Catch Up Time

October 23rd - Sunday - Sunny - Beautiful Day

Finally, we were awakened with the sunshine brightly shining and a promise of a day without rain. We bounced out of bed and dressed for church thinking of what we should get accomplished after church. Normally, Lou and I do not plan on working after church; however, it has been so long since we have had a day of full sunshine, we knew we had to take advantage of it.

When we arrived at church, we found a goodly amount of people already assembled in the sanctuary and that is always pleasing to us, as we feel very blessed to have two very special pastors in our church. Today we had the pleasure of having Pastor Sandi. Her message was on God's Love and how sometimes we fill our hearts with other things so that God's love can not enter our hearts and therefore, it can not overflow to our neighbors. That was the children's sermons. Ours went into more detail. We begin a new Bible study tomorrow night and we are looking forward to that.

After church today, we did some of our fall jobs taken care of. Lou got the gutter on the house cleaned out and some of the gutters needed some attention and Lou got them repaired. I got the ones on the garage and the little barn cleaned out. Lou got my push lawn mower fixed, which I am so pleased about. It is so much easier for me to use that, than the weed eater. It is an electric start John Deere and for some reason, we haven't been able to start it; however, today, he got it started, so I was able to cut some of the grass around the house. Still can't cut around the barn, as we still have water standing there and by the weather report we heard tonight, supposed to have rain again tomorrow. It may freeze before it dries up!!

We have opened up some of the skirting around our house trying to get it dried up a little, as we have to get some work done under the house before it gets real cold and that is going to be a day long job and then we need to get the water to the barn shut off for the winter.

We finally got all of the painting done, all of the fence, little barn, bird house, still want to paint the inside of the doors in the house, but can do that when I do the fall cleaning..

I went with Krista when she took Michelle back to Elizabethtown College after her fall break. I rode in the back seat with Matthew and he was so good. The poor little guy is having an allergy to milk protein and he is waiting for a new formula to arrive, he has not had any milk of any kind in almost a week, he has been to see a gastroenterologist in Williamsport and he believes he is on the right track now, he described it as having bees in his intestines, so Matthew is dining upon pedialyte and sweet potatoes and rice cereal that Krista prepares from scratch. It is hard to believe how good natured this baby is despite how much he must hurt.

Lou's daughter-in-law has just had surgery in Tyrone and seems to be doing well. We wish her a very speedy recovery. We met she and Preston at the club two weeks ago for dinner and had a good chat. It was a beautiful drive and we all enjoyed the fall foliage.

It seems like it has been a time of family get-togethers, Noell and Wyatt were at Shawn and Maegan's last weekend and we were invited over to visit with them and ended up staying for a dinner of homemade pizza. It was really nice to catch up on all of the family news. Susie had been off to visit with a high school friend and it was nice to hear of her visit and to see how Wyatt had grown and it is always good to see the little girls, that really aren't little girls now.

We have had election of officers in our square dance group and Lou and I have been elected treasure, so that has been time consuming and while Michelle was home, she helped me set up spread sheets on the computer and that has made things easier. We have used the rainy days to set up new filing systems and I think we have everything under control at this point.

I took pictures of a vine that I purchased about five years ago called Porcelain Berries and this year with the late frost it has really been pretty, they do show up a little in the picture, but in real life they are much prettier.

I guess, this pretty much catches us up on what is going on here. I did get the RV cleaned inside yesterday, all the drawers cleaned and packed for the trip south, carpets shampooed and Dish Network sent out a rep. that finally got the television to work, so after paying for service for four months we have service. I have a happy husband. We still have to take it back to Camping World in Bath before we can winterize, and we have not heard from them. Tomorrow we will call them again. The saga continues!!

Camping At Ives Run - Tioga County, PA

October 3rd Monday Cloudy w/ a few peaks of Sunshine

We are currently at Ives Run camping. We arrived on Saturday during the rain and it has rained almost constantly since our arrival. We actually have a beautiful view of the lake and we have watched the lake raise with the continual rain, but the Park Rangers have assured us we are not in any danger. In fact, we are among the first campers to be allowed in since the last flood after Hurricane Iris passed through. The park was closed for the majority of September and just reopened on the 1st of October.

We have not let it dampen our spirits. We met our good friends June and Steve here around 12:30 on Saturday and quickly got set up had lunch and the guys braved the rain and took a walk in the rain. June and I opted for some needle work. I brought along a primitive pillow top that I had carried to Florida last year and didn’t take the time to work on it, so thought this weekend might be the time to pull it out and I have had time to enjoy working with it again.

Being only about ten minutes from our home, we dropped Estee off at our home Saturday night on our way to the Penn Wells Hotel for dinner. We had made reservations for 7:00, so it gave us time to show Steve and June around our home and the surrounding area before arriving at the Hotel. We all enjoyed a wonderful feast at their seasonal smorgasbord, which to June and Lou’s delight also included crab legs. I was happy to see mashed potatoes and gravy and lots of roast turkey. I guess the cooler weather brings different tastes to mind.

Sunday it stopped raining long enough for a ride through the countryside to see the gas wells and bring Steve and June up to date on the places that they hear Lou and I talk about and of course, a trip to Wellsboro is never complete without seeing the old homes in Wellsboro and something very precious to me the construction of the Deane Center.

June prepared a lovely dinner of baked Lasagna, tossed salad, garlic bread and a wonderful red wine and for dessert we had an apple cake with vanilla ice cream. An impressive dinner to have been prepared in the motor home. After we cleaned up the kitchen and washed the dishes we played cards until nearly midnight. It was a very enjoyable day and evening. We talked about out plans for the winter and where we wanted to go this winter and when to leave and when to return, it seems like each winter we go earlier and stay later. June and Steve are also getting a new motor home this year, and we are excited for them.

Monday morning we all slept in and the guys were off for a long walk, and I got busy fixing my food for dinner tonight. I brought along a ham to bake for our dinner tonight, Krista gave me some beautiful 20 ounce apples, so I fixed apple slices to have with the ham and did fan-tan baked potatoes, fresh green beans from the garden and fresh Harvard beets from the garden and for dessert we are going to have pumpkin pie bars with ice cream. Lou have dandelion blossom wine that his father made in 1975 that he wants to serve, so that will also be different. June had made pepper jelly and brought us a jar of that, and I didn’t have anything to glaze the had with, so I used a little of that and mixed some cinnamon and nutmeg with it and used that for a glaze. Hopefully that will be tasty.

After dinner we are going to play cards again and tomorrow we have to pack up and head home and then we have the huge task of taking the majority of the things out and repacking things for the winter storage and the trip south and start the winterization program. We do need to make one more trip back to Camping World in Bath before we can wash and wax the motor home.

We have made definite plans to hold our June SMART Muster here in June, 2012. It will be fun to have the club travel to our area, as we do have a lot of pretty sights to share with folks right here in our home town.