Christmas, 2010

Dear Family & Friends,

Warm winter wishes from the sunny south!

Our big news of the year is that we’ve become legal residents of Florida, where we expect to reside from mid-October to mid-April each year!

Last winter Dick did a lot of internet research on double-wide manufactured homes in 55+ communities. Right after leaving Fort Walton Beach last spring, we visited Ocala which seemed to be the best area for us. It’s in central Florida, about an hour’s drive from either coast, an hour+ from Orlando and in the heart of rolling horse country. It’s a little warmer than the Panhandle where we’ve spent the past 10 winters, but cooler than Orlando south – and a lot less congested.

We saw “our” home on a Monday, closed on that Friday, stayed in it 2 nights (the former owners left a double bed), and then drove back to Connecticut to get ready for Maine 6 weeks later.

Maine was wonderful, as always. Our weather was terrific this summer, and our volunteer job consisted of our usual movie-showing twice a week, plus the addition of 2 horseshoe tournaments a week for Dick, water aerobics 3 times a week for me, and maintaining a dishwashing station once a day (or as needed.) We didn’t have to clean the bathrooms at all this year! Not bad work - and for that we get to stay at our favorite place in the whole world for the entire summer for free!

With our youngest son Michael and his family settled into their own home only 45 minutes from Sebago, we got to see a lot more of them. Ayden is now 7 and his little sister Alea is 2 – fun, busy ages. Michael and Jennifer’s toy/entertainment business is still plugging along. They are having more “crews” run the Renaissance Fairs for them and they’re focusing more on the entertainment and internet aspects of the business. Their website, if you’re interested in checking it out, is www.tryouttoys.com.

Sadly, our middle son Tim and his family were unable to get east this summer. Given that they have to fly in from Spokane, WA, they couldn’t afford both the trip and a replacement car. They needed the car, they wanted the trip. The car won out. Alden is now 5 and in kindergarten, which he loves. Ethan is 3 and kind of likes having Cristy to himself while his brother’s in school. We will be flying out there to spend a week with them in mid-December. It’ll be great to see them all again.

From there we’ll fly to CT to spend Christmas with Scott & family, then a week in a time-share in MA with Mom, Scott, Mike and families. We’ll fly home New Year’s Eve.

Our oldest son Scott and his family did come to Sebago for their annual 2-week vacation. It was wonderful to get to spend an extended amount of time with them. We still get to see them when we’re in CT, but that’s less and less time every year, and they’re so involved in sports and other activities that we don’t get to spend nearly as much time with them as we’d like. Teddy is now 14 and Kayleigh is 11. Teddy plays for the high school JV soccer team and has become an awesome goalie. Kayleigh still rides and shows horses, winning her share of ribbons. She too plays soccer. Amy’s horse farm is feeling a bit of the economic slowdown, but is overall holding its own.

My mom is plugging along. She still has all her faculties – some of them take longer to access than they used to, but, heck, at 96, almost 97, she’s still an amazing woman! We’re very lucky!

My sister Marty will be returning to Ft. Walton Beach this winter. Two of the friends we made over the past 2 winters are going to share the 3-bedroom unit with her. This was our biggest concern when we were thinking about leaving Ft. Walton for further south – what would Marty do without us to share the unit and expenses? Fortunately Kathy & Karen stepped forth and offered to share the unit with her. Hooray! We will, however, miss all the friends we’ve made in Ft. Walton, but we’ll try to get up there for a visit sometime during the winter. Ocala is over 300 miles from FWB – a 6-hour drive, so we aren’t likely to make the trip often.

And that brings us back to our new home in Ocala. We moved here October 20th, and spent the next couple of weeks buying a car and furnishing our house. (Our Ford Windstar died on the way down here - but that’s another story!) We’re getting to know people, square dancing twice a week on the average, Dick is golfing and I’m crafting, so our new life is shaping up nicely. There was no water aerobics going on here, so the second week we were here I got that started – big surprise, huh?

Our community is called Saddle Oak Club and there are about 375 homes. We have a great clubhouse with lots of activities and an outdoor heated pool. We’ve become “official” Floridians with the purchase of our own golf cart!

Dick & Gee Sauvageau
5606 SW 58th St.
Ocala, FL 34474
(352) 873-4301

Our cell phones are the same:
    Dick: (203) 512-2057
    Gee: (203) 744-4193

And our emails are the same: 
    geesauvageau@hotmail.com
    dicksauvageau@hotmail.com

Our plan is to try this life for a year before making a decision on selling the house in CT – 6 months here, 5 months in Maine, 1 month in between traveling back and forth and getting our house in Danbury ready to sell. If the market doesn’t rebound a bit more we may decide to rent it until the market does get better. If, for some reason we find this lifestyle isn’t right for us, or we don’t like this area, we still have the house in Danbury to fall back on.

If you are headed to Florida this winter, we have a spare bed.

Love,

Dick & Gee