Gathering Essentials

Ok, so tonight’s blog will bring the answer to the question I’m sure you all have asked, just what was in that box from Camping World?

A few essentials have been on our “to pick up” list for the past few weeks since we made the decision to purchase the fiver. So here, in no particular order of importance, are some of the items we have bought in preparation for our trip to TN in 3 weeks…

We had to buy a set of sheets, as we do not have a king size bed in our house. We are looking forward to having one in the fiver.

Chocks to prevent the trailer from moving when we are set up in a campground…

A sewer hose bayonet to connect to the campground sewer line…

 

 

A multimeter tester to ensure proper electrical current at the pedestal before we plug in….

A water filter stand to prevent the water filter from laying on the ground (we already had the water filter). We also ordered a new cartridge for the filter, but that is backordered and should be arriving any day now.

A tire pressure gauge to check the air pressure on the tires for the truck and fiver…

 

 

 

A sewer hose support to…support the sewer hose

And finally…

a lube plate to lubricate the trailer hitch without having to apply grease.

And there you have it, our supplies for the trip so far! We have a couple big purchases left to go in the coming year – especially a pressure pro system – but that will have wait for a bit yet while our bank account recovers from the past couple months.

Memorial Day 2011

These pictures are from our trip to Washington in 2009.

To all our Veterans…

Thank you.

A Quick Trip

It has been another beautiful day, with lots of sunshine. It’s been a little muggy but I’m still enjoying the warmth after all the rain and cool weather.

The cats are enjoying the screen door to the back deck being open most days now.

Today’s main project - we were heading to my sister Denise’s today to bring the riding mower over to them. Another item out of our garage!!

And our first time towing anything with our new truck.

I brought my camera and intended to take a couple pictures there – but when we got there, I got chatting and forgot!

After our quick trip over to Denise and Mike’s, we headed to Albany to do a little quick shopping. We bought some king size sheets for the bed in the fiver, and a torque wrench – but the torque wrench turned out to be the wrong size, so Harry will be returning that this week. He has since found a better deal for the right one online. Thank goodness for internet!

I took this picture on our way home – you can see the haze over the city.

 

So it’s been another nice day, and now we are hanging out, relaxing and enjoying a sudden breeze. It feels like there could be a storm in the area.

I am so glad that we have another day to this long weekend.

Have a great evening everyone!

A Short Postscript

Harry uses Google Chrome so I tried logging in to Blogger on his computer – no problem! So I have downloaded Chrome and will use that for my blog reading and commenting for the time being. I’m not a huge fan of Chrome so far – I like my favorites bar and some of the other features of IE. But maybe after using it a bit more, I will change my mind.

Blogger Problems

It’s been a frustrating few days with blogger, especially when it comes to commenting. I keep trying periodically to see if I can log in, but I get stuck in that endless log-in loop. I went to the Blogger help forum, and there were several threads there detailing the exact same problem. So I’m definitely not alone. But because of this, I haven’t been able to comment on blogs other than by just using my name. Some people don’t allow comments on their blog by someone if they don’t have an account, so there have been several times when I tried to comment and couldn’t. So that’s been a pain. According to the help forum, they are working on it. I hope they get it fixed soon!

Other than that, it’s a beautiful day here in the neighborhood! The sun is shining and it hasn’t rained all day!

Here Crookshanks is enjoying the sunshine and a coolish breeze.

A few days ago, we ordered some essential items from Camping World for our trip home from Tennessee. They came yesterday, and Harry enjoyed opening up the box and checking out all the items. We only have a couple more things to get before we head to pick up our fiver.

Today Harry started working on the floor in the downstairs guest room.

The last floor is almost done!

We are making some real progress on the house – hopefully by the end of this year we will only have a short list of items left to accomplish.

One Down!

Well, we just arrived home a little while ago from Clifton Park. We now officially own only one property!! What a great feeling. I was told that the closing is boring for the seller, since the buyer is the one doing all the signing and looking at all the paperwork. But I didn’t find it boring at all. I just sat there and enjoyed the feeling of freedom that came as I watched the buyer sign all the documents, and then at the end, I passed over the keys with a big smile and a “congratulations!” So that was an awesome experience!

Other than that, the past couple of days have just been really busy. Yesterday, we worked of course, and then Harry’s son Andrew came over for dinner. We barbequed and then chatted away the evening.

We have had weird weather over the past couple of days – last night we were actually under a tornado watch, which is very unusual for our area. We did have a huge storm overnight, and Harry got up and turned on the tv just in case. But thankfully, it was only a lightning storm.

This morning I was dragging. Since I was leaving work early for the closing, I actually opened instead of my usual nice leisurely relaxing Friday morning. And it was busy! Wow – before I knew it, it was time to head out. So today was a whirlwind, but really great day!

Now I am just sitting here enjoying the feeling of having $118k less debt to my name. I said to Harry on the way home, if we feel this way now, can you imagine how we will feel after the next closing?? 

Feast or Famine

Some days I find it hard to come up with a topic to blog about, or some topic of interest from daily happenings – especially on work days! And today I have the opposite “problem” – lots of stuff to talk about. I put the word problem in quotes because it’s all good! Actually, there is enough news for today that I am going to put my proposed blog topic for today (a recipe for taco burgers) off until a later date.

Our biggest news of the day – we have a closing date and time!!! I have had days that I wondered whether it would happen, but we are scheduled for this Friday at 4 pm. However, we may have an interesting trip – our closing is north of the city late in the afternoon on the Friday before a holiday weekend (about 30 minutes away on a normal day). Let’s just say, we will be allowing more time than that.

Also, we had an electrician come by today, originally for an estimate. And then we decided to have him go ahead and do the work. So, we now have a 50 amp hookup for the fifth wheel out in the garage. We know that will come in handy over the next year and a half.

It has been a beautiful day, lots of sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. Tonight, our friend Rose came over for dinner after a walk around the block. We barbequed out on the grill, and enjoyed a great meal while we caught each other up on the latest news. So a great day off!

A Quick Hello

We heard toward the end of the day yesterday that the condo sale is almost clear to close. Phew! Good thing we haven’t been holding our breath all this time. Maybe today…

I saw this on someone’s facebook page yesterday and had to share! I love it!! (It is a little blurry because I enlarged it.)

Have a great day everyone!

A Trip Around the Homestead

Harry and I have landed at home after a fast trip up north. This morning I decided to take a few pictures around the little corner of the world where I lived for my first twenty years.

I walked down the street a bit – in the foreground of the picture is the house where I grew up, and in the background you can see a little bit of the house which my great-grandparents built, which is where my maternal grandparents lived for much of my childhood as well. I thought I took a better picture of my grandparent’s house, but I guess I didn’t.

When I was growing up, I was surrounded by family. My maternal aunt lived in the house to the right of ours, and my paternal grandparents lived in the house behind where I was standing to take this picture.

All of these trees around the house were small when I was growing up. Every year my dad would go up to the forest behind the house, and find a couple small trees that met some criteria he had, and he would dig them up and put them in the back of the tractor, and plant them in our yard somewhere.

The trees in the corner of the fence to the left of the picture were so small when I was young that my cousin and I would build a “fort” in the summer by attaching a blanket to the fence with clothes pins and drape the other end over the tree.

 

If you look down the driveway toward the garage, you can see a yellow trailer to its left. When I was young, that was where my parents had their garden. When my grandparents got older, and their house became too big for them, they sold it, and bought a trailer, and moved it to the spot where the garden used to be.

This cute little spot is our future landing area when we travel up to “the homestead” with our new fiver. Those little trees were going to be moved anyway, so that will work out great.

And one last picture of the view from the front porch. You can see the house where my dad’s parents used to live.

I took more pictures of our trip back to the capital region, but I think I have already put in enough for one post!

I hope everyone had a great weekend.

Tomorrow is Monday – back to work, ho hum, and hopefully we will finally hear something about scheduling the closing for the condo.

Good night, all!

Heading North

This has been a very busy day. I started out with my normal standard few hours of work, and left Harry with a “honey do” (please) list at home.

The twin bridges heading out of Albany on our way north.

It was a beautiful day for traveling which was a little bit of a surprise, as the showers of the past week were forecast to continue again today.

Actually the sky got even more blue as the day went on.

Unfortunately, we will only be up here for one day, since we have to head back home tomorrow. However, we did not travel up here just so Harry could try a michigan hot dog. (And, although those koegel hot dogs from Michigan sound interesting, they are not what I mean when I talk about a michigan.)

The sun wasn’t cooperating for these pictures but here is Harry about to have his first michigan, (onions smothered). Basically it’s like a chili dog, but the sauce is different, finely ground with a distinctive taste.

And the verdict was…

DELICIOUS!!

So, as I was saying, yummy as they are, enjoying michigans for dinner was not our primary motivation.

We were also here to spend an unfortunately too short amount of time with…

 Mom and Pop!

After our delicious dinner, we took the scenic route back to the house.

                          

 

 

 

 

And on the way we had another nice stop to enjoy some ice cream.

 

So it’s been a great day, and now it’s time to relax…good night all…