Busy, Busy Days in Florida

Toffee Brownie Trifle

My winters in Florida are fun and fine, although a bit too busy at times.  Last week I had the AC tech come to check my air conditioner on Monday. 

Tuesday I went to a Social Committee and potluck brunch - even had to cook - yikes!  Everyone liked my trifle, which makes it worthwhile to cook.

Wednesday I went to our big Health Fair.  Of course, I do what most people do - stocked up on pens, pads, jar openers, magnets, and other free goodies.  The best was a free ice cream at the end!

 

Thursday I took my friend, Judith Beckman, shoe-shopping.  That proved to be rather challenging but we finally had some luck.  The bad part was that in that outlet mall they had one of my favorite stores - Crocs.  I ended up buying several pairs of shoes for me.

 

I worked the Saturday Morning Coffee Hour.  That's OK except that - gasp - I had to be there at 8 a.m.  Setting an alarm ain't for retired people!!!

 

I had Judith come for lunch on Easter Sunday. I did it the easy way - got 2 dinners from Perkins restaurant.  We ate in the Florida room with the windows open and had a lovely afternoon.

I got a new computer recently so have spent many hours getting it set up.  You don't realize how many details you have set until they're not there.  There is a young man named David Cheney here in Savanna Club, who is my new computer guru.  He's sharp, pleasant, patient, and so knowledgeable.

 

Then the laundry does accumulate and dust sneaks its way into my house!  We're starting to get warm in the day so I'm enjoying tooling around on my golf cart. We were in a drought but thankfully it rained several days so things are green again.

 

On Tuesday I was especially busy because Gary was arriving Wednesday.  I went to the dermatologist, went to USPS to return something to Amazon, went to the HOA (Home Owners' Association) to have some copies made, went to the monitor's office to get a guest pass for Gary, returned 2 books to the library and got 2 more. Then I went to the golf shop to get some business cards.  

 

I came home and worked on the folders for our Welcome New Residents Meeting in October.  That's where I used the business cards and copies I had made.  (I won't be here so my co-chair, Sharon Jackson, will run it.)  

Savanna Club is the name of our 55+ community here in Port St. Lucie.  We have over 1,400 homes, a full golf course, 3 club houses with pools, LOTS of activities and almost 4,000 residents to "play" with. I enjoy informing our new residents about all the amenities at the New Residents' Meeting.

 

I also did some laundry and moved some clothes so Gary would have a little closet space. 

 

He arrived yesterday and I'm happy to observe that he's sleeping in. 

Tax season was especially grueling this year. Gary still isn't ready to retire but he might cut down his practice.... maybe....  People have no clue how intense tax season is for a tax accountant.

Now I'll be busy because during the time that he's here, we have one main objective:   We love to eat seafood in restaurants that are on the water.  We already tried a new place on the way home from the airport.  Gary had a shrimp and scallop sandwich and I had a Caribbean salad. 

That's about it for now for my leisurely life of retirement in Florida.  As they say,  "It's better to burn out than rust out."

Eggtravaganza

My church in Port St. Lucie, Florida, First United Methodist Church, has hosted their Eggstavaganza for over 10 years but I had never gone.

Somehow I had envisioned children running around screaming.  It was quite the opposite!  Everything was so organized and the children were well-behaved.

The 44,000 eggs we had stuffed filled the field.  Children got a LOT of eggs because the attendance was less this year.  We had had to cancel in past years for Covid so maybe the word didn't get out.

(Click on any photo for an enlarged version.)

My friend, Sharon Jackson from Savanna Club, came with me.

This little girl seems to be wondering what in the world this big strange creature is.

There were many activities.

Face painting

 

 Jump houses

Crafts

Games

   These are the "wrappers"
    (of hotdogs and hamburgers)

Some people emptied out their eggs and left them for us to fill next year.

The Praise Band played all day.

j

We hope Jesus was jumping for joy as we celebrated the
happiness of Easter with out neighborhood.

(Some of these photos were shared on FB by our director of Student Ministries,Pam Szymczyk.  Thank you, Pam.)

Egg-Stuffing Parties

 (Click on any photo for a larger version.)

I had been talking to Gary every night on the phone about going to Egg Stuffing Parties. After a couple of weeks he finally asked,  "What is an egg-stuffing party?"

My Florida church, (First United Methodist of Port St. Lucie, FL), hosts an Eggstravaganza every spring for the community.   This has been going on more than 10 years.  

Children come for egg hunting and many activities, from face-painting to jump houses to photos with the Easter bunny to crafts and to free food. 
Everyone is given snow-cones, popcorn, hamburgers, hotdogs and drinks.  

OK, back to the Egg-Stuffing Parties. 

Our congregation contributes plastic eggs and candies.  The whole month before the Eggstraganza, volunteers volunteer to "stuff" the eggs with candies.

These egg-stuffing parties take place during the month of April every Wednesday for an hour in the morning and every Wednesday evening for an hour.

We can't use chocolate candies because they melt in the Florida sun.  If people forget and donate chocolate candy, the volunteers help out by eating the chocolates..... it's the least we can do!

 This year, we had a few youngsters to help collect the eggs as they're being filled.  They're home-schooled so it works well.

Young Hudson took filled eggs over to the counting station and brought us empty eggs and candy as needed.  What a trooper he was!

Hudson's older brother, Carter, helped wherever needed, which included counting the eggs.

 I hope this video will run for you.  We'll see.....

  Each bag holds 100 (or was it 200?) eggs. In any event, they fill the church van when we take them over to the park across the street.  
 
With this system, they can keep count.  I thought it was VERY well organized and I thoroughly enjoyed the egg-stuffing days!

Before we knew it, we received this little announcement in our e-blast and on our Facebook page.  We filled over 44,000 eggs!