2020…Year in Review – Part One

The 2020 version of Susie’s Christmas Letter started this way:

“I ended last year’s letter with, “ I wonder what the next year will bring.” Well, to say it’s been a doozy is an understatement! I’m sure we can all agree it’s been a very trying year.”

As the clock approached midnight on December 31st, 2019, 2020 appeared to be shaping up to be another good year for the D’Elia Family! Our kids were all married and healthy. A third Grandchild had joined our family in 2019. The boys had been with us for Christmas, Billy, Lori and our 3 Grandkids had visited us right after Christmas and we were looking forward to 2020, including our plans to spend several months of the winter in Florida!

in January, we celebrated my 70th Birthday! First with the boys at Angelo’s because January 2nd fell on our usual Angelo’s night of Thursday!

Then a week later, the twins and their spouses (Krissi, Mike, Kenny and Chris) surprised me with a birthday weekend at Harrahs in Atlantic City!

It was a great way to celebrate my 70th trip around the sun and the kids totally surprised me!

The next weekend, Kenny and Chris started their new job of flying to various cities around the country and officiating at Dance Competitions. All expenses were paid, they got frequent flyer miles, and working 4 days a week, they made what they’d have made in a regular job. It was a lot of work, with long hours, but they seemed to be enjoying it. Meanwhile, Susie and I were putting Christmas, 2019 back in tubs and transporting it to our storage place. We were also packing and getting ready for our trip to Florida at the end of the month! On January 30th, we left Ocean City, with our first stop at Billy and Lori’s brand new house in Wake Forest, North Carolina! Little did we know that would be the last time we saw them in 2020!

You can follow along on our trip to North Carolina and our trip to Indian Rocks Beach in our blog, Florida, Here we come! https://rnewadventures.com/2020/02/01/florida-here-we-come/

Our rental condo in Indian Rocks Beach was right on the Gulf of Mexico, and ours for the entire month of February! See our Blog Week One In Florida for more….https://rnewadventures.com/2020/02/11/week-one-in-florida/ for the rest of the story!

Then, towards the end of the month, Kenny and Chris had a weekend off from their job, and came down and spent mid-week to mid-week with us! It was great showing them a place we liked a lot, and they liked it too! They loved going to the beach, exploring the town on foot, and checking out several great restaurants

The last week of February, on the 25th, Susie got a call that her Mom had died. She was 95, had been in full on dementia for a while, and had been in a Nursing Home on Long Island for several years. We were very happy that we’d had a great visit with her in January before heading down to Florida, but now the problem of the boys and us being in Florida and planning and getting to a funeral that was taking place that weekend on Long Island.

I wrote an extensive blog about it back in early March. Life Happens will give you more details. https://rnewadventures.com/2020/03/03/life-happens/

The morning after the funeral, Kenny and Chris drove back to Ocean City, Billy caught his flight out of JFK, and that afternoon at 4:15, Susie and I were on another Delta flight, heading back to Florida (where our car was waiting for us at the long term parking at the airport), and what we thought was going to be our second month in the Sunshine State! After a brief overnight at a Hampton Inn near the airport, we were off to six wonderful nights at the Double Tree Resort in Hollywood Beach! To say we love being at Hilton’s Double Tree Resort in Hollywood Beach Florida would be an understatement..see what I mean in this blog! https://rnewadventures.com/2020/03/12/doubletree-resort-hollywood-beach-florida/

I think the morning we drove away from the Doubletree’s Valet Parking, was the last time that Susie and I thought that 2020 was going to be a normal year in our lives! Our next stop was at my cousin Jeanne and Walt’s in Barefoot Bay, Florida. Just above Sebastian on the East Coast of Florida, we’d stayed with Jeanne and Walt several times in the past, but this year was going to be different. A couple of days after we arrived, Jeanne and Walt were heading to Hawaii, and Susie and I were going to be residents of Barefoot Bay for the rest of March! “Were Going to Be” are the operative word of that sentence!

If you want to know what transpired, I wrote a blog post called A Very Strange 6 Weeks that detailed our Florida visit 2020, and how it ended! .https://rnewadventures.com/2020/03/19/a-very-strange-6-weeks/)

Two days later, on Monday the 16th, the boys returned from what would be the last weekend of their new Dance Competition job. Susie and I wondered if we should go to Charlie’s the next day for St. Patricks at the back bar with our friend Sue. We didn’t have to make the decision, as Charlie’s and most of the rest of our Jersey Shore Community closed down! One week later I wrote another blog about a Strange Time…little did I know!
https://rnewadventures.com/2020/03/21/a-strange-time/

Honestly, most of 2020 has been a blur that went by way too fast. I wrote one blog post early in April (https://rnewadventures.com/2020/04/) and then nothing again till August! In the midst of all this, I just didn’t feel like writing. I started a couple of blogs, but they just never went anywhere! Therefore, my plan for the rest of this Review of 2020 is to look back at the calendar and some of our pictures, and try to recreate the “high” spots of the next 9 months!

The Front Porch Gets Rebuilt

April brought the start of major work on our house’s front porch. We had an issue in the front right corner, figured that we had some rot, and made arrangements for OC Fiberglass to start work when we came back from Florida.. Of course, nothing could be determined till it was opened up, and when they did open it up, there was much more damage than we imagined. Turned out we had to have the 4 front columns replaced, the entire outer structure of the porch, and it involved our upstairs neighbors too! Because of the supply issues with Covid, and Mother Nature, what should have taken a couple of weeks took well into mid May! A lot of time, and you don’t want to know what it cost us!