Brrrr-December 31, 2014

Jerry became nervous about the radiator on the coach yesterday so we struck out in the snow to double check the antifreeze. The temp on the car showed -2. I told Jerry I didn't know those thermometers could read that low. And I thought that should not be allowed. I was stunned we were out in that. The low here last night, according to the National Weather Service, was -27. You can take my word for it that -27 is definitely cold. Right now as I type this, at 9:30 AM, it has warmed up to -21 and the sun is shining. It is predicted we will be above freezing this weekend. Happy day!

I just wanted you to know we are still kicking and have not frozen yet. I suspect Jerry is getting cabin fever and will want to go out for something today. I am not affected by cabin fever so I would be content to stay here and clean and rearrange things. But I will go.

                              
                                  HAPPY NEW YEAR!


I wish for you a prosperous, healthy and happy 2015. Please read 2 Chronicles 7:14 and pray for our country.

More white stuff-December 29, 2014

It is snowing again though not a blizzard or severe storm. However the wind is so strong the snow is blowing horizontally. Quite a sight. We were supposed to pick up Hannah today so she could play in our home. However, it's just too cold to take the little thing out in it. So I am making a big batch of homemade soup and might make some homemade English muffins this afternoon. We are due to have some bitterly cold temps until at least Saturday. I'll say it again because it bears repeating. We are so happy and thankful to be in a warm place.

After spending days and countless hours winterizing the coach, for a reason we don't know, "we" failed to check the antifreeze in the generator. It is frozen solid. That does not bode well for the pocketbook when the spring thaw occurs. However, we are not crying over spilled milk. It is done and we will deal with it. I guess because the generator was serviced in Red Bay it just never crossed our minds that the liquids they added did not include antifreeze. We do have the block heater on the engine so it will be fine. We'll just save our pennies in between now and Spring and be prepared to have a huge outlay. One thing about owning an RV. You just have to deal with whatever happens.

When I looked out the bedroom window on Saturday morning I was caught by the beauty of the ice on the tree limbs. I took some pictures which don't show the real sparkles in the ice, but you can use your imagination.

You have to trust me. This was quite a beautiful sight.

The snow is very pretty until you have to drive in it.

 

We will be indoors today, staying warm. I hope you are warm, too. If you are in a warm climate, then don't take it for granted. Everyday is a gift. Enjoy it. 



 

Total snowfall-December 26, 2014

The storm was not as bad as predicted as far as the total snowfall. It appears we might have maybe 6 inches of snow on the ground here. Neither of us is volunteering to go out and measure it because it is only 18 degrees with a wind chill of 8 degrees. That makes us happy to be inside today.

It's pretty if you don't have to get out in it.

 

We are surprised at the number of tire tracks in the parking lot.

There must have been a large number of people who had to

go to work today. Notice the snow on the roofs? That indicates good insulation

in the attics. We are happy about that.

 

The high school parking lot almost appears to be part of the street,

but there's actually a large ditch in between. It's not visible.

Note all the tire tracks. People were in the parking lot last night

doing donuts (doughnuts, if you prefer). You could tell they were

really having fun. Frankly I was more in favor of them pulling those

stunts in a vacant parking lot than on the streets.

 

Unfortunately a nearby neighbor decided at 5:00 AM that her BMW needed to be in her garage with a ton of snow on top of it. She struggled for an hour trying to get the car in but it was just spinning on the ice under the snow. She finally gave up so we could go back to sleep. I don't blame her for wanting her Beamer in the garage but why didn't she put it inside before the snow started? Who knows?

 

This is homemade soup and bread baking weather. Sounds good to me.



 

 

White and wonderful Christmas-December 25, 2014

The more we listened to the threats about impending winter weather, we all decided to not make the trip to Denver for Christmas. As it turned out that was a very wise move. It's safe to say it was a "God thing", not our own decision. We went to Derrick's to see what Santa brought Hannah and Zoey. They made a great haul. That Elf on the Shelf must have given a really good report to Santa.

 

Hannah serving up "food" for her Daddy from her new kitchen.

Never mind the rest of the mess in the family room. It happens.

We did not confess that we bought her a kitchen for her play room here.

They are very different so it won't be a problem.

 

The snow started exactly when they predicted. And it also rained first. Jerry has not driven on ice in over 10 years. We left their house at 4:00 and we did not have any problems, but it takes strategy to travel over ice. We did pretty well until we got very near our street. A Cadillac and a Camero both lost control and could not go up the hill. A pick up behind them started fishtailing. And I prayed! The Camero gave up and pulled to the side of the road. The Cadillac and truck both turned sideways but managed to give us enough room to make the turn. We drove into our garage and before we got the Cute Red Vehicle unloaded our tire tracks were covered up. We all know we would not have made it back from Denver in this. We would have had to find a place to spend the night. The snow will not stop until later in the day tomorrow. You have no idea how relieved we are to have stayed here.

 

At 12 noon it was just starting to snow.

 

At 4:20 our car tracks were barely visible.

 

At 4:30 the street in front of our condo and the parking lot of

the high school across the street were really accumulating lots of snow.

We'll see what tomorrow morning looks like.

 

So, you see we truly had a white Christmas. And it was cold, too. We are happy and thankful to be warm and dry.

 

I must tell you that among many gifts we received the most shocking of all were tickets to the Neil Diamond concert on May 31, 2015. He will be in Denver that evening. No matter how many times I have seen him I still get as excited as a teenager to see another show. It was all I could do to keep from crying when I saw the print out for the tickets. What a shock! What a wonderful gift! I don't want to wish the time away but I can hardly wait to see the show. Derrick said that was a thank you for all the babysitting. That's quite a thank you.

 

We had a fabulous day and hope you did, too.



 



Catching up-December 23, 2014

We keep waiting on our lives to slow down. Sure hope it happens soon. We had bought all of our Christmas but for some reason we felt the need to do more. So, we got out in the horrible wind today to buy more stuff for the already over-stuffed. The weather is brutal. The wind is out of the north so it is very cold. It's strong with gusts reported at 46 mph. Dirt is blowing everywhere. You cannot wear enough clothes to keep the cold from freezing your bones. We remember now that this is the reason we never wanted to live here again! So much for that. It's all Hannah's fault.

I forgot to post the following picture at the end of last week.

It's not really a sunset. It's before then. What caught my eye was

the nice blue sky and the sun shining on a very dark thick cloud

all in one picture. The rays of sunlight in the dark cloud are called

corpuscular rays. Really. It's a meteorological term.

 

We had little Hurricane Hannah yesterday. In a quiet moment she was doing Water Wow with Granddaddy. She absolutely loves to do that. She was mainly wired yesterday so we did a lot of dancing and playing Ring Around the Rosie, but when she got quiet she shared her time with one of her favorite people.

 

Please overlook the fact we are still moving in and in some spots

we are living out of boxes. It will get better. Tonight I will be

putting more shelf paper in the kitchen and unloading two more

tubs of dishes we brought from the storage unit today. I'm

really excited to get to use my lighthouse dishes again. They were

too heavy to use in the coach.

 

Tomorrow I will shop for the ingredients for the food we are taking to the family Christmas dinner. We think we have decided what we want to take.

 

I have more things to share but not enough time. More later.

 

Here we are-December 18, 2014

I can attempt to describe how this condo complex is set up but I'm not sure we have totally figured it out yet. Our building like so many others contains 12 condos as evidenced by 12 garage doors. However, condos are not stacked on top of each other. We have no one underneath us which is really nice since Hannah likes to run and dance.

This is what we refer to as the back side of this building. It is on the south

side, exactly opposite to us. Each side has a courtyard. The more we look

at this unique set up the more confused we become. It uses the least amount

of land and gives the biggest amount of living space in return.

 

We are on the left side. The balcony is off the living/dining room.

At the same time the lower door is also ours. Our front door and the door

from the garage enter very close together and go immediately up 17 steps.

Technically we live on one level but it is on the second floor. Confused?

The door on the left side of the courtyard, lower level is the entry to another

condo but no one lives in that space. They enter there and go up a flight of stairs also.

Therefore, we are not above anybody. On the courtyard there are two windows on the

upper level and one small window on the lower level. Those are ours. I'm telling you that

you have never seen any set up like this one. But it works. And we are getting plenty

of exercise. Hannah loves the steps for a reason we do not understand.

 

The men who delivered the furniture said they had a bone to pick with the architect and builder of this complex. The front door is offset from the steps by nearly a foot. Therefore everything coming in has to be shifted to the right to come up the steps. Only a sectional sofa could be brought in here. We only brought in a love seat and that worked fine but still took a little work. The bed was not difficult at all. We are contemplating a dining room table but we are not sure yet.

 

So now you see what has become our warm little home for a while. It was gorgeous today but only 41 degrees. Still it felt good. I ran all the errands today. I was happy to get out and enjoy the fresh air. They are saying it could snow on Christmas. How I hope not. It's pretty but we have to drive to Denver in it. Time will tell. And if it's bad, we stay home. Very simple.

 

 

 

A few things-December 17, 2014

We still don't have everything moved into the condo. And I'm not sure when we will get it done.

We are trying to adjust to the cold, the gray skies and lack of sunshine. We'll get used to it eventually. We had forgotten how horrible the pollution is and it has been shocking to see the thickness of it every day. It's such an ugly brown color.

We also had forgotten that all bodies of water are frozen this time of year. We're not used to that either.

We had forgotten that you can tell the upcoming weather by the flight of the geese in the mornings. When the gigantic flocks of geese fly wildly and the sky is black with thousands of birds, a big front is moving in. Get ready.

We had become spoiled. While we had experienced some cold and rainy weather, we had not been in it non-stop for long periods of time. However, it is a small price to pay to be with Hannah.

Two odd things I found out:
1. UPS is going to have a gigantic price increase effective Jan 1st. They will not only charge by weight but also by size and shape of the box. When a UPS store owner says "prices are going up ALOT" then you know what to expect. If you have something to mail in early January, do it now and save $$.
2. Most credit card transactions at one of those little machines at the cash register no longer require a signature. And if you do have to sign it your signature is not normal looking. One day I remarked that I did not like that. Anybody who steals my card can walk back into the store, make a big purchase and be out of the store before I can notify the credit card company that my card is stolen. The cashier informed me that we can request a paper receipt when we use our credit cards and then sign it any time we want to. I do like that idea though I am not positive it would stop theft or fraud. It's nice to know we can sign a piece of paper and then we would know if the signature was ours or not.

Sometimes I think I am just too old to keep learning all of this stuff!

Don't fuss-December 11, 2014

We tried to finish everything we could on the coach today. Bad weather is due in here on Sunday and will hang around for a few days. I think we got everything moved out that we need in the condo. I straightened what was left as best I could. Jerry positioned the coach on solid blocks of brick. The jacks are down and now must be coated with some kind of icky grease. He will do that on Saturday. I am busy unpacking, again. After this we head to the storage unit and pick out only a few things to hang on the walls. Plain walls are so drab. Anyway, we are making good progress but it really is tiring.

We decided since we would not be riding in the coach until after the spring thaw, we asked both parents if Hannah could ride with us to fill the land barge with fuel. They said yes so we put her in the front seat and buckled her in.

I told you not to fuss. She is not in her car seat. We are fully aware

of the laws. We took the back roads into Eaton, fueled up and came straight back.

I sat on the floor beside her.

 

I must tell you this was such an adventure we laughed the entire time. She was squealing and laughing and singing her own original songs. She saw every car and told Granddaddy to "watch out!". Then she told him when to stop for a stop sign or light. When it turned green she'd yell "Go!". She loved every minute (about 20 minutes altogether) as much as we did. She might be closer to the age where she can travel with us than we originally thought. We have a very long winter ahead of us before we entertain those thoughts. Time will tell.

This will surprise you-December 9, 2014

This is today's sunrise. Yes, sunrise! You know we do not rise early but

today we had no choice. We were on the list for a 7:30 delivery of our new

furniture. We didn't buy much but we were still very happy to get it delivered.

The furniture was in place before 8:00. We would have gone back to bed

but Hannah and Zoey were coming here to stay with us while  their Mommie went

Christmas shopping. To say we are tired is an understatement.

 

We thought we only had a big trip left to unload the coach. Wrong. We have at least two more and we had made two trips when I made that statement. We are just stunned we had so much stuff in that coach. Jerry says it's so much lighter it runs like a striped butt (not his exact word) monkey. I am not familiar with that creature but apparently they run very fast! I'm not about to ask why Jerry knows how that kind of monkey runs. Some things are better not asked.

By Thursday we should have it all done. Then we will drive it and fill the tank as full as possible. A less than full tank collects moisture in the wintertime which causes all sorts of engine problems. We have to buy some pavers to park it on. Then the task will be done for winter. It's a good thing. They are saying we will have snow on Sunday. There are no words to tell you how happy we are to be warm at night.

This has been yet another learning experience. I guess you never get too old to learn.

A fun day-December 6, 2014

How's this for a change? It's a full moon, not a sunset!

This is from our dining room window. That room is a work in progress.

It will probably never be a real dining room, just a place to eat.

 

We had a great day furniture shopping today. We had been to several stores earlier in the week to no avail. Today we had a productive day. We ended up with really fun love seat to blend with Jerry's extremely special recliner I refer to as HIS chair. We got a new mattress and box springs. There we found out that memory foam mattresses are on their way out. They were just a fad. Great news. We have one in the coach we bought last year. We have never really liked it but we are not going to replace it. Today we also bought a cute little Ladybug storage box for Hannah's play room. And we bought one Christmas gift. Nothing can be delivered until Tuesday so we will get by.

 

After that we had lunch at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants in Fort Collins. The more we move around the more we find this is really a great location. We are close to almost everything we need.

 

I have put away almost everything I have for the kitchen so far. I have to move to the master bedroom and start organizing before they bring the new mattress. It's so much tougher to unload the coach than it was to fill it up.

 

We have begun to realize that we were really over the legal limit of weight in the coach. We honestly had to idea. It's really very fortunate we never had to have it weighed for any reason. Not sure what we would have done if somebody found out we were carrying too much cargo. We think it will be completely unloaded one day this week.

 

We welcome a quiet day tomorrow. I hope you have a quiet day, too. Have a wonderful Sabbath!

 

 

 

 

Lots to say-December 4, 2014

I have been trying to come up with a way to make this brief, but it is difficult. After "cussin' and discussin'", prayer, planning, thinking and weighing the pros and cons, we have made a conscious decision to suspend traveling for a while and put down roots at least temporarily. You know the reason without me typing it: Hannah.

We were lead to a really nice little condo just 6 miles from Derrick's house. 2 BR/2BA. Great view but not of the mountains (aren't you glad you will be not bombarded with more sunset pictures?). We have a cute little garage that only the Cute Red Vehicle can fit in plus it will hold the extra refrigerator out of the coach. The huge disadvantage is that we have a 17 step flight of stairs to climb to get to the living part. It is a one level condo built on the second floor. I cannot begin to describe out these condos are built to maximize land. It's really very interesting. One day I will get some pictures taken and then try to describe it to you.

We are on our third day of moving and we are not even close to being done. We drove the coach over the first day and unloaded as much as we could. Derrick spent his lunch hour helping with the really heavy stuff. That enabled us to spend the night and sleep in warmth which we have not done in a long time.

There are so many wonderful things we are enjoying that would simply bore you because you live with those good things everyday. But I will say one thing and that is that I will never ever take nice toilet paper for granted again.

We have over 3 times the floor space of the coach, but so much less storage space. We are really having to work hard to fit things in. All in all, that's a small price to pay.

The freezer part of the refrigerator is so much bigger I cannot fill it up, yet. The refrigerated part is so much smaller so I am struggling with that. It will work out. I have a full sized washer and dryer that actually holds 6 or more pairs of jeans. I could only wash two in the coach. So, you can see there really were some pros and cons to be considered.

We must buy a sofa (or couch if you prefer) and we need a chest of drawers for the bedroom. We are making a room for Hannah with all of her toys that live with us. We brought her over yesterday and she absolutely loved it. She played and played and never noticed we did not turn on AJ and the Monster Machines. We are struggling with Comcast service. They are the worst in the business. That's why they were bought out by Xfinity, but they're not much better. We will loose our wonderful satellite service since the HOA does not allow dishes, but still we think we can get by somehow.

As we finally get settled in I will finish telling this story but for now you know why I have not had time to post this blog. There'll be pictures to share eventually, too.

In the meantime know we are still working to get moved in. And be happy we are warm. We certainly are!