Christmas Holidays with Family and Friends

Wow! What a fabulous visit with family and friends. I wrote the “This and That in Georgia” entry on December 15 and have just now had the time to post it on-line and to write this entry on the remainder of our visit. Whew! It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks. In three weeks we were in NE Georgia, we put just shy of 1,200 miles on the truck. It seems we were running somewhere almost every day.

On Saturday, December 12, Don and I went to Alpharetta so I could meet up with my dear friends from Amoco Foam. I joined the group in 1986 when I began my 14 year-career with Amoco, and even though Foam broke apart in 1996, we’ve all stayed in touch from our other Amoco divisions. Our fearless leader at Foam, John Giroux, promoted a family atmosphere, and consequently we do, indeed, feel like family. Foam has a reunion every couple of years and most years we have between 50 and 75 people attending. And we only had a little over a 100 people to begin with! It’s a tribute to John and his personality and management style that, after 10 years apart, his people still come from near and far to gather together. Unfortunately I was not able to attend the reunion last year, so I was really glad that Jan, Sharon, Mary,Jan and Dee could get together for lunch. We spent a couple of hours catching up and had a great time reminiscing about the old days. It was a great day and we made plans to get together again next year when we come back to Georgia. Hugs and kisses, Dear Friends!

We got our Christmas decorations out of storage and spent an afternoon with the family decorating the tree and the rig. You know how hectic it gets in your home when you are decorating for the holidays, so you can imagine the chaos we had with 5 adults and 2 small children moving around in about 400 square feet of space. Arrrrrgh! I love the kids dearly, but I was so glad to see them leave that day. LOL! They all came back again on Christmas morning to open gifts (another mess) and then we all went to Sarah’s to have Christmas dinner. We really had a great time and it was a beautiful day, so Don was able to put up Kayla’s swing in one of their trees. We originally had the swing in a tree at our home in Helen and Kayla loved it. When we sold the house she was adamant we take the swing with us. So we did and now it’s up at her house for all of them to enjoy. She was thrilled!

We spent several evenings in Helen at our old drinking establishment, Southside Bar and Grill, and at another place that has opened since we left, The Watering Hole. Each night several of our friends showed up, and it was like we had never left. We also saw some of the same people sitting on the same barstools they were on a year ago, and it was great to be able to go into a familiar place and see familiar people. Partying with our friends brought back some great memories, and it makes us feel so good that they came out to see us.

Even though it was run, run, run, the whole time we were in Helen, we had an awesome time. It was so good to see our kids and grandkids, and we were so pleased that we could also spend quite a bit of time with our friends. Unfortunately there were several friends we didn’t get to see, and we hope we can catch up with them next year. Every one means so much to us, and we’ll miss them all in the coming year. But the road is calling and it’s time for us to move on.

We left Georgia this morning and are spending the night in Montgomery before heading over to spend a week in Pass Christian, MS…just outside of Biloxi. We’ll spend New Year’s there, hopefully winning some $$$ in the casinos. From there we are going to Abita Springs, just across the Lake from New Orleans, where we will hook up with Denny and Linda. We are looking forward to sharing a Muffaletta sandwich and beignets with them before heading to Texas where we will see Dan and Diane. Lots of good times ahead!

Dec 27, 2008

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