Sunday, December 29, 2013

It just dawned on me that I'll have to start typing 2014 in a few days.  Wonder how many times I'll forget?

No pictures today.  We've spent the last two days doing projects, running for supplies, doing more projects, returning stuff and buying more stuff.   But things are shaping up.

Olga asked me to make chili last night, which meant a run to the grocery store for some spices.  She had bought pork to use so we used Dad's recipe, only with pork.  It was just a little different, but quite good.  So, Dad, try it out and see what you think.

The good news is that we had unpacked all the cooking equipment I needed.  But Olga asked me at noon to make it for dinner and got out the crock pot.  I usually make it in the crock pot and let it cook all day.  But the original recipe says to simmer for 45 minutes, so that's what I did.  Natasha asked why not the crock pot; she was at work when I started.  She said she would have never considered doing it on the stove.  So we learned something.

Natasha, Steve and Maria visited the backdoor neighbors today to get some questions answered.  Trash pick up, etc.  The neighbors were a great help.  They knew how the gas fireplaces worked, what lawn service the previous owner used and even had information on the furnace and hot water heaters. The houses were built around the same time and theirs is a mirror image of Natasha's.  It was a really helpful visit.

Olga raked leaves this morning with the rake we got yesterday.  I think leaf raking is an all winter occupation around here.  There are lots of oak trees that take forever to lose their leaves.  One of the minuses of living in a warmer climate.  But only relatively warmer.  It was 45 when I took Obi for his walk this morning, quite chilly.   However, it was 35 in West Lafayette.  I'll take the 45.

Steve and I went out to the trailer today to check on things and pick up a few things.  I told Steve when we were leaving that when we're ready to leave Dallas, we should just pull the trailer up to Natasha's house.  He replied that he didn't want to navigate the street if there were cars parked on both sides.   It would be tight.

We went to California Pizza Kitchen tonight for supper.  They have a gluten free crust for me, so I could have pizza.  Natasha suggested the BBQ chicken pizza, which was quite good.  It's a different taste, so didn't quite say pizza to my taste buds.  I'll have to go back and try again. :-)

The local Kroger has a "natural" foods section that has a lot of the stuff I can eat, so I've been surviving quite nicely.  Between that and Olga's cooking, I'll probably need to diet when we leave here.

Obi's snoring at the foot of the bed and I'm running out of news, so I'll sign off for now.

Deb

Friday, December 27, 2013

We spent last night back at the trailer, doing some maintenance stuff and seeing what else we needed to pick up.   We started to dump the tanks for the first time and found we needed a few things, so Steve took off to pick up supplies.   We got the job done and packed up things for the rest of our stay at Natasha's.

We'll head out to the trailer every few days to check on it and make sure there's enough propane to keep the trailer from freezing, although the weather today was great.

Natasha is actually living in Plano, Texas, which is north of Dallas.  She works in North Dallas, which is south of Plano, but north of Dallas.  Her neighborhood is very nice and has alleys, which I haven't seen since I was a kid.  The only bad thing about the alleys is I think they took the land for the alleys out of the street.  With parking on both sides of the street, its difficult if not impossible for two cars to go by each other.  Especially since a number of the "cars" are full size trucks like ours.   There seem to be a lot of neighborhoods with alleys, at least those you can see from the highways, but there are also neighborhoods without alleys.  

Most of the homes in the neighborhood are brick.  Kind of reminds me of all the brick buildings at Purdue.  The mailboxes are street side, built into nice brick edifices.  But they are on both sides of the street and randomly spaced.  With on street parking, delivering the mail must be a pain.   Sometimes you have to wonder, just what were they thinking?

Texans take their high school football seriously.  We've passed a number of high school stadiums.  This is one I managed to get a picture of.  Note the press box, which is two stories tall.

 I think one high school had both a stadium and a practice field.

Today's highlight was time spent with Maria.  Maria and I played with her tea set she got for Christmas.

And she helped Grandpa.

And Obi's hanging in there.

He hates the truck.  He mostly acts like a sack of potatoes riding in it.  But he never liked going in the car, either.  He doesn't like going into the trailer, but is OK once inside.   He's being very good about asking to go out.  He wanted to bark at the horses in the pasture behind the trailer, but quieted down when told to.   He sticks close to either me or Steve at Natasha's and isn't much for playing with the other dogs.  He's not sure what to make of Maria.

Steve's been plugging away at his to do list for Natasha.  Light fixtures and locks replaced, closet rods secure and who knows what else.  Daily trips to Home Depot.  I got my sewing machine set up today to work on some projects for her.  I found that I managed not to pack a seam ripper.  And it turns out Natasha doesn't have one.  So tomorrow will be a trip to Jo Ann's.  Life's tough.

The Sunday and Monday lows are supposed to be 25 degrees, but tomorrow's high should be 61.  And they're predicting lots of sun next week.  We'll enjoy that.

Take care, everyone.

Deb

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Christmas in Dallas!  We made it!  The presents have been opened and the turkey eaten.

Maria of course liked the paper and the gift bags as much as anything, but Olga and I had fun playing with her talking teapot.  I don't think we've gotten the hugging Elmo out of the box yet to see how it works.

The major gifts this year were the truck, trailer and the house, so there weren't many gifts to open.  Mike scored big as the gift giver with a day at the spa for Olga and Natasha.  After all their hard work, it will be appreciated.

I promised photos, so here they are.

Natasha's new house:

Four bedrooms, 3 and a half baths, plenty of room for us all.

The kitchen:

where we made Christmas dinner with no measuring cups or spoons.  But since everything mostly disappeared, we did OK.  Turkey breast, Aunt Becky's sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans and pasta.  Apple and pumpkin pie followed.

Here's the family room decorated for Christmas and baby.

And the view from the family room:

The pool is just big enough to get a little exercise and nicely landscaped.  

Here's Maria trying to share a Christmas cookie with Salami.   Our friend Melinda made some baby sized Christmas cookies for her.  Christmas isn't Christmas without Melinda's cookies.

And Maria enjoying a cookie with Mom's help.

Steve and Maria enjoying each other.

Maria opening presents

And family portraits.

And the trailer Christmas decorations:

For those of you who were on the Robison family cruise many years ago, the tree and the creche are from that trip.  Keeping them wasn't the miracle, the miracle was that I remembered them and found them!

We've stayed with Natasha last night and we'll stay again tonight.  Tomorrow we'll run some errands and check on the trailer and spend the night there.  

We temporarily forgot that everyone else was running around getting Christmas done, so there is no such thing as a quick trip to Walmart.   We've been to a grocery store (and went the night before Christmas Eve to avoid some of the crowd), Camping World and Home Depot.  The Home Depot is next to a mall so traffic around it has been bad.  We'll keep our distance from stores tomorrow, but I'm hoping by Friday things will start to return to normal.  

Steve is progressing on his Daddy Do list.  I need to dig out my sewing machine and start on the Debbie do list.  

We'll be in Dallas for awhile and I'll update periodically.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Deb

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Steve had me up and on the road before 8 am again.  We wanted to get to our RV park in plenty of time today as we have to back the trailer in and we don't have much experience.

But today we had sunshine!  After two day of continuous rain, it was a pleasant change.  The temperature started dropping as we headed west and we were traveling in the 30s.

We pulled into a rest area to stop and have lunch.  It's the only rest area I've been in with parallel parking, for all vehicles.  We were lucky enough to be able to pull into a spot without backing up, but it was interesting to watch the semi's parallel park.  They all made it look easy.  Maybe some day we'll be that experienced.

We made it to our RV park near Denton, TX.  It's about a half an hour drive from here to Natasha's house in Plano, TX.  We arrived about 1:30 and by 2:45 were sitting in the trailer watching a football game.  It only took Steve 15 minutes to back the trailer in.  It took us a while to get it level.  We're on a gravel pad and they've had a lot of rain lately.  One side of the pad was a bit soft and there was mud where there wasn't gravel.  Steve had brought his rubber boots and I had been wearing crocs for the last 2 days of rain, so dealing with the mud wasn't a problem.

I never liked crocs much, they're so clunky looking.  But I found a cute pair of sandals this summer and they are super comfortable.  Someone on one of the RV forums suggested wearing crocs when dealing with the sewer line.  If there's an accident, you don't ruin a pair of shoes.  The crocs just wash clean.  So we each have a clunky pair and they have already proved useful (for mud).

The RV park is fairly new and seems well maintained.  The RVs across the road have some trees, but our site doesn't.   Since all the trees are deciduous and don't have any leaves, it doesn't make much difference.   There are some permanent residents here.  Some have built decks.  But the park looks good and has what we need.

Natasha and Olga were at the apartment downtown packing up the last of the stuff there.  It will get moved on Monday.  So Steve and I drove over to the nearest Camping World to pick up a water hose and a few other things and then met them at the new house.  It's gorgeous and large.  I'll take pictures tomorrow and try to get them posted.

Maria is growing and crawling.  Surprisingly, the dogs don't give her quite as wide a berth as they used to, although they still take off if she gets too hands on.

Olga had the Christmas tree up.  I was so glad.  It really hasn't felt much like Christmas this year yet. I do have a few decorations in the trailer, but other than sleeping, we haven't spent much time in it.

I apologize for not having many pictures, but we haven't been sightseeing and rain pretty much looks the same everywhere.  But tomorrow I'll try and post pictures of Natasha's new house and of Maria.

That's all for today.

Deb

Saturday, December 21, 2013

It was a dark and stormy night.   The rain came down hard and steady.  Of course Steve slept through it.  Obi and I woke up periodically and Obi eventually slept under the covers, which he never does.

Steve luckily had packed his rain suit and was able to get us disconnected and on the road before 8 am but it was a dark and stormy day.  Steady rain, fairly hard.  Apparently the ground was already saturated, as most flat areas have standing water and the ditches, streams and rivers are mostly overflowing or at least close to overflowing.    It rained all day.  We pulled into our overnight spot near Benton, Arkansas, just as the sky started to clear.

We saw lots of flooding, but I started noticing that some fields completely flooded were surrounded by fields with some standing water, but were not flooded.  Checking on line I found out that Arkansas produces a lot of rice and rice is grown in water.  So some of the fields are built to be flooded.

Our truck and phones have so many bells and whistles, we don’t know what they all are.  Several times today we got warnings on Steve’s cell that we were in a flash flood area.  And the truck told us twice when there was a construction traffic jam ahead.  We think that was On Star.  Obi suffered through another day of driving, acting like a sack of potatoes, although he didn’t have any trouble sharing my chicken at lunch.  But he didn’t want to go into the trailer, even though it was raining.

He’s curled up in his bed now, waiting for Steve to return.  He went to see if he could borrow a water hose.  We thought we had one, but Steve emailed the previous owner to make sure what we were going to use was OK and it wasn’t.  Another item for our Walmart list.

If the weather hadn’t been so bad, we probably would have stopped at Walmart today.  But the rain and construction slowed us down and we just made it to the RV park before sunset.

We had no problems, but others weren’t so lucky.  One bus had caught fire, disabling but apparently not life threatening (no ambulances).  One tractor trailer overturned and another went into the medium and 6 or 7 cars off the side of the road at various places.  Another bus was pulled over to the side of the road and a police vehicle was approaching it.  No ambulances at any of the accidents, luckily.

Natasha texted that her carpets got cleaned and they stayed in their new house last night!  She’s excited and tired.

It takes two of us to make this work.  I tried to light the stove to boil some water, but forgot a step.  Steve remembered.  You have to turn on the burner and then turn the Spark knob.  

Luckily I packed some freezer meals so dinner tonight was homemade chili.  Very nice on a dreary day.  Riding in a truck shouldn’t be so tiring, but all I want to do is go to bed.  But I still have dishes to do.

Tomorrow night we should be having dinner with Natasha and family.  It seems like this has been a long trip, longer than when we drove the UHaul down, but I think that’s because of all the preparation we had to do.  Steve just told me we are 285 miles from the RV park we’ll stay at while we’re visiting Natasha.  We did 365 miles today, leaving just before 8 am and arriving at 5 pm.    

The good news is that they are not predicting rain for tomorrow!

Time to go do the dishes.

Deb

PS.  Apparently Blogger has an old spell checker.  Walmart, texted and UHaul are misspelled words.

Friday, December 20, 2013

We are finally on the road.  Those of you paying attention know we were supposed to leave on Wednesday.  But sanity reigned for a change and we took two more days packing up the RV.

We also managed to get the furniture in the house moved back into the normal places, so it feels like home again.  (Many thanks to our friends Diana and Greg.  We couldn't have done it without them.) There are still one or two items to be done, but the remodeling and repairs are done.  The roof doesn't leak anymore, my new walk in closet is wonderful and the new lighting and ceiling in the family look great.

I'm sitting on the bed in the RV typing this.  We are parked in a campground near Whittington, IL.   There are about 8 RVs parked here, 4 of which are obviously occupied.  It looks like a nice campground, but we'll be pulling out in the morning.

We have two more full days of driving to get to Dallas.  Natasha and Mike closed on their house in Plano, TX (north of Dallas) on Thursday and the movers dropped off their furniture yesterday, too.

Obi is surviving.  He can get quite heavy when he doesn't want to do something and plants all fours.  Luckily I can pick him up.  He wasn't shaking in the truck today as he usually does in the car, but we let him ride on my lap.  For most of the trip it was like having a sack of potatoes on my lap.  But in the late afternoon he started shifting his position around and relaxing a little bit.

We've had him in the RV as we were working on things and he didn't seem to like it.  But tonight as soon as we put him in it, he snuffled around until he found the bag with his food in it and let me know he was hungry.  Then he found his little chair (a foam toddler's chair we rescued from the garage sale years ago) and curled up in it while we were eating.

Right now he's curled up on the bed in Steve's spot, listening to the rain.  I can tell it won't be a thunderstorm, as he's quite calm.

One good thing about not leaving until today is that we did get to see Leigh and Wes for a few minutes last night.  We are lucky that we have Leigh to house sit for us while we are gone.

I'm signing off for tonight.  I'd like to get a good night's sleep so we can put in a lot of miles today.

Deb

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Here's what our weather looked like today:

We stayed in and worked mostly on computer projects, it seems.   Our weather advisory didn't end until 6 pm and I think the snow stopped about then.  It's 26 degrees now, so not too bad.  I looked out at the sky this afternoon and it was solid gray.  Looked like it could dump a lot more snow on us but no more snow is predicted until tomorrow night.  I just hope enough gets cleared away that we can travel on Wednesday.

It looks like we'll encounter rain for most of our trip to Dallas.  We'll just hope that a cold front doesn't move in and change that to snow.

I love seeing the trees with snow on them, but glad I don't have to go out.  Now that the snow has stopped, Steve went out to brush off the truck.  He's going to take the 4 wheel drive vehicle to church tomorrow.

Things arrive daily that one or the other of us has ordered for the trailer.  We have a soap and shampoo dispenser for the shower.  That way we won't have to worry about bottles, etc.  We're still trying to decide how to handle everything else in the bathroom.

Steve's been getting in all kinds of things I don't even know about, but among them is a back up camera that will mount on the back of the trailer with a screen in the truck.  The truck part is installed, but not the trailer part.

And we want to do some experimenting with furniture.  The rocker/recliners in the trailer are nice, but too deep for me.  We're going to pull one of those out and replace it with an Ikea chair and footrest that we both find very comfortable and already have.  If the Ikea chair works, it weighs a lot less than the recliners and would lighten our load.   We're also substituting 2 desk chairs for at least 2 of the dining chairs.  We think they'll be more comfortable for computer work and will function just fine at the table.  We'll see how it goes.

This is going to be a 3 month shake down cruise.  Steve's already located the Camper's World near where we'll be staying and Natasha has located Home Depot and Walmart.  I found the JoAnn's Fabric.  I'm sure we'll find lots of things we didn't pack.

More next time!

Deb

Friday, December 13, 2013

My goal for this winter was to go south before the cold weather hit.

Blew that one.  I swear WBAA (local NPR station) said the wind chill was -17 a few days ago.  Leigh said it was 5 degrees when she went to her final Thursday morning.

On Tuesday, we headed for Chicago in the car to help Natasha pack, move and close on her townhouse there.  The drive up was uneventful and we got checked into a hotel near Natasha.  The hotel architecture has always intrigued us, but this is the first time we had stayed there.  It's a Hilton hotel, called Indian Lakes.  It's a resort, although we didn't indulge in any activities.

It was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright's and is based on a series of octagons, resulting in unusual shapes.  It was built in the 50's or 60's and as a result has some maintenance issues.  Our room was 75 degrees when we checked in and went up to 78 degrees.  The maintenance guy said the compressor was going out and they moved us to another room for our second night.

But they allowed dogs and Obi was remarkably well behaved for us.  I think he is a bit deaf and doesn't hear as much as Scrappy did.  Scrappy would frequently just bark once or twice and then Obi would start and not stop.  So we have a quieter (and lonelier) house.

Olga and Natasha had packed almost everything except what they used on the last day.  So there were bits and pieces to get packed.  Steve and I did some on Tuesday and we finished when Natasha flew in on Wednesday.

The truck was supposed to arrive Wednesday afternoon, but due to the weather, did not get there until after 9 am on Thursday.  Since closing was at 2:30, the buyer wasn't exactly happy, but luckily did not have a moving truck waiting to unload.  The movers worked their tails off and pulled out about 5:30 pm.  Natasha's flight was due to leave a 6, so one of the neighbors took her to the airport for us.  Luckily her flight was delayed, as it took them an hour and a half to get to Midway.

We pulled out just after the moving truck, loaded up with the plants Natasha wanted to keep and the friendship bread starter she wanted.  I figured if Charley's cousin Diane could travel in a motor home for 2 years with a lemon tree, we might manage 3 days with 2 plants.  Traffic was bad, although the weather was just cold, no precipitation.  We got home just before 10.

So now we have to pack the trailer with whatever we think we might need for the next 3 months.  We hope to leave next Wednesday, Dec. 18, assuming the weather allows.  We're currently hunkered down under a winter storm warning that will last until 6 pm Saturday, with an accumulation of up to 4" of snow.  Ouch!  We may not be leaving the house until Sunday!

Leigh, our housemate, left this morning for California for some time in her new/old home with her hubby, Wes.  They'll be arriving back for Christmas after we leave, so we'll miss them.  Wes stayed for a few extra days at Thanksgiving, so we were able to spend some time with them then.  Diana and Greg McKinney will be arriving Sunday to spend the holidays with their families, so the house will be full, even if we're gone!  It's nice to have a home we can share with others and have others help us watch over it.

No pictures with this post.  Pictures don't really show the cold.

I'm hoping to get our furniture moved back into the family room before we leave.  The room would be done except they didn't measure right for the bar counter and it has to be remade.  That and the mirror in the pool bath are all that is left, I think.   It's been a 5 month project and I'll be very glad to have it done.

Steve told me today that there was a lot on his list that wasn't going to get done before we left.  Me, too!   I'm considering this a long shakedown cruise.  We'll never be that far from a Walmart or a Camping World and there is very little we can't live without for awhile if we already have it at home.  It will be an adventure!

Keep warm!
Deb

Friday, December 6, 2013

December? Already?  If anything, time flies faster in retirement than it did before.

I last updated in October when we drove the Uhaul to Dallas for Natasha and Mike.  Steve had ordered our truck and we were waiting for it to arrive before we could go get the trailer from Grand Rapids.

We picked up our shiny, new, blue Silverado on October 31.  It's a one ton diesel Chevy quad cab.  It has 4 doors and seats 5.  It has running boards so I can climb into the thing and adjustable pedals and steering wheel so I can drive it.  And, independent heat and cooling for the passenger and driver so I don't freeze Steve out.  I sometimes call it Big Blue.

Now, Big Blue needed to have 500 miles on it before we could go pick up the trailer, so we started to drive it everywhere, including over to the Beef House in Covington, IN one night for dinner.  We had 300 miles on it when Steve realized that the temperatures in Grand Rapids were starting to drop below freezing  and the trailer isn't winterized.  So a rush trip to Grand Rapids was planned.  Since it's 200 miles to Grand Rapids, the mileage would be okay - barely.  We took off on Thursday, November 7, drove to Grand Rapids and picked up the trailer the next morning.

Now, other than towing Natasha's car behind the Uhaul, we are novices at towing.  The trailer had been stored at the dealer who did an inspection for us and one of their employees helped us get hooked up and ready for the road.

But the truck isn't supposed to pull at high speeds for the first 500 miles of towing, so no interstates on the way home.  We made it in one day (a long one) and I even drove part of the way.  ( I also did the backing up when we were getting the truck and trailer hitched together.)  Here's our rig.

It was actually a nice drive home.  Because Steve is red green color blind, we don't typically go looking at leaves in the fall.  While it was late in the season, there were still some brilliant colors and a bit of snow!

After an entertaining half hour, we even managed to get the trailer backed into the driveway.  Leigh was there to help and several of the neighbors really did come out to watch!  I am impressed with my hubby - he can get a trailer, truck and two prius' in the driveway if he tries hard.

After a whirlwind trip to Michigan, we had a whirlwind weekend before we flew to North Carolina for my niece's wedding.  Saturday was a home football game and even with all the construction going on, we're still "tailgating" at our house before and after the games.

We also lost our black dog, Scrappy, that weekend.  The front door was open and he saw something to chase and took off, into the path of a car.  When Scrappy was focused on the chase, there was no stopping him.  Scrappy had some problems, but he could be loving and funny, too and we miss him.  This is our last picture of him.  He had crawled into Steve's lap and asked for some loving.

The next week my niece, Jessie, was married.  The wedding took place in Ahoskie, North Carolina, not far from Virginia.  It's about 2 hours away from New Bern where my mom and dad live.  Our job was to get them to and from the wedding.  Mom's 85 and Dad's 86, so it wasn't as easy as it sounds.  We stayed at a terrific bed and breakfast in Ahoskie and they took great care of us.

We hadn't expected the weather to get as cold as it has, so the trailer has remained mostly in the driveway, plugged into electricity and running it's furnace to keep from freezing.  We both head out there daily to work on getting it set up.  Steve drove it to Plainfield, IN (I think) to have some antenna work done and Dish Network was here this week to install the satellite.

We had hoped to take the trailer to the family Thanksgiving at the Dickerson's, but that would have meant having to back it into the driveway in the dark when we got home and we thought better of that idea.

We'll be driving up to Bloomingdale (without the trailer) next week to help Natasha supervise movers and close on her house there.  Then on the 18th we plan to leave for Dallas.  Natasha takes possession of her Dallas house on the 18th, so by the time we get there on the 20th, Olga will probably have everything unpacked!  But Natasha has a long Daddy Do list, so we'll be busy through the holiday.

I'll be updating on an irregular basis, so if you want to follow along, you might want to sign up to follow me by email.  If you have trouble, let me know and I'll help you get set up.

Deb