktails with Mint to sip while we make dinner. I was going to make Bananas Foster for dessert, but I just received 2 boxes of chocolate covered strawberries and orange segments from Mike and Kathy (ooooohhhh, yummmmmmm).

Looks like I will be making banana bread tomorrow.

But today...Happy Birthday to Meeeeee!