June 28th - Home for a Week

I've now been back home for a week. I did some outside work up until yesterday but I've been pretty lazy the past two days.

We have certainly been enjoying Lydia while she has been here. Andy & Kelsey dropped her off Tuesday afternoon and she has been here since. Amy is picking her up around 4:30 today and then she transfers to Elaine on tomorrow evening.

Lydia LOVES being outside. She doesn't care how hot it is, and it has been in the 90's all week, until today.

 She was trying on hats. Kathy had a pink one from one of the camps where we volunteered, but it was in the house the day she was trying them on. She definitely prefers the pink one. Although she doesn't want to wear it for more than a minute or so at a time.

One morning Kathy & Lydia were out for a walk. When I came out of the house Lydia made a beeline for the porch. She threw a shoe in the rocky driveway and it didn't even slow her down.

Doug & Anthony brought her some flashlights when they were here. She likes both of them. This one is a witch that cackles when you press the lever in the handle and turn on the flashlight. The flashlight is behind the witches mouth, which opens when you press the lever. She LOVES the blue hippo flashlight. It emits kind of a hearty har, har, har laugh when you press the lever and open its mouth so that the flashlight can come on.

The basket she it trying to climb into is one that normally holds some of her toys. She brought the basket over to where Kathy & were setting and proceeded to try and set in it. The hoop handle made it quite difficult, she couldn't squat down low enough to get back under the handle.

I hope all of you are enjoying the summer. The next few days here are supposed to be nice. Highs only in the mid 80's. That will be a refreshing change.

May God bless you and yours.

June 22nd - Back Home in Centertown

I arrived back home yesterday evening around 7 PM.

Some photos:

It was foggy the morning I left TN. I took this around 7 AM, not long before I pulled out and headed for MO.

Flooding somewhere in KY. These are big trees, not bushes. I'm not sure where this was, it was raining hard and I really should not have been trying to take a photo while driving.

NARROW bridge over the Mississippi

NARROW bridge over the Missouri

Below is an aerial photo of the bridges above. The top bridge is the one over the Mississippi. The lower one is the bridge over the Missouri. All the gray area is flood plain. The road is built up at least 15 feet above the surrounding terrain.

I did not stay overnight at the Walmart parking lot. I drove over to the Camelot Campground and staying there overnight. It was a nice place. I took this photo the before leaving in the morning.

The aerial photo below shows Ellington, MO, population 987. The "A" indicates the location of Logan Valley Christian Retreat. It is probably only about 2 miles from town "as the crow flies". To get there from town you drive out 5 miles on Hwy K and the double back on another road which shows up as one of the gray lines. The total driving distance is about 10 miles.
Parked at the camp.

I worked on the "ground crew" during the 3 days I was there. Wednesday we put on the roof purlins and Thursday and Friday we put on the metal roof.

There were six of us working on Wednesday and five on Thursday and Friday. The crew started at 5:30 AM and quit at 2 PM. I started at 7 on Wed and at 6 the other 2 days.
I left the motor home down there and plan on going back after the 4th of July.

Andy, Kelsey, Lydia & Melissa came over for supper tonight. Kelsey & Andy finished putting together the car Marshall and Amy bought Lydia for her birthday. She LOVES it.

I was outside doing stuff, which included mowing the lawn and burning one of my piles of limbs, for about 4 hours. By that time the heat index was over 90 and I had enough of the heat.

I hope you all had a good day. May God bless you and yours.

June 17th - Made it to Poplar Bluff, MO

I'm going to spend the night in Poplar Bluff and then head up to Logan Valley in the morning. It is about 70 miles from here and it will take at probably 2 hours to get to the camp.

There were lots of slow downs for construction. The first one, in TN, took about 20 minutes to go 2 miles. Every one had to go slow and watch a pavement breaker in action. No rain until about 20 miles from Paducah, KY, then the sky opened up.

Driving 20 mph, for the construction traffic, was OK in the rain. Even at 20 mph visibility was less than a quarter mile. Had an interesting experience just south of Paducah, as we motored along at no more than 20 mph. I heard a siren and realized it was a tornado siren. Before the first one faded out I could hear a second one. I don't know if there was actually a tornado. I was glad to get west of Paducah, out to where the rain had let up. It is still raining here in Poplar Bluff. It will quit for a little while and then start up again. Here it is just a gentle rain.

I'm glad I crossed the Mississippi on US54 a couple of times. That bridge was where I hit some guardrail that had been bent out by a previous accident. The consecutive bridges across the Mississippi and then the Missouri on US60 are every bit as nasty as the one on US54.

I planned on staying in the Walmart parking lot but may end up going to a campground for power. Yesterday I started the generator and let it run for awhile. It was fine. Here in the parking lot it won't start. Could be all the water. The bedroom, next to the engine, gets quite toasty.

Tomorrow, if I remember, I'll attach a photo of some flooding.

Good night. May God bless you and yours.

June 15th - Laundry Day

I did my laundry today. I now have enough clean clothes to last me until I return home on the 22nd. Since I didn't wash the sheets I has just enough clothesline, after I squeezed things together.

It is so nice to have the windows in the "cabin". It is light in there when I open the door. Because there is no window in the bathroom it stays dark until the lights are on. This morning I noticed the grab bar in the tub/shower "glowing" from the light outside the bathroom.

 The bar with the bathroom light on and using the flash.

I borrowed Tom's weed eater today and did about 15 minutes of weed eating. I also moved some dirt around the sewer inlet for the motor home. I also spent some time down visiting with Marvin. His gardens look just awesome. I can't believe how well the tiller on his tractor works.

Good night to all. May God bless you and yours.

June 14th - Digging

Today was a BEAUTIFUL day. High couldn't have gotten much above 80 and humidity was decent.

This morning I put up the rest of the insulation I had taken down in the bedroom, so that we could install the window.

 Then I moved to the kitchen and finished the electrical work in the exterior walls. I came up with a better way to "balance" the load of the circuits and rewired them accordingly. I previously had not put any insulation in the kitchen walls because the wiring was not totally complete and the windows were not in the walls. Since the wiring is now done, and since one window is in, I added insulation except in the area of a future window.

 I spent the afternoon digging. Dirt was up on the siding at one corner and I had to do some grading. More work will be required but I dug out enough so that the dirt is now below the siding and I don't think water will wash more against the building. Now I need to get rid of the pile of dirt. Next trip I will do some more grading.

It is probably a good thing that I only ordered two windows. I was plenty busy today. Tomorrow I need to spray for bugs and weeds and do some weed eating. I also need to do some laundry. Since I've never fixed the dryer in the motor home I'll need to dry the clothes I was on the clothesline.

I still plan on heading for Logan Valley Christian Retreat (near Ellington, MO) on Monday. I will stay overnight somewhere along the way and plan on arriving Tuesday. Dave, the camp director, told me they will expect me for supper Tuesday night.

Time to finish eating my supper and I may go straight to bed.

I hope you all had a good day. May God bless you and yours.

June 13th - Windows!!!

I think there was a 50% chance of rain today. Marvin came and dropped off a trailer with some tools/ladders/etc. at about 6:30 AM. We started work at 7 AM.

We stopped at 11 for lunch. By that time we had the siding off, the windows framed and the windows installed.

By 1:30 PM Marvin was re-installing the last piece of siding.

I couldn't believe how smooth things went. It helps to have an expert around. My only regret is that I didn't order 4 windows, instead of 2. We could have put 2 more in tomorrow. I was tuckered out by the time we finished up today.

Before we got Marvin's tools loaded back up it started raining. It rained on and off for a couple of hours. After he left I took a break and then did some more electrical work.

Last Monday I picked cherries off our dwarf cherry trees.

 They are the smaller "sour" cherries that I love. I picked a large cottage cheese container full.

Kathy said she picked them again yesterday and that she picked more than me. She thought that there is about one more cottage cheese container full left on the trees.

After as dry as it was last summer I thought maybe the trees would die. I sure didn't expect this many cherries. I might check into fertilizing them to see if we can get a larger yield next year.

Good night. May God bless you an yours.

June 12th - In TN

I arrived in TN around 8:30PM yesterday. No travel problems. I gave the lawn a quick mowing (I think it was the 3rd mowing in 10 days) before leaving, so I was a little late leaving.

After breakfast I went down and visited with Tom & Merv a little and then stopped by Marvin's to make sure he was available to give me a hand tomorrow and Friday, he is.
The two windows I ordered for out "cabin" were supposed to be at the hardware store today. I went in to Crossville to pick them up, along with some other miscellaneous materials, and they had not yet arrived. Probably a good thing because the 10-2x4's and 4-12' long pieces of "J" trim, made a good enough load in the CR-V. I went back into town in the afternoon and picked up the windows.

During the second trip I did some grocery shopping, didn't need a lot since Kathy loads me up when I leave, and also scouted a couple of propane companies. I need to fill the motor home propane tank before I get to Logan Valley. Both places I looked at in Crossville will require that I unhook the car to be able to get in and out of them. Doing that when I leave here will be easier than just driving the motor home into Crossville, filling the propane tank, and then driving back to our place, without the car.

I did some research this evening and I should pass at least one Flying J truck stop on my way to Missouri. I may just bite the bullet and stop at it to fill the propane tank. I'm sure it will cost me $10-15 more to fill the tank but that is better than the bother of unhooking the car, leaving it at a parking lot, driving the motor home to a propane place and then going back to get the car.

Marvin is coming down between 7&8 tomorrow to start the window installation. It will be kind of a pain since we need to remove most of the vinyl siding from the side where the windows will be installed.

Battery on my phone just beeped. Since I'm using it as a "hot spot" to connect to the internet I better get this sent and get off.

Hope you all had a great day. May God bless you and yours.

June 8th - Birthday Party

Lydia's birthday was the 7th, her birthday party was yesterday. Below are some photos from the party.

I cut out the sign, Kathy did the base paint and Kelsey and Megan did the lettering and stencils.

Grandpas & great-grandpa got to spend quality time with Lydia before the party.

The party starts.

 Singing Happy Birthday

 Eating her cake.

Pool play.

 Unwrapping presents.

 Marshall's catch. I was beginning to think all we had in the pond this year was catfish. Marshall's caught this bass on his first cast. He caught another bass about this size and several blue gills and perch.

We had a great day. Folks stayed around until after dark. The weather the past couple of days has been the best weather we have had during the year we have lived in Missouri.

Leaving this morning. Kelsey, Andy and Lydia came over after church to say goodbye to Doug, Anthony & Phyllis.

I hope you all have/had a great weekend. May God bless you and yours.

June 7th - First Post of the Month

Nothing to exciting has happened in the past week.

Kathy has been cleaning and doing yard work. In addition to "housework" she got Doug & Anthony's trailer ready for them for the weekend.

I mowed the lawn twice during the week and did some weedeating. Probably 5 hours on the mower and 2 hours of weed eating. I spent another couple of hours trimming back trees/brush and our noxious bamboo.

I finally found something that is cheaper in Missouri than in Tennessee. I had a one tandem axle dump truck load of rock and another load of road base (up to 1" limestone with a lot of fines in it for packing) delivered. $450 total for both loads. I put rock on the pad I prepared for the RV and used some rock and some of the base material to do some drive way patching. After the RV pad was rocked I moved D&A's travel trailer up on the pad and hooked up the water and electricity so it was ready when they came yesterday.

Doug, Anthony & Phyllis (our neighbor from Lebanon, IN) came for the weekend, to celebrate Lydia's first birthday, which is today.

Kathy fixed two prime ribs for supper last night and they were AWESOME!

Kelsey, Megan (Andy's Aunt), Andy & Doug. Phyllis and Anthony are behind Doug.

 Kelsey, Doug & Anthony.

Lydia playing on the front porch.

 They just don't get any cuter, unless you have your own great grandchild.

 Lydia in her cowgirl outfit. She will wear it for some contest at the weekend festivities in Russellville, where her and her parents live. It is an annual weekend festival that is special this year since Russellville is celebrating its 175th anniversary.

It was a beautiful day here yesterday and today looks like it will be just as nice.

I think I will head to Crossville on Monday, to put in a couple of windows in our "cabin" and then take the motorhome to Logan Valley Christian Retreat, near Ellington, MO. We spent October of 2011 volunteering there. They are building a new home for a couple on staff there. I told them I would come and help.

I hope you all have/had a great day. May God bless you and yours.