in The Villages. When retired there is plenty of time on your hands, and what do you do when that happens? You party. I guess we are never too old to enjoy a good time. I started thinking about this the other evening as I was leaving a Christmas Party. Someone said, well this is the first of many. We all laughed and said how right you are. I heard it again last night. We were out to dinner  and our friend mentioned that the night before he had gone to a Birthday Party and there were about 60 people in attendance.   The surprised Birthday Boy, celebrating his 75th,  gave a very moving speech that he had lived in his last community for over 30 years and only 1 year ago he moved to The Villages. He went on to say that in his last community he did not know 60 people that would come to a party for him, but here in just 1 year he has met so many people through his activities that felt they wanted to celebrate his big day.  He was very touched and so were those in attendance, as they could all identify with his sentiment.  Moving is a very stressful event, and moving away from your roots,  your children and grandchildren  adds to it, so does the fact that you never imagined taking up permanent residency in Florida and you are doing it at an age where you don’t want to make life changing decisions.  You are retired,  you don’t want to think of stressful things any more, you left those at the office or said good-bye to them when the children left home.  But here you are making them anyway, against your better judgement and yet, almost the minute you move here, you realize that my judgement is pretty good, I can still make good decisions and guess what happens?  Your new friends are your new family and they love to be  there for you especially when it comes to celebrating.  Birthdays are big, but with the Holidays the parties are in abundance, just as someone mentioned, the first of many to come.  The invitation to this party came from someone I met at water aerobics, today is a party with my neighbors at one of the Country Clubs,  next week-end I’m attending an Open House party given  by a couple that have been here just a year.  I think her guest list is up to 90 people.  Then there is Sean’s Ambassadors’ Christmas party at Cattle Baron Restaurant and I am having my own Open House the week before Christmas and lastly but not leastly, a progressive dinner with my New Jersey friends that get together all year long on Thursday nites. January is a busy month also, as some celebrations take place after the New Year.  The get togethers are different here.  We are done impressing anybody, we dress very casually and we are normally back home by 10 o’clock, sometimes earlier.  Also, there is no pressure, if you don’t wish to attend parties that’s ok, you don’t have to feel guilty if you don’t want to go.  When we moved to The Villages we left the stress behind and also the guilt, we came here to enjoy our retirement in the sunshine and we  respect all  the different ways people do that.  The biggest thing is we are here and we can celebrate our choices.  That’s the best celebration of all.