Christmas - Meeting Family & Friends, touring the East...

Our earlier cancelled flights were replaced by a direct flight to Charleston, WV.... Merry Christmas! Brother Dan met us for the short ride home. The large Sizemore Clan packed into Mom & Dad's place for a Christmas dinner and celebration filled with 3 generations and so many grand-children that it was easy forget who belonged to who. Back to live in the USA after so many years.... the time with family flew by.

From there, we started on our Great East Coast Tour... upstate New York where we stayed in the Teddy Roosevelt room in the old Notleymore Cottage (pictured below) - Teddy stayed there as a friend of his was the owner. These days it is a lovely Bed & Breakfast. http://www.notleymere.com/.

Other stops included Cooperstown, the home of Baseball, New Jersey, New York City (we visited the aircraft carrier Intrepid just a few days before an airplane was brought down in the Hudson River when Geese flew into the engines - just a few feet away!), Washington, DC, and more... Great to see so many friends and relatives - many for the first time in years.

Vacation started in Orlando, Florida, where Bev took us in and made sure we enjoyed Disney World - where she works. Siemens is well represented at the Epcot Park (there are 4 parks all together) at the Starship Earth ride, and also as the sponsor of the nightly firework and lights show.

China is also well represented at Epcot, including an acrobatics show several times a day. Some of the workers are from China, and when I noticed one young lady's nametag said she was from Shanghai, I greeted here in Shanghainese... needless to say she was quite surprised.

We visited Sarasota before traveling up the east coast once more....

Next stop - New Zealand