Happy New Year 2012

December 31st - Cloudy and very mild

At the risk of hurting any ones feelings, I want to share some of our Christmas remembrances with everyone. It has been a very hectic month of December, as it seems everyone as experienced the same thing. Perhaps, it is the fact that we still have not had snow here, so Christmas crept up on us here in Pennsylvania.

We celebrated a lovely Christmas Eve at Shawn and Maegan's home which was decorated to the hilt as it always is. We tried something different this year, everyone brought food that could be eaten on our laps and we had a wonderful variety of foods, so we all got a chance to chat with everyone and to enjoy the kids, then after dessert we opened our gifts. Maegan always comes up with the neatest gifts for Lou and me and I enjoy opening our gift bag. This year among the treasures she had a wine cork with pretty gems on the top with a "R" and a spreader with an engraved "R". A travel journal that has a place for pictures and a short narrative and a travel folder to keep receipts, credit cards, maps, etc. These were all things that we can put in the RV and use on our travels, these were just a few of the things, but the interesting thing was the wine cork matched a set of melted blue bottles that are intended to be used for cheese and cracker dishes that Lou's daughter, Sandra gave to us, and her daughter gave us another dish that matched that, so all of those go into the RV. Perfect!!

Tonight is our square dance celebrating the New Year and I just have to use the dishes there, so after that they will get packed up and put into the RV.

Krista, knowing that I just can't get enough of Frank Sinatra got me a collection of his CD's and they are all of his old albums with the original album covers. I was delighted. They certainly will go in the RV and will offer many hours of entertainment on the road.

Janet, Lou's youngest daughter, did a really neat thing. She took an old 33 1/3 record and softened it in the oven to make it into a bowl, and then filled it with neat items from Bath and Body Works for me. It was the perfect gift for me, as this is the first year that I have not ordered from them, so I didn't have any new products to take south with me. The bowl will make a great conversation piece to include in the RV. Like Lou tells me I have the RV overloaded now anyhow!!

I had not gotten my granddaughter anything for Christmas other than a book that she has requested, but wanted to get her a business suit for her trip to Harvard, so on the 27th we set off to the mall and while at the mall, we found a sign maker, hence, I finally was able to order a sign to put outside of our RV when we are traveling. We have wanted one forever and now we just have to get it waterproofed and we are ready to travel.

Preston hand threw a new dish that has two pieces so the bottom one will hold ice or hot water to enable the top serving dish to be multipurpose. He also made coffee mugs to all of his cousins. Each and everyone is unique, a lot of talent in those hands.

We also received many gift cards that we will use while traveling. One is just for books and that is always a delight and that one we usually save until we return home and make a day trip with that one. Last year I purchased The Help as one of my books and was that a delight, but was disappointed with the movie, so much was left out.

My brother and his wife gave us bird houses that we will delight in putting out when we return and a solar light that we will take with us and display with our new sign.

Next project will be getting the house cleaned up and the motor home packed up and ready to leave mid January.

December Already

December 2nd - Saturday

I can not believe the whole month of November has passed and I have not made a post to our blog. Believe it or not, I have spent the entire month trying to get my fall housecleaning done.

Growing up my mother had a rule, our work had to be done before we could play, and you know to this day it is very hard for me to deter from that rule. I started with the master bathroom, took everything out of every drawer, and moved from one room to the next. I finally finished on Thursday!! It has never taken me this long, but I can tell you our house is clean as is the RV.

We had many things side track us as the house cleaning was trying to be accomplished. The RV had to go two different places and one night when we were trying to get it back into the barn after dark, I heard a lot of creaking in the barn floor only to find that several boards had split, which later revealed that the large beams in the barn had dry rotted and need to be replaced. We are not trying to decide if perhaps we need to built a pole barn with wider doors.

The picture of the beautiful African Violet is one that my sister gave me last year when we were in Florida, it was a small one and we transported it all the way across Florida and back home and transplanted it and it has bloomed and rebloomed. It was supposed to be white, but you can see it has some purple in it also.

You will also see from the pictures how much Matthew has grown. Steve is working a lot of evening shifts, so Krista and Matthew spend at least one evening with us which Lou and I enjoy. He certainly enjoys his Grandpa and at church, he will crawl over me to get to Lou.

Lou and Preston have been hunting several days this week and Preston comes to our house for dinner each evening which we enjoy. That way I get to hear the deer stories again. While they were hunting one day this week, Krista and I did the wreaths for the cemetery and got them delivered. We have been so fortunate to have such a warm fall, it had made the outside projects so much easier to accomplish.

Lou and I filled a shoe box for The Shoe-Box Ministry at church. Our Parish sent 97 shoe boxes, which I thought was extremely good for a small country parish.

I have not done any outside Christmas decorating and may not, as we are planning on leaving for Florida by the 15th of January and we do have a lot to do before our departure. We plan on having time to enjoy our families and the holidays.

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.