Well, I think we are finally getting settled in our two condos.

After spending many years in traditional houses in Fountain Hills, we are now living in two condos, one here in Fountain Hills and the other in the Green Valley area of Henderson, Nev. I don’t know if “downsizing” is the right word for it. You might say it’s more like a “divide and conquer” war strategy.

You may remember we decided to sell the Santa Fe-style house we have called our home for the past 10 years. I turned 70 last July, and Diane will be 65 this July.

Diane retired early at age 62 from the Mayo Clinic where she worked for 19 years as a medical secretary.

My Parkinson’s doctor, Dr. Adler at the Mayo Clinic, was surprised when I told him.

“I thought I told you to retire years ago,” he said.

“I know,” I replied, “but it took the falls, other health issues and all those nights in the hospital in 2016 that finally convinced me to start planning for my retirement.”

I talked to my son, Brent, about the prospect of taking over and operating the company.

“Dr. Adler said I need to remove as much stress as possible from my life,” I said to Brent. “Are you ready to take over?”

‘He surprised me by saying without hesitation he would make the company successful once again.

It was announced at our company Christmas luncheon a year ago that Brent would be learning the business and I would be stepping down when the time was right. It was at our company Christmas luncheon in 2017 that I told everyone I was retiring.

Since we had the time and there was a need, we decided to split our time to living in two towns. We’ve been helping out with babysitting duties for our daughter, Toni, who has lived in Las Vegas for some time now. We have been driving to her and husband Jason’s home quite frequently over the past two years to watch their four-year-old son, Camden. We generally stayed at their house when we would go.

That was O.K., but nothing like going home to our bed when our babysitting duties were over each night.

We liked the Henderson Green Valley area the best for our Nevada residence.

Both of our condos have two bedrooms.

We got the Fountain Hills unit first. We had planned a cross-country trip to New Jersey to visit five of our eight grandkids.

When our house sold in September, we moved everything into our Fountain Hills condo and five storage units.

We went on our trip, which lasted five weeks and three days. In addition to seeing our kids and grandkids in New Jersey, we stopped along the way to see friends in Kentucky, Alabama and Texas.

Once back in Fountain Hills, we got serious about dividing up the items we had stored. It was time to get serious about setting up our new lives in two condos. One complication we had was we were running into Christmas. We decorated both places. Diane had 37 boxes of Christmas decorations that we divided between the two places.

We had Christmas Eve with Diane’s former sister-in-law at her new home in Henderson, Christmas morning with Camden at Toni and Jason’s house, drove home to Fountain Hills on Christmas day and we had another Christmas celebration with my mom, daughter Holly and her family, my son, Brent and his wife, my brother, Steve, and his wife the day after Christmas.

We’re nearing normalcy, now that the holidays are over. Our new problems are remembering what day of the week it is and which place we’ve put certain tools, utensils and clothes.

I guess we will settle down and get used to this new lifestyle called retirement. It seems the days are passing too fast.