Where Do I Begin?

I think one of the hardest parts about getting back to blogging after a break is figuring out where to begin! I’ve thought about settling down to the computer and doing a post several times in recent weeks, but it just seems so overwhelming trying to figure out where to start.

So I guess I’ll just jump right in where we are and then hopefully will get some blog posts in over the next weeks about our summer – which was completely awesome, by the way.

When I left off, we were just finding out about the warranty results for our rig repairs and getting ready for the boys’ summer visit. I’ll say more later about both, but just for this post, I’ll say we got the rig repaired and had a great five weeks with the boys. I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to have a 4 year old and a 9 year old for five weeks in an rv, but it really went very well. I’m already looking forward to our next summer visit next year.

So, to jump to more recent events, in mid-September we were getting ready to leave Peru to head back home to Florida.

(This picture shows our seasonal site. We really loved it. We had enough trees around us that we had hardly any direct sunshine on us at all. Even though it was the warmest July and August they had ever had in that area, we didn’t have to turn the a/c on once!)

Right at the same time we were getting ready to leave, Florence was heading for the Carolina area. We had intended to head down our usual route to Charlotte to visit Harry’s son and daughter-in-law and then down to Jacksonville for another family visit on the way home. But given the storm, we decided to go on a more westerly route past Atlanta instead. Because of this, we actually got home almost a whole week earlier than we had expected.  We were pretty lucky. There was one day when we were going through Virginia where we were passing along the outskirts of rain from Florence, but for the most part we were able to avoid the storm with our adjusted route.

It was really good to get home. I had called Home Depot in late August and given the HR person my return date. Wow, how easy that all was. She reactivated me Sept. 1st so she could get me back on the schedule right away (they schedule 3 weeks out), and last Thursday I went back to work. I’ve already worked several days, and I got back into the routine like  I had never been gone. I’ve even been back on the forklift. And, in other exciting news, shortly after we got back, Harry had an interview at Home Depot also. He had a little bit of a wait while they were doing a few more hires, and as I type this, he is at Home Depot for his first day. So now we are both employed which will make our  bank account very happy.

The other most exciting news is that we have bought a car! We’ve been thinking about it for a couple years. Using the truck all the time costs a decent amount in diesel, given that it takes about $75 to $80 per fill up. On top of that, there have been at least 1 or 2 times a year that we have needed to rent a car, so that is another added expense. Last year for one of our rentals, we had a Nissan Altima, and we just loved it. So once we knew for sure that Harry had a job, we went off to do some car shopping and came home with this 2018 Nissan Altima. I am so enjoying having a car again.

So it’s been a good start to our winter season in Florida. We’ve settled back in and are enjoying being back. We won’t be doing any big projects this year around the house. We are going to take this winter off from that kind of stuff, and only do any emergency type things for the most part. Hopefully there won’t be many!