Merry Christmas

“Celebrate endings—for they precede new beginnings.” –Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Covid 19 may have changed the way we did a few things in the past 9 months, but it didn't stop us from enjoying another wonderful year. We spent less time with friends, but much more time with our family. That trend started in January when Kyle and his family came to Texas for a week. We spent four of those nights with our whole family in a beautiful home in Dripping Spring. It was a great place for us to visit, reconnect with each other and watch the cousins play. 

In February we spent almost three weeks in Puerto Rico. What a great place to vacation, it offers a little of everything we love...crystal clear water, white sand beaches and amazing waterfalls. We had plenty of time to hike, explore and relax. The people of Puerto Rico were amazingly friendly, the food was excellent, the scenery spectacular and the beaches picturesque...all the excitement of being in another country, but the ease of being in the US. It's definitely a place we'll visit again. 

Life went along as normal until the middle of March...then our world seemed to change over night. Not that it really affected us that much...we did give up eating out and going to the yacht club, but we had lots of great visits with our Rockport granddaughters. The slower pace gave us a chance to get a lot of projects done around our house and cooking at home meant we were saving money and eating healthier. All good things.

The biggest issue the virus caused was the timing on our return to New York and The Pearl. The state park that our marina is in wouldn't allow anyone to stay on their boats until the first part of June...so we lost a month of time up north. We didn’t spend a lot of time visiting with other boaters, but we spent A LOT of great time with Kyle and his family. Our summer was amazing...we had three mini vacations on the lakes in upstate New York. All were spent with our family at great home rentals. We went swimming, boating, hiking, exploring, painted rocks, had campfires, ate s'mores and had a wonderful time.

The saddest part of our year was the passing of Stan's mom in September. We went home in August so we could spend a few weeks with her. She was the last of her generation to pass and now we're the old ones...how did that happen so fast? She'll be missed greatly, but we have a lot of wonderful memories to cherish.

This year brings an end to our life in Port Lavaca...we have a contract on our house and will move on to Texas Pearl full time on January 15. It's an emotional move, but we're ready. We no longer have any reason to stay in Port Lavaca and we have so many other places we want to explore. We look forward to the new year with all its new adventures and the opportunities it'll bring. We will move our belongings into a climate controlled storage unit and one day we'll have a new house to put them in, but for now the world is our home.