April 1st - Not Much Happening, But...

Nothing special happened today but I had to post a photo. Kathy met with the Centertown Ladies group for lunch today, while Lydia and I stayed home. Lydia finished eating lunch before Kathy left and we just played around for awhile before nap time. I laid down with her at noon, no complaints from her, and by 12:20 she was asleep (it routinely takes at least a half hour for her to go to sleep).

As far as activities go, Kathy spent her morning cleaning, and watching Lydia, while I cut down another small dead tree. In the afternoon I ran maybe half a tank of gas through the weed eater doing some cleanup.

One interesting event occurred. Someone had told Kelsey that she needed to call Century Link, the local phone/internet supplier, and tell them she wanted a cheaper rate. She doesn't have phone/internet service since they are living with us, but she has mentioned it to me a couple of times. Our bill had crept up dramatically while we have lived here. I called them this morning to complain and with hardly any conversation the lady dropped our bill by $30/month. After I then did some whining she dropped it another $5/month. She made sure that I understood that this was a "promotional discount" and that it would end in 12 months if I didn't call back in then and ask for the cheaper rate.

We did get a little rain late this afternoon, and a small amount of BB size hail. This evening we have had a couple of good, but short, showers. We can certainly use it. Thunderstorms are in the forecast for the next 2 days. We certainly need more rain.

PS: Part of my daily Scripture reading today was the 73rd Psalm. God used that reading to remind me that my often negative Letters to the Editor, the ones about people whose irresponsible behavior has created hardships for them, do hurt some people. The people I would like to "hear" the message probably either never read the Letters, or they could care less about their irresponsibility. The very people who I think worthy of a helping hand (if only we could make a connection), the ones who have some understanding of the concept of personal accountability, are the ones who are hurt by my comments.

PPS: As I wrote the above God reminded me that we are all sinners who fall FAR short of "measuring up" to the standard of Jesus Christ. (The Good News is that Christ died for our sins and offers us a place in Heaven if we only accept His free gift. Romans 3:23 & 6:23) God loves those who my "worldly self" considers unworthy. He loves them just as much as he loves me. While, as Scripture tells us, they may be blind and deaf when it comes to hearing the truth of the Word, they are still worthy of being loved. This is a task that I find totally impossible to do on my own. Without the help of Jesus I don't have a chance of loving all people, as He commands.

May God bless you and yours.

Mar 31st - Great Weather

Some "left over" photos from TN.

Lydia likes popsicles as much as I do. She calls them icicles.

I cut down a couple of dead trees while in TN. She is helping me load wood on a trailer.

Saturday
I'm not even sure what we did on Saturday, but I'm sure it wasn't much.
 I did take this photo of the crocus's in our yard.

Sunday
We went to Sunday School and church. It was a "5th" Sunday and there is always a "potluck/pitchin" on 5th Sundays. It was good to see the folks at church.

Monday
Kathy went to Jefferson City and bought a car load of groceries. She also did a mountain of wash. I went to California to get a saw blade for my weedeater/brush cutter and to get a haircut and beard trim while there. Listening to the "gossip" while at the barber shop is always interesting. In the afternoon I cut down a small dead tree (maybe 7" diameter trunk) and cut it up for firewood. I cut up a few other chunks of wood and split it. I also cut up a couple of cedar trees to make 5 more posts for Doug to use for fence building at his place in Indy.

We had a very light rain shower around noon but the rest of the day was beautiful High might have made it to the low 70's. Tomorrow is also supposed to be nice.

May God bless you and yours.

March 28th - Home Again

I don’t think I posted this photo on my blog. Lydia likes a little salad with her Ranch Dressing.

 

 

Wednesday

I think it only got down to 19 last night, still the coldest of any night we have spent in the motorhome. We stayed nice and warm inside and had no problems.

I cut down a couple of dead trees that were along the edge of the woods around the cabin, and cut them up into firewood length chunks.

Kathy and I did some kitchen layout planning and we went to Lowes and looked at some of their cabinets to get an idea of what we want.

Miss FixIt - We had some problems with the door handle. Lydia spent a lot of time working on it.

 

Thursday

I borrowed a trailer from Tom, loaded up the wood I cut yesterday and hauled it down to his house. We fired up his splitter and while he worked on lawn mowers I spent a little over an hour splitting what I had hauled down plus some wood he had in a pile.

Merv, Kathy’s Dad, invited us to go to the 19^th Hole, a restaurant at a golf course near Lillian’s, with Lillian and him. The food was good, and so was Lydia.

 

We started our packing for our trip home.

 

Friday

Finished packing the CR-V, we left the motorhome in TN, and after going down to Tom & Mary Lou’s to say goodbye we headed for MO. On the way to their house we saw that Mary Lou had been busy yesterday afternoon, she had stacked most of the wood I split yesterday.

We were lucky with our packing. It rained some during Thursday night and again on Friday morning. We managed to get all our loading done while it was not raining. We had the back of the CR-V packed full to the top of the head rests on the back seat. I even left some of my tools in TN because we needed the space.

 

It was a little after 9 when we left. We drove through some light rain several times during the morning. By afternoon we were out of the rain, it was just cloudy. Since we were heading west the clouds were a blessing because we didn't have to drive directly into the sun all afternoon. We arrived at our home in MO about 8:45.

 

It feels like a LOOONG trip, 580 miles (getting old is tough <grin>, we used to drive straight though from Niantic, IL to Tampa, FL, over 1,000 miles). We only stopped three times. Lydia slept a lot of the morning. Around noon we stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s and then filled up with gas before hitting the road again.

 

Stop 2 was at a rest area along I57 in Illinois. Lydia loved the slide. She went down it MANY times.

 

Someone had cut down several trees in the wooded area at the rest area. The person was quite creative with the stumps. They sawed a chair into one of the stumps.

 

At another one they used it as a base for a bird bath and a eagle. The eagle was a little rough, but it was a lot better than I could have done.



About 30 miles west of St. Louis we made our final stop for some supper and another gas fill up. Lydia was getting pretty tired of riding by this time. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to be strapped in a car seat all this time.

 

Once we pulled into the driveway at home she brightened up a lot. I think she got her "second wind". She was quite a live wire until they finally put her to be a little after 10.

 

Good news - Today Kelsey and Andy accepted an offer on their house in Russellville. That will be a load off their minds. A guy is supposed to come out and pay Andy for his other "toy", the black car, tomorrow. Now they can get serious about house hunting.

 

Time to hit the sack. Not sure what is on tap for tomorrow. High temp is supposed to be 58 and it is supposed to be sunny. Should be a beautiful day.

 

May God bless you and yours.

March 25th - Tuesday

Update:

Friday

The telephone man finished the installation of our Internet connection this morning. Our download speed is a little over 3 Mbps. I am quite happy with that. Spent some time getting the “cabin” ready for breakfast Saturday morning.

We had a campfire in the evening. It was a beautiful night for it. Nate, Judy (one of Kathy’s sisters) & Emily (one of Nate & Judy’s daughters) arrived late Friday evening. They “bedded down” with us in the motorhome.

Saturday

Very early Saturday morning (1AM?) Kendahl (Nate & Judy’s younger daughter) arrived with 3 friends from college. They bedded down in the cabin, with Kelsey, Andy & Lydia.

There were about 35 people here for breakfast Saturday morning. Kathy fixed sausage gravy, bacon, scrambled eggs, etc. She served it buffet style in the cabin. We started the campfire again. Many of us sat around it while we ate breakfast.

Mid-morning Kendahl and her crew left for their Spring Break vacation. Later Nate, Judy & Emily headed back to Ohio.

Merv’s (Kathy’s Dad) 95^th birthday party was held at the Crossville Lutheran Church Fellowship Hall. Tom, Mary Lou & Merv attend church there. The turnout was good and everyone had an enjoyable time.

 

We had another campfire in the evening but it was a little to windy to enjoy it. I was concerned that the wind might blow some sparks into some of the many dead leaves in the woods, and start a fire.

 

Sunday

We (Kathy, Kelsey, Andy, Lydia & I) “wimped out” on attending church and just “vegg’ed out” during the morning. Kelsey and some of her cousins went to town and had a good time shopping.

Monday

Kelsey & Andy drove back to Missouri. Lydia is going back with us when we go on Friday. We didn’t do anything special that I remember.

Tuesday

It was cold last night, below freezing again. It snowed hard a couple of short periods and we has light flurries on and off most of the day. The ground was to warm for anything to stick. The wind blew fairly hard most of the day. The high temperature was just above freezing. It was not a nice day. Tonight’s low is supposed to be 16 degrees.

I spent some time making some “skirting” out of plastic sheeting and insulation. I made up enough to run it across the front of the motorhome and down one side, the areas where the wind was hitting. We have never been in the motorhome when the temperature was below 20. Doug & Anthony stayed in it, at our home in Missouri, when the overnight low temperature approached 10, one night last winter. When that happened I had straw bales stacked around the entire perimeter of the motorhome, to act as skirting.

 

We went to Tom & Mary Lou's for supper. Dean made taco's for the main course and peanut butter pie for dessert.

At 11PM the outside temperature is in the mid 20’s. Inside is a very comfortable 65, which is where I have the thermostat set, in the motorhome living area. I’m sure it is warmer in the bedroom. (The bedroom is always the warmest area, I think it is because of the heat loss through the windshield.)

 

Helping Grammy with the dishes:

 

Time to finish reading my daily Scripture reading and hit the sack. May God bless you and yours.

March 21st - Early Morning, Very Early

Had problems sleeping so I thought I would catch up my blog posts.

Tuesday

We went in town in the morning to buy some concrete sealer and other odds and ends. We had lunch at Sisters Café. The place is definitely not fancy but they serve good food and the price is fantastic. Kathy had the chicken liver dinner plate and I had a hot beef sandwich (Beef Manhattan). Kathy said hers was very good. She had to ask for a box to take some home because they gave her more than she could eat. Mine was, without a doubt, the best restaurant meal I’ve had since we left Missouri over 3 weeks ago. The cost was about $12, including my 60 cent cup of coffee.

After returning home I worked in the “cabin” and Kathy did some laundry and cleaning in the motorhome. I moved everything to one side and swept, with a broom, the empty side. Then I vacuumed it and mopped it. After it dried I sprayed the floor with concrete sealer. The sealer will make the floor easier to clean until we decide how we want to finish the floor.

The family came to our place for supper. Kathy fixed a beef roast, with potatoes, carrots & asparagus, in an electric skillet. It was awesome, as usual.

Wednesday

The overnight low was very near freezing. It was quite frosty when we got up. Kathy did more laundry (laundry takes forever in the small washer/dryer in our motorhome).  I repeated the floor cleaning sealing process on the other side of the cabin floor.

The LED lights that I had ordered, to replace the fluorescent tubes and bad ballast in one of the lights in our motorhome, had been delivered to Tom & Mary Lou’s. They dropped them off and I installed them in the fixture. The bulbs are expensive but they use a lot less energy, per unit of light output, even less than fluorescents. I’ve read about buying 16’ strips of LED’s than can be cut to length and used to replace fluorescent bulbs. Doing it that way is much less expensive. I’ll have to do some more research on the subject.

Thursday

Kathy went “junking” while I continued working on the cabin. She found a coffee maker, a toaster, and several other items for the cabin. We rearranged some of the “furniture” we  have to get ready for company and I inflated some air mattresses for beds. Tom & Mary Lou loaned us a table and a mirror that came from Raymond & Helen's (Mary Lou's parents) place.

Doug called to tell us that he and Anthony weren’t coming down. He isn’t feeling the best and Samson has some type of ailment. As far as we know Kendahl (Kathy’s sister Judy’s daughter) and her crew of “spring breakers” are still arriving Friday afternoon. They are currently camping in the Smokies.

Kelsey, Lydia & Andy arrived a little after 6. Lydia was glad to see her Grammy and Pawpaw, but I think we were even more glad to see her. We had supper and then went to Tom & Mary Lou’s to show off Lydia <grin>, and visit.

The telephone man came out to install our Internet line. He had a problem finding a good “pair” of wires to use. He ended up tracking back up the line several miles to find a good pair and then climbed one pole after another to continue the good pair to our place. He only got as far as the “Picking Barn” when he had to quit for the evening. He said he would return first thing in the morning to finish the job.

Our AT&T phone service here is much better than what we previously had with Verizon. Derrick Burgess, one of our neighbors, said that Verizon had put up a new tower and that their service had improved. The service on my phone is good enough that I was able to watch a Netflix movie with very few interruptions due to buffering.

Friday
Tentative plans are to borrow a chain saw from Tom and cut some wood so that we can have campfires over the weekend. Last night, coming back from Tom & Mary Lou's, it was clear and the stars were brilliant. I think Kathy & Kelsey are going to hit the Crossville stores again.

May God bless you and yours.

March 16th -- Sunday - Happy Birthday Tom

Sunday
It rained REALLY hard last night and again while we were at church this morning. It is 4 PM and just started raining again, after maybe an hour with no rain. Most of the time when it wasn’t raining hard it has been sprinkling.

We went to Liberty for church this morning. Last week I almost enjoyed the contemporary music. I REALLY didn’t care for the music the first week and again this week. I think if I were going to be down here I would still attend the church, but I wouldn’t go into the service until the music was over. Guess I could set out in the hall and listen to southern gospel on my phone <grin>. There seems to be so much good going on there that my dislike of the style of music would be a minor inconvenience.

Today’s message was based on the story of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:4-42). The Jews looked down on the people of Samaria and tended to not even enter the country unless it was absolutely necessary. Not only did Jesus go into an area that most Jews wouldn’t enter, he talked to a woman who even the local people probably shunned because of her lifestyle (5 previous husbands and currently shacked up with a guy). His witness to her not only turned her life around it ended up turning around the entire town where she lived. We need to be aware that God will sometimes ask us to go into places where were may be intensely uncomfortable, and talk to people who our “worldly” selves find to be unlovable. (It may be our workplace and someone we have be around at work.) If we pray about the situation God/Jesus will open our hearts so that we can love those our worldly selves find unlovable. The Pastor noted that we all have 3 options. We can be a “player”, someone ACTIVELY involved in sharing how God has blessed our lives; or a “bench warmer”, someone who sits on the sidelines but who just doesn’t have the drive to get very involved; or we can be someone who sits in the stands and just watches life pass us by.

Both Liberty and the church we attend while in Crossville appear to be growing at a fast pace. Both seem to have many activities (small groups, study groups, church dinners, rummage sales, etc.) occurring on regular basis. I wonder what type of spark it takes to generate the excitement I feel among members when I attend those churches.

We drove up to Summerdale and had lunch at a “Mom & Pop” type restaurant. The food and prices were good. I had beef tips and rice, au gratin potatoes and fried squash. Kathy had chicken tenders, pinto beans and cabbage. We both had coffee to drink and peach cobbler for desert. The desert was included in the meal. With tax the cost was less than $17. The “fried squash” was breaded in what I thought might be the breading they use on onion rings, and deep fried. It was really good.

We are still on track to leave for TN in the morning. If I were tough, like my brother-in-law Tom, I would drive all the way in one day. He never took more than a day to make the trip between Tampa and Crossville, which is a lot further than we have to go.

March 15th - Pensacola, Florida day

I mentioned earlier about helping tear down a wall at the church we have attended down here. Below is a photo of maybe a third of the area where the wall used to be. There are still a few metal studs to be cut off. The sanctuary is on the other side of the plastic. We removed the drywall from the studs so that the studs could be salvaged.

It will be interesting to see if the guys have it open when we go to church tomorrow.

Thursday

After my morning walk (only 1.35 miles), and a shower, we headed out for Pascagoula, Mississippi. Our intention was to “kill two birds with one stone”, we were going to take the ferry across Mobile Bay on our way to Pascagoula.

From the campground it is an hours drive, 40 miles, to the ferry. The last 19 miles are on a peninsula. The only way to get off the peninsula is to take the ferry to Dauphine Island (Mobile) or turn around and go back the way you came. There was some interesting housing to check out along the road, but the ferry ride appears to be the only reason to make the drive, unless you happen to live out on the peninsula. When we finally got to the ferry we saw a phone number displayed. Kathy called the number and learned that the ferry was down for maintenance.

As soon as you start out the road on the peninsula there are numerous signs warning that it is a “toll road”, which I assume refers to the charge to take the ferry. It certainly seems like someone could have added a sign stating that the ferry was out of service before people drove all the way out there. We were not the only ones who were turning around and heading back.

We ended up doing a little more sightseeing along the Gulf and had lunch at a rather boring restaurant buffet. The weather was nice so we still had an enjoyable day.

Friday
During my morning walk (4.4 miles in 75 min) I noticed that quite a few people had garage sales going on. Later in the morning Kathy & I went walking and checked some of them out. I bought a used 26” flat screen TV for $35 and Kathy bought 2 bags full of paperback books. Right before noon we picked up the TV on our way to the Fairhope Arts & Crafts festival.

Fairhope is about 15 miles from us, and right on Mobile Bay. It is supposed to be quite an upscale community. We drove around quite a while before we finally found a parking place. It was at least 5 blocks from the start of the festival. They had stuff priced from 50 cents to thousands of dollars. I’m certainly not an art critic but it looked to me like about a quarter of the art being sold could have been done by middle school kids. We did see some interesting things, like the “udder” ketchup & mustard dispensers.

 

Kathy walked more Friday than she has in a year, there were a lot booths to check out at the festival, and that was after hitting the garage sales earlier in the morning. The food court didn’t have anything that interesting so on the way out we had lunch at a couple of different churches. They had boiled shrimp at the Methodist church, which is where we went for Kathy’s lunch.

 

The Lutheran church had German sausage dinners, which is were we went for my lunch. Kathy’s shrimp was great and my sausage, sauerkraut and some kind of rye bread was also good. I still can’t handle German potato salad.

 

Saturday

While I ate breakfast at the clubhouse I noticed that they were setting up for their own craft festival. One guy had some awesome woodworking pieces, nicer that almost everything we saw at Fairhope.

After breakfast I walked a single lap (1.35 miles) around the campground.

Around 10:30 we headed for Pensacola. We drove along the coast. It was interesting, but after driving up the west coast in northern CA, OR & WA it was a little boring.

When we neared the museum we saw what we thought was a seafood restaurant and stopped for lunch.

This was parked along the edge of the parking lot.

After we entered we learned that it was a fish market. It was an interesting place and we were glad we stopped. There was an incredible number of people buying fresh fish. There must have been 8 checkout lines, with long lines at each. The photo below shows about half the length of the display of fresh fish.

As we neared the museum Kathy noticed four Airstream trailers in a courtyard along the street. They make up a food court. One is being remodeled, one served BBQ, one served cheese dishes and the last one served Mexican. Kathy had a taco and I had a burrito. Her taco was good, my burrito was OK (I think that I am disappointed in most restaurant food because Kathy is such a good cook. The food at most restaurants just can't compare to what she makes.

We took a guided tour at the History Museum. The tour guide gave us a lesson on the history of Pensacola, which was interesting and led us though 3 houses that were built in the 1800's. There was a lot more to see at the museum and if we had went there earlier we would have went back for a second day. It was cool and misted rain most of today so after touring the houses we headed back home.

Another good day in Alabama.

Our current plan is to head for Tennessee Monday. It is supposed to be rainy Monday morning so that may delay our departure. I want to get the propane tank filled down here, so that will slow us down some.   It is about 500 miles from here to our place in Crossville. My guess is that we will spend about 9 hours on the road, plus stops. We may drive it in a day or we may take 2 days, we will see how things go once we are underway. That is a nice thing about being retired. We don't have a schedule that has to be kept.

May God bless you and yours.