Holiday Weekend

We are celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas this weekend.  Marianne and Diane will both be in Wilmington, so we are celebrating.  We are all able to be together only 1 or 2 times each year, so we try to make it special.

We will have our traditional Christmas Eve fondue on Saturday evening.  I suppose we should include a few North Carolina items like, oysters, shrimp or bar-b-que, but I am not sure how that would work out since not everyone, including me, likes seafood.

Sunday, will be Thanksgiving with the traditional turkey.  I am sure there will be enough football, and maybe the Bears can cap it off by beating the Packers

It should be a lot of fun.

November 1, 2014.

We have been retired now for 8 months.  It has been a fun and interesting journey.  Not only did we retire, but we also moved about 1300 miles from Green Bay WI to Wilmington NC.  I literally left work, got in the car and off we went.

This journey has been fun and challenging in many ways.  First we moved to a house we had owner for almost a year, but our son was living there.  His idea of clean and ours were not exactly the same.  In addition, he had been used to this being his house and now we were taking over.  Also, we had given him some furniture, so his things and our things made it crowded.  He has met a very nice girl and they are a good match.  Tim is also in the process of buying his first house.We had also left a good deal of things behind for our youngest daughter. We miss her and look forward to her visits. Our oldest daughter is set in a masters program about 2 hours away.  This is the closest we have lived to her in about 6 years, so we are able to see her more often.

We have continued to learn about investments and how retirement income streams work.  This is a continual learning process.  It took a bit to get the pension and 401k plans lined up, but we have a very good financial advisor who makes sure we understand what is happening.  We have been working with her for a few years and have a lot of trust in her.

We still have more to learn.  Long term care insurance is the next item to learn about and find the best solution for us.  I also plan to enroll in classes offered by the library to continue my understanding.  We talk about real estate investing, so that may be our next class.  We will also want to work with someone who has experience.  We also continue to look at health care.  We are both going on my work plan for next year.  We will see how Obamacare shakes out after the election.

We have completed several projects around the house.  We had the old master bath updated with a new walk in shower.  Sadly, there is an issue with it and it is being replaced, but not at our cost.  We also replaced the kitchen and bathroom floors.  In the kitchen, we also replaced the cabinets and countertops.  The design was unique but it looks great.

We have had company in our new home.  Diane visited us for her birthday in March along with Joe.  They had a good time and discovered some new places to hang out.  My mom and sister and her family visited in July.  We had fun showing them around.  Jan's sister Mel visited for her birthday in August.  Coincidentally, she had an offer on her place that week, so we showed her places to live and she moved to Wilmington in October.

We have had a lot of fun, both exploring new places and hanging at the beach.  The area has many festivals and just cool places.  We have been to the beach many times.  Sometimes to just have lunch, read and talk.  There is much to see and do.  We have volunteered for several events and with different groups and have had good experiences with them.  Our new neighbors are fun also.

So, we are really enjoying retirement.  I advise people to go when they can.  That is a different time for everyone, but we have no regrets and are truly enjoying ourselves.