Meeting up with *more* friends!

Friends Dave and Jeaninne live in On Top of the World, a 55+ community in far southwest Ocala. We had contacted them and they invited us to come see their new home - they were in Bible Study with Carl and Sue at Riverside Church, and moved here from the far western suburbs of Chicago about two years ago. 

Their home is beautiful (unfortunately, we did not take any pictures!) and the community seems to be very nice too! One thing they mentioned was that they specifically wanted to buy in an area of the community where the homes were just being built so everyone would be "new" and it would be easier to build community with your neighbors -- which we thought was a smart idea!

We went out to a Mexican restaurant -- the chairs, booths, and tables were all very decorated! Jeaninne and Dave...

... Carl and me.

After supper, we drove into Ocala to see their lights display. We first drove around the Ocala Downtown Square, but, unfortunately, did not find anywhere to park. So, we went over to the "Citizen's Circle" (City Hall) where the "dripping lights" were found...

A picture of the dripping lights... but..

you really need to see them in motion (hopefully this embedded video will work):

(I don't think the embedded video will work, so here it is on YouTube, only 5 seconds long: https://youtu.be/C9hYYXQK__E)
 

Some of the other decorations at Citizen's Circle...

 

Patti, Jeaninne, and Dave at "Metallic Fluttering" (the butterfly sculpture)

Jeaninne was impressed with how well Carl's camera took a nighttime picture, so she decided to try taking one with her phone's camera...

... but it gave a funny message...

... even though we could see Carl and Dave in the picture... but her phone said "No person detected."

Jeaninne went up and poked both of them to make sure that they weren't just holograms. Note that Dave is suavely modeling Jeaninne's purse too!

That got us all tickled... so when we went over to the green and red lit trees to do a selfie...

... we couldn't stop laughing and we all had a "glow" (from the lights) about us...

... which made us laugh more...

... we finally got a relatively normal picture of all four of us!

As we left Ocala, we went back past the downtown square - we still did not see any parking, but I took a picture out of the car window. They had a very interesting "wrap" on the trees in the square that made them look almost like they were large balloons floating above the square.

It is so nice to visit (and laugh!) with friends!