Happy New Year!!! I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s celebration. Although I wasn’t able to fly off for Christmas as planned, I did spend some time with family and also went to Captiva Island. My family always gets together on Christmas Eve.  We do a potluck dinner and Chinese auction. It’s interesting to see how time has changed and now it’s the nieces in the family that plan the events and pull it all together. I’m happy to have passed down the throne and to just sit back and enjoy. It was a very special time spent with all of my family, brother and sisters,  nieces, nephews, grandnieces, nephews and grandchildren.  We have a lot of little ones that are so fun to watch with all their excitement bubbling out of them. Check out the pictures to the right that were taken on the picture wall that my very creative niece Megan put together.

After Christmas, we took off to Captiva Island on the west coast just south of Ft. Pierce. It was absolutely beautiful. Still recovering from AC joint and rotator cuff surgery, it took some creativity to figure out what to do with my time. I’m so used to being physically active that simply being at the beach doing nothing took some adjusting.  Of course, I quickly adjusted to a nice long nap and plenty of sun worshiping….. Oh yea ….and eating!!

I sometimes just like to wing it when I go on vacation and find a spot to stay when I get there. We ended up getting this very cute little one bedroom cottage at Captiva Inn, just a block off of the beach right in the center of Captiva Village with restaurants and shops all around.  It really couldn’t of been planned better! I included some pictures in this newsletter and highly recommend visiting Captiva and Sanibel Islands.

True to form as soon as January 2nd rolled around, business started picking up again with lots of rental and property management inquiries.  We do a great job of keeping our properties rented and I believe right now we’re renting our very last vacancy and will soon be at 100% occupancy!!!  That doesn’t happen often. Go Laura!!! I know I’ve said it before but I have to say it again,  I have the best assistant ever! We do have some properties on our website that will be coming available due to tenants not renewing their leases and we have some new homeowners putting their properties into management with us soon. I’m sure the 100% occupancy will be very short-lived but it’s nice to have achieved it!

The weather in our area has been crazy. It may be 35° in the morning and 75° in the afternoon and then a rain storm comes in and we’re dropping back down to 50° by evening time. We have noticed that this has created a lot of what’s termed “environmental mold” in some of our concrete block properties. I asked Jonathan with Dreyer’s Restoration and Mold Remediation to write an article for us explaining what is happening. I’ve worked with Jonathan for years and find him to be one of the best in mold remediation. They do many more things than just mold remediation so check out his article and if you get the opportunity to use him, you won’t be disappointed.

I wish you all a prosperous and peaceful New Year!!!