We left our beach RV Park, Dockweiler, on December 21st which also happens to be the birthday of my sister Susan and my sister-in-law Celina. We moved over again to the street outside the Kelly home in Lakewood Country Club area. So we were dry camping again, which mean no hook-ups for electricity, water or sewer plus in this case we park leaning a lot to starboard (our right) and no slides extended. We have done it before and it makes for cramped conditions. Plus because of the angle the water only senses about 1/2 of the full amount and says we are out earlier than we actually are. Plus running on batteries means you can only run certain devices like the AC or heaters when the generator is running. No AC wasn’t a problem because it was cold the entire time we were there, but we had to turn on the generator first thing in the morning and last thing at night for an hour or two to heat up the coach. We spent a lot of our time traveling around visiting family and friends, or at the Kelly house so it wasn’t really a problem.
This was our year to be with our kids and their partners for Thanksgiving, so that also means this is the year they spend Christmas with their partners families. While this plan has been in place for several years it was actually the first Christmas in the lives of James and Madison that they didn’t spend it with us. Patrick had missed a couple of times for family reasons with Mysha (like her pregnancy with our soon-to-be grandson last year).
Before Madison left the area for Christmas with Joey’s family, my older sister Tess arranged for a joint Susan/Celina birthday party at her house on the 21st of December. Tom picked up Italian food, Madison brought Joey for those to meet him if they hadn’t already, and we had a great time with everyone.
Then there was a repeat group dinner on Christmas Eve hosted by Tess again. This was a traditional Turkey dinner with all the fixings. Tom smoked the turkey outside and while I’m not a huge fan of Turkey this was very good and surprisingly moist. Leslie made great stuffing, Tess had her famous creamed corn, plus salads, cranberry sauce and everything.
Christmas the next morning was quiet without any of our kids, but we just took it easy and walked over to the Kelly home and Leslie made breakfast blintzes she had learned from Jessie Butler for Christmas breakfast. We just hung out the rest of the day. I watched some of the NBA on Christmas Day basketball and later we all enjoyed our traditional Baker/Kelly meat fondue Christmas dinner. We have been doing this for over 15 years as none of us needed the big Turkey dinner tow days in a row, and we fell into this. It is a very social meal and the entire family on both sides seem to love it.
Bakers Be Gone 