Happy New Year!

Sunday, January 1, 2017
Texts on our phone, messages on Facebook, emails, phone conversations and people on the street all prefaced things with the greeting of Happy New Year today!  And yes, that is typical each time we get to January 1 of a year but with each succeeding year it seems like it comes at us from via more and more different methods.  This communication age of ours is amazing.  Ways to communicate keep growing and changing -- and now I'm considering getting a "smart" phone I'm even more aware of the different ways we reach each other.  Yes, it is more convenient at times but at times it is information overload.  I wonder what 2017 will bring us.

Yesterday Ken and I took down our Christmas tree and all of the other trims in the house and stored them away.  Then today we finished the job removing the outside trims.  It is so much more than we've done in years because now that we have a home again there is more space to decorate.  But it was fun having a tree again and space to entertain on Christmas Day.

Then last night we got dolled up and went down to our clubhouse for the New Year's Eve dance.  Roland and Eileen who live at the end of our street arranged to make it official and had arranged for a wedding ceremony the hour before the dance was to start.  Many of our residents attended that.  Emma Jean Cook had arranged to get her licence to officiate (she had one for Maine her original residence) so she did the ceremony. Here is a photo of that

Later at the dance another gal in the park took this picture of them

They then set the flower covered arch off to the side of the stage providing a spot for couples at the dance to get pictures of themselves.  Here we are

The music was provided by Travis Golden who lives here at the park and is well known for his jukebox and Elvis manikan which sits on his covered front porch.

He really was terrific providing all kinds of music, and "show" bouncing around the stage in a variety of costumes

and working the crowd getting them clapping hands and doing things like the chicken dance with him in the middle wearing a chicken hat and doing the dance with them.  He had a couple of cute "competitions" one of which included having people move to one of 4 corners of the floor by an ace card for one of each of the four suits.  He would then pick an ace from his stack and those in that corner would have to sit down until we were down to two people left to go to corners.  The winning couple got a gift certificate for a local restaurant. There were raffle prizes and cash prizes as well but that was arranged by the committee.

The kids texted a Happy New Year to us and Beth posted this picture taken at their place tonight while they were preparing to shout Happy New Year

This morning Ken led the worship service at our park church.  We both sing in the choir so it was a busy service for him.

Afterwards we quickly changed as the temperature had gone from 54 to almost 80 when we got out of the clubhouse.  Once the outside decorations were put away we drove to the local Ruby Tuesday where we met Frank and Bette, Jim and Jackie, and Harold for dinner

Following dinner we gathered over at Jackie and Jim's for more conversation.  Ron and Kathy Alesin joined us there.  But it was soon time to head back to Hillcrest for ice creamT and entertainment at the hall. Geoge Raab does an amazing job singing every song he plays making sure there is a good variety of music so chances to do everything from a slow dance to a polka and line dancing.  I loved the last song of the evening Sweet Caroline.  Meant for me, right?  Besides I love Neal Diamond's music. 

Speaking of that, Jean Russell sent this picture to me as well as friend Caroline Landrum and other Carols she knows.