Ramblin'

Thought I would just write about what we have been doing and what is on the horizon ~ hopefully not too boring for y'all.

Work is going well.  New Assistant Managers, Gordon & Diana arrived on Friday, September 16th and started working on Monday, September 19th.  They seem to be catching on pretty well.  Training has been very uneventful.  Tomorrow and Friday we are going to be hanging in the motor home and let them do their jobs without us hovering.  We will be close by though in case they have problems.  Then next week they are working on Wednesday as I have a doctor's appointment with the cardiologist ~ Dr. Emily, here in Hondo is concerned about my high pulse rate - it is beating between 100 & 144 beats pretty consistently.  And then they start working on Saturday & Sunday's, October 8th &  9th so the office will be open 7 days a week ~ the start of our winter hours.


We have good friends arriving on Friday. They are going to stay in the little B&B about a mile from us here in the park. I am looking forward to seeing the inside ~ have thought of doing a weekend retreat there all by myself so I can take a couple of long hot baths ~ sure miss my tub and a long soak with a good book and a glass of wine

Patrick & Patricia will be here till Monday morning. On Saturday we are going into San Antonio. Will go to the Alamo and the Riverwalk. When we took our grandson to the Alamo he was not interested in reading all the history and stuff. We know we can do that with P&P. And of course we will go for some BBQ somewhere. Any of you who have visited San Antonio know of a good BBQ place?

I am going to use Thursday as a day to do some cleaning and sorting of the rig. They (the park) have a big flea market/yard sale on the 12th of November so I am want to see if I can gather enough stuff to have a table or else I will donate it to the park table. I have also decided to go through all my clothes that I have in the rig and also in two big totes in the storage shed here - I don't need to keep carrying all these clothes that I don't wear very often or at all any more. And then I need to get busy and clean out all the cupboards in the rig. Feel free to ask me how the cleaning/purging/sorting is going - a little accountability never hurt!!

And of course pictures are always fun to show.  Sure hope you enjoy them.

Opal - she looks so much like her daddy!

Grandpa asked to be slapped when he said "just like a typical woman - yakking on the phone"

Danayln, Max, Brandon, Treyson and Christopher - we love how Danalyn always coordinates their clothes for family pictures.  Grandpa thought she should have picked something besides Carolina Blue.

Brandon with Treyson.  I took this picture while we were on Skype together just a couple of weeks ago.

Well I guess that's all for now.  Hope you enjoyed catching up with us.  Take care and have a great day!!!

A Productive Weekend

We have had a good and productive weekend.

Saturday found us going to San Antonio for a Costco run.  We had not been since the end of June.  Usually when we go we only buy bottled water like Propel or Gatorade, toilet paper, paper towels, dry goods and of course, Ron's beer.  But this time was different.  A couple here at the Lone Star Corral have offered us the use of their side by side fridge/freezer so this time we were able to buy some meat and frozen fruit & vegi's.  This will help me so much with meal planning and saving money. 

One of my goals for the month of September is for us NOT to go out to eat unless it is a special occasion.  We ate out way too much in July & August.  Like last week I went out Friday night with a group of gals from here in the park.  And this next week, we are taking Jared out for dinner to say thank you for all his hard work this summer and for covering while Ron was in Idaho & Oregon.  So far we are up to 16 of us going to H.ermann's & Sons.  It should be a good time.  But I digress - so after grocery shopping and figuring what all we had in the shed, the storage bins and added what we bought I am now planning our meals for the month.  After all that shopping we had a quiet evening at home.

Today was a busy day.  After sleeping till about 8:30 I got up and decided to do some cleaning today.  I did some deep cleaning of the kitchen and bathroom, and organizing my books and cleaning off my nightstand I tackled the dining room table, benches and underneath the table.  And swept the motor home - I can't believe how dusty things get even with the windows closed up - with running the air conditioner 24/7 for almost three months straight I was really surprised but the dust bunnies are all gone now - at least for a little while.  I then went and did six loads of laundry - usually we have two loads.  Thank goodness for  having six washer & dryers in the laundry room - took me just over 2 hours but it is done for now.

I then spent a few hours on the computer before Ron started scrounging around for something to eat.  It was after 5:00 p.m.  So I put together dinner - roasted chicken with green beans w/mushrooms, fried potatoes with onions and something new.  Hank & Euona Rathjen had made us a plate of okra w/onions and bacon.  Ron and I had never had it - we were pleasantly surprised - it tasted really good.  Definitely going to add that to our menu. 

We ended the evening watching John Wayne in McClintock.  So fun to see a well made movie and so many famous actors. 

So as  Ron's mom used to say - "we had a perfect day."  Hope you did too.

Mini Update

Am really struggling with knowing what to write and telling myself I should just write whatever.  And then I ask myself who am I writing for - I write because I like to write, I like to talk and I like to share what is going on in our lives so this raises the question - Why then don't I just write a small post each day just for me???  So that is what I am going to do - just write something, anything and write for me not for others.  If others like what I write that is great, if not, so be it.

The last couple of weeks have been frustrating here in the park.  While Ron and Jared were working on the drain/water system surrounding the clubhouse last week Ron broke a propane line.  This meant the water and propane to the clubhouse had to be turned off.  Thinking it would not take long to fix we put a sign up on the laundry room explaining the laundry room was closed till further notice and put the same notice on the sign board outside the office.  Well two days turned into five, turned into eight days.  

Needless to say we had some unhappy campers.  Especially the one who went into use the laundry room and didn't know it was closed.  Seems someone opened the door to the laundry room (the sign was on the outside of the door) and this person didn't know the laundry room was closed.  OK, no big deal right - well no, we had to refund their money and while Ron was climbing on top of the washer to disconnect it from the electricity so he could get the washer open so she could get her dry spinning dirty laundry out he smacked his head a good one against a nail sticking out of the wall!!  A nice  1 1/2" gash on his head.  My question was "why would someone open the dang door to the laundry room if it was closed?"  of course no one could answer me and of course no one would fess up to doing it.

So after multiple trips to Hondo (16 miles round trip), one trip to Uvalde (66 miles round trip) and trying multiple fixes it was successfully repaired late Wednesday morning.  I have 5 or 6 loads of laundry to do but wanted to wait for the rush to die down - think I am going to try to do laundry tomorrow late afternoon.

And of course we are on fire alert.  Earlier this week we had a large fire in San Antonio about 45 miles from us.  Today has been a bit more scary as there is one burning about 25 miles from the Lone Star Corral.  You can see the smoke from that fire all the way into Hondo.  We have talked about an evacuation plan.  Ron figures we would need 30 minutes notice to hit the road ~ in that 30 minutes we would just toss things from the shed into the rig, move stuff around in the rig so we can have access to the driver/passenger seats, hook up the Jeep and hit the road.  Besides getting all our stuff in the rig I have made a list of what I need to grab from the office: the Emergency Contact Book, the money, the checkbook and the little safe.  If I have the time I would also grab the desktop computer - it is only the hard drive and the screen.

So we pray:

1.  For rain - we desperately need rain.

2.  For safety for all the firemen/women responding to these fires

3.  For 45 minutes notice to evacuate if it comes to that

4.   For peace of mind no matter what comes our way

If you are a praying person, please join us in praying for Texas and the weather/fire danger and I would also ask for your prayers for those on the East Coast who are dealing with floods, with no end in sight.  For people to remain calm and not let their emotions rule what happens.

So that's it for tonight.  Talk to y'all soon.