We are just about to celebrate Thanksgiving without the large family gathering. The effect of the pandemic has reduced as many people have been vaccinated although masks are still required for many indoor locations. We are back to church with few restrictions remaining.

This will be the first time in 50 years that we didn’t host the entire family in our house for Thanksgiving. The family is now scattered with many family members in North Carolina and Mike and Tammy having moved to South Carolina. We had an intimate Thanksgiving last year with Rosalie, John and Ben due to the Pandemic restrictions but now we realized that it is too much for us to host 20+ people any more. So we were invited to John’s brothers home to celebrate with the Cook family.

This summer we were able to be with the Cooks at the Outer Banks of North Carolina in July, at Wildwood in NJ for a few days at the end of August, and finally at Disney World in Florida in September. We thought we would lose a year’s worth of DVC points but a week opened up unexpectedly and we booked two 2-bedroom units for ourselves another for Mike and Tammy. The Cooks came for a world wind weekend with us. It was a great week.

As we approach Christmas and the winter our country is in trouble with great divisions due to the socialist approach of the Democratic party and President Biden. Raging inflation and many other issues like the many immigrants surging across the southern border, riots in the cities of our country and police animosity ,and the vaccination and other restrictions the federal government keeps insisting, have created a confrontational environment in our country. There are “Help Wanted” signs everywhere as small businesses can’t get workers who prefer to live off the government handouts coming from this socialist government. Many small business are no more while others struggle with limited staff. It’s hard to understand why so many people voted for this approach but we are in it for the near time at least.