South Florida Winnie Gators

NOVEMBER 2008  OUTING REPORT

By Marlene Sholtes

A beautiful warm, sunny weekend greeted us for our November campout at Upriver RV Resort in Ft. Myers.  We had 19 coaches in attendance.  The entertainment for our first evening was Card Bingo, one of our favorite “group” games.  The attendees seem to enjoy participating in all of our “group” games. The winners of Card Bingo were Florence Allen (who won two times), Chuck Seager, and Marlene English.  Friday 50/50 Happy Hour Junior Raffle Babes Mo Shaughnessy and Sylvia Smith did quite a good job of selling tickets.  The winners of this raffle were: 1^st  Charlie Travers; 2^nd  Damaris Travers (hmmmm); and 3^rd Jean Fantelli.  We later dined on Sloppy Joes and Cole Slaw prepared by Damaris Travers and Marlene Sholtes.  The members contributed many scrumptious desserts.  Our entertainment for this evening was a game called Crazy Cards.  One table was a little crazier, because we discovered they were not playing with a full deck!  Oh well, we have lots of fun.  The winners of this game were: 1^st Marlene Sholtes; 2^nd Karen Dunn; 3^rd Florence Allen, with Jean Fantelli winning the Booby Prize.

Saturday morning George Shaughnessy and Bob Gill were up early making pancakes with apple topping and sausages.  Of course, Charlie Travers, as ever faithful, made his delicious coffee.  Lee Macdonald and Sylvia Smith brought thousands of beads, donated by Florence Allen, and the members made Spiral Christmas Ornaments.  Each one was individually designed with their favorite colored beads and were quite unique.  The men were asked to bring their potato peelers to help peel the many potatoes required to feed 40 people.  A time to gather was stated, but some of the men arrived quite early and couldn’t wait to start peeling.  There were a number of disappointed men who arrived “on time” but all the potatoes were peeled!

At Happy Hour we were visited by two Pilgrims from the Mayflower, Damaris Travers and Mo Shaughnessy, looking for some money and selling raffle tickets for the many nice prizes we had to offer.  Our dinner Saturday evening was a Thanksgiving Feast featuring turkey and all the fixins’ including pumpkin pie.  Quite delicious!  Our guests for dinner were George & Marge Shaughnessy’s grandson Lane and his friends Kelly and Steve.  They pitched right in the kitchen and helped mash potatoes, lifted the heavy pots, and anything else they could help with.  Such fine young people.  Kelly even helped serve the gravy.

After clean up, 25 of us played Chase the Ace.  This is always a boisterous game!  Marlene English sped the game along by walking around to make sure everyone played quickly.  She must have walked a few miles around the long table.  Damaris Travers won this game also.  She and Charlie have been lucky this weekend!

Sunday morning we had biscuits and gravy prepared by Bob Gill and George Shaughnessy.  We never go hungry with this chapter!  We had our monthly meeting and parted ways until next month when we have our Great Christmas Party!