Planning for RV Days with Jessica and Harry

Wow!

2012-03-14T19:16:00.001-04:00

Wow is just about the only word I can think of to describe this weather.

The grass is getting green, and my tulips are coming up. And our temps for the upcoming week look just as nice – we even have several days of 70s forecast for next week. (The average high for today is 43 degrees.) We have turned our heat off for the time being. Who knows whether this will last through the rest of March and into April, but even if it cools down at some point, we are saving bigtime on pellets every day that we don’t have to run the stove.

We have been enjoying the nice temps immensely, and have been doing a lot of our cooking outside. Today was our third time using the bbq within a four day period.

I have been having a great time moving things into the fiver, and getting organized. I love baskets, and they are coming in very handy as I decide where things are going to be placed.

There is so much storage space!

Our house is starting to look a little empty, ummm make that….very empty.

An Awesome Day

2012-03-11T18:47:00.001-04:00

Today was another one of those all-around really nice days! Both Harry and I were excited to get outside and start organizing in the fiver.

Harry started in the bathroom, switching out the small fan that came when we purchased the fiver for a Vortex fan. We had picked it up yesterday at the repair place. It has several speed settings, and you can reverse the fan direction.

I spent the day moving stuff in. We brought a scale down to the garage, and we weighed everything before we found a home for it.

While I was organizing inside, Harry was organizing outside. He took everything out of the basement that we already had in there, and weighed it. Then he started moving more in, and getting things arranged the way he wants them.

He also found a great spot for our foldup tables and griddle in a storage area over the batteries.

They fit great, and with room to spare.

After a great day puttering around the fiver, we ended it with a yummy steak cooked on the barbeque.

They sure look good.

and I love the view from my spot…

Yay! Our Home Is Back!

2012-03-10T17:38:00.001-05:00

Another beautiful day, and we were off after I got out of work to pick up our fiver!

I snapped a nice shot of the Hudson River right before we got on the Castleton on Hudson Bridge.

We were SO excited to pick up our fiver and head back home. And WHAT a difference! We were both amazed at how smoothly the ride goes now in comparison to before.

What a great sight! Our driveway is full once more.

Checking out all the nooks and crannies for any sign of little visitors.

Happy to report that there are no signs of any “wildlife” having been around.

We had a brainstorm while the fiver was gone, and now that we have looked at this cabinet, we think it’s going to work.

Future site of a litter box modification…

It has been a great day. Backing into the driveway went reasonably well. I had the idea to tape it, and that worked out well for two reasons. First of all, we have already watched it and have made some adjustments to our plan of action for next time. And secondly, because we were happy to realize that what felt like 30 minutes when we were in the middle of it, was really only 10 minutes from start to finish. So we are definitely making progress.

Guess where we might be spending some time tomorrow?

Could It Be?

2012-03-07T17:43:00.001-05:00

All the signs seem to be pointing to it, but could it be true? Are we really going to have an early spring? The next ten days look pretty spring-like – lots of high 40s and 50s in sight!

It was actually warm enough outside today that I opened the windows to get some fresh air. Yes, an open window is a cat magnet.

The snow we got last week is almost gone…and also here is one last look at our almost empty driveway. We had a call from the dealership and everything is done! We will be going to pick up the fiver on Saturday afternoon. We are SO looking forward to having a full driveway once again.

This bush took a beating last year, but it has some new growth and buds. It seems like an easier winter has been good for it.

The picture below has nothing to do with anything, but it cracks me up. Someone had a hard day.

There hasn’t been an awful lot going on around here otherwise. I have used the refinish stuff on two more closet doors, the upstairs bathroom door, and the stairs. I sorted out some more clothes that I don’t wear and know I won’t be wearing, to take to the clothes drop-off. My closet is starting to look a little empty.

We have just about two months left before we head out for our first excursion of the camping season. Last October, we looked at our list and decided that we really wanted to accomplish as much as we possibly could while the cold weather was upon us, and I think we are both really happy with the amount of “housework” we have gotten done over the past few months. We are really trying to stay motivated for this last stretch so that we will be able to concentrate on the garage and outside of the house over the summer (in between outings of course).

RV Show Weekend

2012-03-04T18:14:00.001-05:00

After work yesterday morning, we headed out on the road to Syracuse, NY for an RV show at the NYS Fairgrounds. We tried to go last year, but our trip was snowed out. This year we had better luck. Nothin’ but blue skies (and some pretty strong winds) but no precipitation, so we’ll take it!

There really isn’t much to look at on the trip to the western part of the state, so I’m glad it’s not a super long trip – about 2.5 hours.

After arriving and checking in at the hotel, we drove the short distance to a steakhouse on the same street, where we met 5 other couples for dinner – Heartland club members who had been at the show. I’m sure you will find this hard to believe, but I forgot to take pictures!! And I even had my camera! I guess that shows what a good time we were having. We will be meeting up again at the three rallies we are going to in the coming months.

Today we were off to the show. We saw some interesting floorplans and features.

This is definitely a weekend camper – I definitely wouldn’t want to spend too much time watching that tv. I think my computer has a bigger screen than that! Also, there is no walking room in the bedroom – you go up the stairs and have to climb onto the bed from there.

This area just looks too crowded to me!

I liked this desk area though.

And Harry got to check out a MorRyde pinbox. (I forgot to tell him to smile for the camera – you’d think he’d be used to it by now.)

We definitely didn’t see anything we liked as much as what we have – not even close, so that’s a good thing!

And we picked up last year’s Exit Now directory for five bucks!

So overall, a very nice weekend! And both of us are even more looking forward to having ours home again! Hopefully this week!

Celebrating Friendships

2012-03-03T19:04:00.001-05:00

I don’t often bring in topics to the blog that relate to work…other than a short mention of going to work, or returning from work, but yesterday was one of those days when work and play came together. Yesterday was the last day of work for my boss for the past three and a half years, so to celebrate her moving on to bigger and better things, we all gathered at a local Japanese restaurant.

It was also another co-worker’s birthday, so we had another great reason to celebrate!

I am lucky that I have great people to work with, and we had a lot of fun and laughs.

It’s a cool experience to sit around and watch the theatrics as your dinner is cooked in front of you.

It’s not too often that you get your name spelled out in veggies and rice to honor your birthday.

It was a bittersweet evening, because while it was a great time with some great co-workers…

…at the end of the great evening, it was then time to say…so long for now…but we will catch up with you again down the road.

In Like a Lion

2012-02-29T15:59:00.001-05:00

Well, we should have known that we couldn’t make it through an entire winter! But at least we have 40s coming within the next few days, so we know it’s not going to stick around long.

This is what it looked like around here this morning. I took this picture around 11 and you can see that the flakes are just starting to come down.

And now, this is what it looks like…

We only have a couple inches so far, but it’s supposed to snow into tomorrow, so we will probably have a good amount of snow before the storm moves on. I am looking on the bright side – tomorrow is March 1st, and we will be seeing green grass soon!

In other news…

We got our new table yesterday.

From this small package…

…comes this…

Now we just need a small tablecloth and we are all set.

Also, our new door was put in today.

Tom reused the trim from the old door so it would match the other doors in the hallway. He does such great work! The only thing left for Harry to do is stain the door and paint the trim inside the office.

And there goes one more item crossed off that list!

Some New Pictures

2012-02-26T18:41:00.001-05:00

We’re finished with the painting in the office!

The lighting was odd, so even though it’s hard to tell, it really is the same wall color in all of these pictures. (And the ceiling is white – it seems hard to tell in the picture.)

It feels so great to have this painting finished.

You can see the door to the office in the picture – it now has a cat door (for the moment!). Yes this is the door that was originally the door to the basement. On the door that was originally here on the office, there were some white rub marks that I had not been able to get out. Well, yesterday Harry had an awesome idea! He switched the office door with the hallway basement door. Now the white marks that were showing on the face of that door are inside at the top of the basement stairs. And when the guy comes on Wednesday to replace this door, he won’t have to work around our alarm system or the basement steps. A win-win-win resolution!

So back to today…while Harry was working on the painting, I was using the refinishing polish on the trim and doors in the other downstairs rooms. You may recall that we discovered this stuff last year when we were getting the condo ready to sell. Well, I just used the last of the can we bought last year this morning. We have already picked up a new can.

These are a couple before pictures…

and here are some of the afters…

The wood is so dry. The Restor-a-Finish polish really brings out the grain of the wood. Then I use a Feed ‘n’ Wax Wood conditioner to finish the process.

There are A LOT of doors and other wood surfaces in this house. I hope I can get the polishing finished within the next couple of weeks.

These weekends go TOO fast!

Finishing Touches

2012-02-25T07:21:00.001-05:00

We are now getting to the point where we can say that we are doing the finishing touches on the various rooms. We’ve done all the biggest parts of each – painting the walls, redoing the floors, cleaning out most of the furniture. After completing the big jobs, we moved on to the next room to do the same, just leaving those little items to complete.

The office is almost finished. Harry will be working on painting the ceiling this morning while I am at work, and then we have the trim to paint. Thankfully, in most of the house the trim was not painted. But for some reason, when Harry painted that room years ago, he painted the walls and the trim the same color. So, since we had to do something with the trim, we bought a small can of a darker shade of the wall color. That is the only painting we have left to do in there. I should have pictures by tomorrow!

So – now this is the plan. Once the office is finished, we are going to start going room by room, and completely finishing each one. I think those small finishing touches will go relatively quickly, and it will be so good to knock all those little things off our list. We have been hoping that we could get the interior of the house pretty much done during the winter season, and I think we are on track to actually achieve that goal.

We should have the fiver back around the 10th of March hopefully. At that point, I am going to start moving some things over, the stuff we are keeping but don’t use all the time. That’s become part of the clutter issue at this point. I’ve gathered the “keeper” stuff together, so I don’t want to put it back away in the house. So we end up moving it from room to room, getting it out of the way while we’re working. For a long time it was in the office. But now we’re painting in there, so I moved it all to the guest room. It makes the house look so cluttered. Plus, I have no sense of how much room this stuff is going to take up in the fiver. I may need to pare it down further; I’m not sure. So I’ve decided it’s time to start moving in! (Yes, I’m going to make that extreme sacrifice! )

One other item being taken care of this week – the door to our basement is being replaced. Our current door has a cat door in it, as our cats’ litter box used to be down in the basement. We know a hole in the basement door would not be an asset during the selling process, so we went and picked up a new door a few days ago. The guy who did our kitchen last year is coming on Wed. to rehang the new door. Another finishing touch!

That list is getting shorter all the time!

Update on the Fiver

2012-02-23T20:03:00.001-05:00

We heard from the repair place yesterday, and lots of good news! The work is progressing nicely. We originally took it there to have the slide adjustment done. They have already taken care of that, and said that the slide was out of alignment more than was visible to us. So it’s a good thing that Harry’s eagle eye noticed the lack of sealing at the top of the slide.

In addition to the slide adjustment, we decided to take care of a couple other items now, since we were taking it to a repair place anyway. The biggest one is a pin box upgrade. I’m sure that a lot of you know what I’m referring to when I say that we have not enjoyed the whiplash type of jerking one feels when traveling on roads that have expansion joints running across them. So Harry and I have been talking since last year about having an upgrade done, and have now decided that there is no time like the present!

Diederich’s will be installing a MorRyde pin box, which uses a rubber type spring to absorb the chocking motion between the truck and trailer. Harry went back and forth between that and the Trail Air Triglide, but the MorRyde won out. One of the reasons that Harry decided on the MorRyde was that he doesn’t have to be concerned with maintaining air bag pressure in the pin box. (Don’t I sound knowledgeable? Well, don’t be fooled – I am typing as Harry dictates! )

Harry also is having Diederich’s do some regular preventative maintenance as well. They are repacking the axle bearings, and they also installed wet bolts on the suspension system.

All of the above has been completed except for the pin box upgrade. They ordered the MorRyde, and it should be in next week. So hopefully by the second weekend of March we can head over and pick ‘er up.

Both Harry and I will be glad when the fiver is parked in our driveway once again.

Scoping out the Territory

2012-02-22T08:32:00.001-05:00

One of the benefits of making plans to travel to a campground in our home area is simply that – it is close to our home. So, on Monday, as it was another beautiful day, we decided to take a ride over and check out two of the campgrounds we are traveling to in the upcoming season.

It was really a gorgeous day, and relaxing, and we enjoyed the nice views as we traveled through the countryside.

Our first stop was the Copake KOA. It was all closed up, so we weren’t able to see much from the road. But we are glad that we made the trip. While the roads are passable with the fiver along the route we took on Monday, there were a lot of winding back roads. So we are going to make another trip over some day going along the highway, just to see which route we would rather take.

Our second stop was the campground where we will be going for a few days in July. That trip will be very easy – straight shot along a good road.

This campground was deserted but open, so we drove through and took a quick look around.

Obviously, at this place there are a number of people who check in and never check out.

We had a great time and enjoyed our quick trip. It really made us SO ready for camping season to get underway. Only 87 days until our first trip of the season!!

All Work and No Play…

2012-02-19T17:38:00.001-05:00

…is not the best way to spend a weekend. So, with that in mind, we mixed a little of both in for today.

It was another absolutely beautiful winter day, with a gorgeous blue sky and a high in the 40s.

These days have been the norm rather than the exception this year. So far this is the 2nd least snowy winter on record since they have been keeping track of such things. And I’m not complaining!

We started out the day by getting back to work in the office. Harry sanded down the spots on the roof where he had spackled.

Once he finished that, we both got busy finishing the first coat of the paint, and moving on to the second.

He also gave the bathroom closet shelves a second coat of the white. In the next couple of days, we should be able to get that bathroom closet put back together. It’s going to look a lot more roomy as I have pitched a lot of what was in there.

And now for the play part of the day…we needed to make a run into Albany, so we decided that now was a good time to fit in Harry’s belated birthday meal. (You may recall he was a little under the weather on his birthday.) So we headed to lunch at…

Harry doesn’t seem to have minded the wait.

Cornbread with pecan butter…yum…

After a great meal and our stop at the store, we headed back home to finish the painting in the office.

It’s all done except the edging near the ceiling.

What a great feeling! We still have the trim to do, and the ceiling needs to be painted, but the majority of this room is done. We should have it finished by next weekend!

We are happy that we have another day off from work tomorrow.

Happy Presidents Day!

Last Room Standing

2012-02-18T17:47:00.001-05:00

We were busy beavers today, filled with new energy now that we can see the finish line to our home improvements.

As usual, I had my 6 hours of work to get through. While I was gone, Harry worked on the finishing touches in the bathroom. He caulked along the edges of the tub, the sink, and primed the shelves for the bathroom closet. He also took the rest of the painters tape off in the bathroom, and cleaned the trim in the office. No pictures of Harry’s work as those were all the kinds of jobs that add the needed finishing touches, but aren’t really able to be viewed in a photo.

Once I got home, I got busy finishing up the taping in the office, and then we headed to Home Depot for what we hope could be one of our last gallons of paint.

The last room to be painted…

It was still wet when I took these pictures, so it will lighten up somewhat as it dries. We hope to be able to finish this room tomorrow.

In case anyone is missing hearing about this, here are a couple photos from this day last year….

No word yet from the repair place on the fiver. We are hoping to hear early next week, but are somewhat relaxed about the timing since it is only the middle of February. Even so, I am sure Harry will be calling if we don’t hear something soon.

A Short Trip

2012-02-15T19:52:00.001-05:00

Today we took a short trip – to the service place. It’s hard to believe, but it has been over three months since we were last out of our driveway with the fiver. And we were going to the same place!

I took one last picture of our full driveway as we were getting ready to head out.

We have no snow still, and the temps were in the low 40s, but it was a gray day with a cold wind. Brrrr…

We had an uneventful trip, but it all felt new again, and we had to get used to the feel of being out on the road and towing! Both Harry and I will be happy when we have a number of trips under our belt. Since we came back from TN last June, we have only been out of our driveway three times!

It seemed so strange to drive out and leave ‘er behind.

But we are both glad that we are getting this work done long before the spring season gets here.

Our driveway looks so empty, through the dusty windshield.

One great thing for today – Harry brought out the hitch cover we got at Christmas. Our hitch has been in the garage all this time, but now we can leave it right on the truck.

It fits perfectly!

We should hear something tomorrow or the next day from the service guy. And hopefully soon we will be heading back to bring ‘er home.

Productivity Part II

2012-02-12T19:42:00.001-05:00

We continued our productive weekend with another great day today. Outside was a little chilly, but in here, we were busy getting stuff accomplished!

Since yesterday I have listed and gotten rid of…a desk chair, a portable crib and all its contents, 2 cordless blinds, and a portable stereo system.

Going, going….GONE!!!

I also worked in the office some more. I cleared off this entire shelving unit. Both of these shelves were covered this morning. Now, not only are they empty, they aren’t hanging on the wall! I have these shelves listed on freecycle. Hopefully I will get a taker soon.

Here is the office after my day of sorting. Those boxes under the window aren’t filled. One is a keeper box and one is a box that will be going into storage. There isn’t too much in here that we will be keeping.

This room is almost ready for painting.

While I was sorting and pitching, Harry was working in the downstairs bathroom.

He started out by applying the second coat of paint to the areas he had touched up, and the closet.

This closet is not easily painted. But it looks great with the fresh coat!

Harry had to be a contortionist today when he was installing the new faucet set in the vanity.

And the finished product!!

So this was a great weekend in terms of getting stuff done. Unfortunately, tomorrow is Monday and we have to go back to… … sigh…

Progress!

2012-02-11T18:28:00.001-05:00

We made great progress today! I came home from work determined to break the pattern of being overwhelmed by the amount of stuff before I even got started!

Harry had been working on the downstairs bathroom before I got home. He sanded down the areas that he had spackled, primed them, and was in the process of painting them when I arrived home. He has also done the first coat of paint in the closet.

When I got home, I went upstairs to the guest bedroom and took pictures of two items that have been hanging around in that room for months – a portable crib and a desk chair. We had the portable crib when Schaun was little, but he outgrew it quite a while ago. The desk chair has just been taking up space, as the desk it used to be used with has been out of that room for several months. I posted them on freecycle around 3 pm and they are both GONE already!! What a great feeling. I have since posted another listing of a couple cordless blinds – hopefully they will go soon as well.

After I got those listed on freecycle, I moved into the office. I started putting in one box those things that we want to keep, and more items in a larger box that we can use for staging the house when we are ready to list it. I took some pictures out of old frames and threw the frames away. I also pitched a basketful of miscellaneous items and threw a bunch of old magazines, phone books and other types of paper products in the recycling bin. It felt so good to look at the room and actually see a difference when I was finished for the afternoon!

Tomorrow I hope to keep up my productive ways!

Friday Again

2012-02-10T06:40:00.001-05:00

Thanks for the birthday wishes for Harry. He took it easy on Wed. and is feeling much better now. It was a persistent bug. Now I’m just hoping I don’t get it!

We didn’t get too much accomplished this week other than planning type stuff. We’ve been checking items off our list, but I feel like we’re moving at a snail’s pace.

On one of the warm days we had recently, we went outside and opened up the slides. Everything looks good inside – no signs of little visitors. So all of Harry’s prep back in the fall has paid off. Harry did notice one small problem. When I opened the off door slide, Harry happened to be over in the living room area, and noticed that the top of the slide isn’t going firm against the seal when the slide is open. It’s tight at the bottom, but at the top there is a gap of about an inch. We are guessing it’s been that way right along and we just didn’t notice. So Harry called the guy at Heartland, and we are going to take it over to Diedrich’s, the place about 15 minutes from here where we took the rig after the tree fell on it in October. They are going to take a look and call Heartland with an estimate. From what I understand, it is an easy fix and just requires a slide adjustment. I’m glad we found it now though. It gives us time to get it taken care of long before our planned trips, which start in May.

This weekend I hope we finally will get our bathroom put back together. It will be nice to have all of those pieces out of the office and back where they belong. The next item on the list is to start prepping the office for a paint job. It is the LAST room that we need to paint!

We have a fast cold snap coming through on Sunday and Monday. Then the temps look to be rebounding back into the 40s. If the weather forecast is to be believed, we are going to make it to at least the 19th of February without any major snow. It sure has been an interesting winter…can it last right through March?

One Year!

2012-02-08T06:29:00.001-05:00

Today is the day that we are exactly one year from that magic day that Harry becomes eligible for retirement! Otherwise known as Harry’s 54th birthday! We had planned to go out to dinner tonight for our celebration, but unfortunately Harry has been fighting a cold/sore throat/cough for the past week and is still not feeling that great. So we may be laying low, and celebrating on the weekend instead.

Of course, I had a great weekend!

Super Bowl Champs!!!

I had a great, although sometimes nerve wracking, time watching the game Sunday night.

Of course, then on Monday, I had to trudge off bright and early to work to join all the other sleep deprived people for a fun 9 hours. After two subsequent early nights to bed, I am now feeling back to normal! I am one of those people who needs a solid night’s sleep to function well.

We had a great productive weekend. Harry did an awesome job on the bathroom floor! We just need to touch up some areas with paint, especially painting the closet. Then we can put this room back together.

Ariel did a good job overseeing the project.

Our weather has been staying the course. At the moment, we have had the least snowiest winter by two tenths of an inch, with 13.6 inches so far this year. But our weatherman assures us that there is plenty of time left in the winter snow season, with most of Feb. and March still ahead. I’m pulling for a record!

Housework

2012-02-04T19:16:00.001-05:00

We spent some time today working on both our places – former/present and future. While I was at work this morning, Harry got started on the bathroom floor.

It’s looking good! The floor should be done tomorrow. We have a few places that we have to touch up with paint and then the vanity and mirror can be replaced.

We also went to Home Depot and picked up a couple items. Mostly stuff for the bathroom, but we did buy a new closet shelf for the downstairs guest room. And I couldn’t resist the temptation to look at storage options for the rv.

I bought some fabric baskets. I love the way they look. I am going to get a couple of those wire shelves to put underneath the baskets to add a little more storage to this area.

I put the other two baskets in the bottom section in the desk area up by the tv. Neither Harry nor I will ever use this for a desk. Now it has become a useful space.

I can’t wait until the weather really warms up so we can start organizing. We have decided that we are going to live in the rv once we put the house up for sale, so we have seven more months to get settled in. Fun, fun, fun!!!

End of Another Week

2012-02-03T20:42:00.001-05:00

There’s been a lot going on around here. I guess…another fast week has gone by so there must be something going on.

One of the items on our list of things to buy has been new carriers for our two cats. At this time, we don’t plan to let them loose in the truck when we are traveling, mainly because Crookshank is such an escape artist. The two carriers we had been using were large and bulky, so we ordered new, smaller, flexible carriers. They came on Wednesday and I opened them up. Well, I no sooner put them on the floor then both cats headed right in and made themselves comfortable.

We have left them out in the living room, and the cats have been sleeping in them off and on. Hopefully they will continue to like them once that door gets closed up.

We have a jam-packed weekend ahead. First, we hope to have the downstairs bathroom done and the guest room finished. Plus, I have work for a few hours tomorrow morning, and we will be spending 2 hours working out at the fitness center. AND of course, we have a football game to watch Sunday night!!!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Full Days

2012-01-31T21:07:00.001-05:00

If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was spring out there. Today we had a high in the low 40s and tomorrow we are supposed to be close to 50 degrees. It even is starting to smell like spring, as the ground is not as frozen with these warm sunny days. It’s so early yet though – my logical side knows that we have plenty of time yet for some of that white stuff to grace us with a winter coating. I will continue to enjoy every one of these springlike days, until the real season of spring comes along.

Our days are chock full of activity, but I can’t really list what we’re getting accomplished with our time. Of course, work takes up its usual majority of the week, and now that we have added five hours/week at the gym…well, I am still adapting to that. But we are determined to stick with it, as we are both feeling so much better. Even with only 2 and a half weeks under our belt.

Harry started the bathroom prep last weekend. The change is not going to be nearly as dramatic as it was with the upstairs bathroom. We painted this room only last year, so we are hoping that the wall color will go alright with the new floor. If not, painting this room (again) could still be added back on to the “list”. The toilet came out with no issues, thank goodness. So we don’t have to make any further major purchases to do the bathroom makeover.

On Sunday, we worked out in the garage. You may recall when Harry built these shelves. (haha if you do, you have a better memory than I do, because I just looked back and I couldn’t find the pictures.) But take my word for it, Harry built these shelves out in the garage, sometime in 2010, I believe. They had gotten filled up over the past year and a half. Well, on Sunday we got out there and cleared them off!! The section near Harry is where we are starting to gather some of the supplies that we will want to keep. So we emptied it out first, and then filled it back up!

Come spring, we are going to have our work cut out for us. Because most of this stuff still has to find its new home.

We have a lot to do in 244 days!!

Friday again…

2012-01-27T09:18:00.001-05:00

It’s raining! And our high today is supposed to be 51 degrees! Wow!

This was last January around this time. That is our garage in the background behind the snow.

This is the scene outside our front window today.

Guess which one I like better?

I made contact yesterday with a potential realtor for our house sale. I heard about her last fall from a member who came into the credit union, and was telling me about her. She was very pleased with this realtor’s work. So I emailed her, and got back a very quick response. We plan to meet with her in April to show her around the house and see what recommendations she will make about the house preparation.

This weekend we are getting back to work on the house after a little over a week off. Harry is going to put in the new floor in the downstairs bathroom, and I am going to work on doing some more sorting and pitching. I am working on one room at a time now and trying to completely get that room done before I move on. So the downstairs guest room is on my agenda for this weekend.

Vroom, Vroom, Vroom…

2012-01-24T20:43:00.001-05:00

That’s what the days seem like lately. I have good intentions of writing blog entries as close to daily as possible, but the time gets filled up with stuff, and before I know it, several days have gone by!

So, let me catch up on recent events…

Sunday dawned as a picture perfect day with a clear blue sky. SO much nicer than the gray day we had on Saturday. In the morning, the roads were still wet, but by afternoon they had dried for our trip home to NY.

Schaun opened his presents, and once the “boring” ones were out of the way, proceeded to have a good time with the fun gifts. I guess I should probably say that both Schaun and Papa had a good time playing while I amused myself by capturing all the moments.

All too soon, we had to be hitting the road for the trip home.

On the home front, we have been spending time once again at the local fitness center. My company gave all of its employees a one year membership to Planet Fitness as a holiday gift, and Harry and I interpreted that as a sign that we should get ourselves moving and maybe even get in shape. We set up a schedule for ourselves and have been going to the gym for an hour five days a week. We are both feeling better already just two weeks into our new routine, but a side effect has been that our already short weekday evenings are now even shorter.

The weather has been pretty nice. We did have a little cold snap and the snow last weekend, but today the high was in the mid 40s. It felt like spring. Our snow has just about melted away again. We both have spring fever already, and are looking forward to our first trip of the season, which is now 115 days away!

We haven’t had much time to work on the house over the past week and a half or so, but this weekend are planning to get back to it.

One More Celebration

2012-01-22T08:05:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was our day to travel to Massachusetts for our last holiday celebration of the season. And as luck would have it, or not, of course we would get one of our first measureable snowfalls of the winter.

We WERE lucky though, that we didn’t get much snow.But the roads were wet and sloppy in places and it was one of those gray kinds of traveling days.

I did take several pictures as we were traveling…but they all look the same…with no colors other than a mixture of grays and whites.

It was worth it though.

Today its time to open presents from Grammy and Papa.

Wednesday Again!

2012-01-18T06:01:00.001-05:00

Along with the weekends, this seems to be my best day for blogging recently. (Even though its sometimes a pain to work on Saturday, I do love having a day off in the middle of the week.) The work days of the week just seem to go along the same way all the time…work, home, dinner, bed. With a schedule like that, there’s not too much very interesting to write about. Don’t want you all to fall asleep reading!

So anyway, it’s not going to take long to catch everybody up!

I am happy to report that we are still snowless for the most part. We did have a huge deep freeze over the weekend, followed by about an inch of the white stuff overnight on Monday. But yesterday warmed back up into the high 30s so the majority of it has melted away again. I don’t know if we can actually make it through the whole winter without another big snowstorm, but I’d be ok with it. The ten day forecast has a lot of highs in the 30s and even 40s, so it sure has been a mild winter so far.

We finished the upstairs bathroom closet on Monday. It looks really nice with the wire shelving as opposed to the wood boards that were there before. We also weeded out what was in there, and threw several bags away. I also started weeding out the kitchen cupboards. Thankfully we have done this once, last February, when we did the kitchen remodel. So the first level of culling has been done already, and now I am working on the second. I have already filled two boxes with glasses and holiday mugs that we never use.

This weekend we will be traveling to MA for our last Christmas celebration of the season! Nothing like making a holiday last!

Fun Day of Shopping

2012-01-15T17:34:00.001-05:00

Today we headed out to Albany with Hannah for her Christmas shopping excursion. We had to bundle up warmly because of course we did pick the coldest day of the winter so far for our trip. It was seven degrees when we left the house.

We had a fun time checking out all of the possible combinations.

Then we headed into the dressing room to try all the outfits on.

After picking out the winners, we headed for a yummy lunch at Chili’s.

Hannah discovered that she likes mozzarella sticks.

We had a great time shopping, and after taking Hannah back home, we are now settled down watching the Giants play the Green Bay Packers.

GO GIANTS!!

Change in Plans

2012-01-14T06:26:00.001-05:00

There’s a couple different changes in plan to write about today. The first is for the weekend. After reading the blog last night, Harry remarked that there were still a couple things to get done in the upstairs bathroom, so it seems that work on the downstairs floor has been pushed back a few days. Right now everything that was in the bathroom closet is sitting in a box, so we are also going to try to pare that down to essentials before we return them to the closet. I’m not quite sure how I have ended up with so many varieties of creams, polishes, and other cosmetic supplies sitting on my closet shelf when I basically use the same stuff all the time. It’s one of those deals where I hate to throw “good” stuff away so they continue to sit on the shelf unused, because I don’t want to throw it away but I don’t want to use it either. What a conundrum!

The other change in plans is a little more exciting. Those people who are tuned into details may notice that the house sale countdown on the side of my blog has “jumped” a bit. That is because Harry and I have been talking about our date for putting the house on the market. Realistically speaking, the chances of our finding a buyer immediately are not great. Even though the housing market in the capital region of NY has not experienced the same problems that are in some parts of the country, there are definitely a lot of homes on the market right now. And even once we find a buyer, the sale process is not quick either. Our buyer for the condo had six months to get her mortgage etc. and we still didn’t close when we were supposed to. So with all that in mind, we have decided to put our house on the market this fall instead of waiting until January. Yes, that’s THIS fall, as in October 1st, as in just EIGHT months away!!! Should we find a buyer quickly, we will just be upfront with them about the fact that we can’t go anywhere before early February 2013.

Putting the house on the market in October for some reason makes it seem so much more immediate, even though it’s only three months earlier. So I (yes you guessed it) have made another list!! As I mentioned yesterday, we still have a lot of sorting, and pitching and packing up to do around here. Time to get busy!

Dark January Days

2012-01-13T08:05:00.001-05:00

Well, we lucked out in terms of snowfall – only a little snow yesterday morning and then the rain came in and washed it all away.

It has been dark though – dark and dreary and not the kind of days to fill a person with energy.

I think I can tell in the afternoon that the days are increasing in length; even those few minutes are welcome to see!

This is this weekend’s project. It won’t be as dramatic a change as the upstairs bathroom was, as it had already been somewhat updated a few years ago with a new vanity and mirror. It still has the old floor though. So replacing that will give it a nice fresh look.

This is the last makeover we have to do. After this we just have to paint the downstairs office and put new shelving in a couple of closets. Then, our major job after that will be a lot of cleaning out and pitching stuff. Even with all the cleaning out we have already done, we have more to go through.

We do have a little fun coming up this weekend. Last year, we gave our niece Hannah a shopping excursion for her Christmas gift. We all enjoyed it so much we did it again this year. So we will be heading to Albany on Sunday to enjoy some clothes shopping. I will try to remember to bring my camera this time!

Have a great day everyone!

Another Fast Week

2012-01-11T16:30:00.001-05:00

January is movin’ right along. So far, so good with the weather. We’re supposed to have a storm over the next couple of days, but we may luck out and end up with rain. So far this has been one of those nice green winters, but they don’t usually last the whole season! We have two months left.

In the spirit of looking forward toward spring, I made camping reservations yesterday for our first trip of the season, in May, at Hartwick Heartlands Campground. Yay! We have reserved a pull through full hookup site that’s located in an open area. Should work out well for our satellite.

Harry and I have checked out the fiver every few days. Still no sign of any critters, and we both get another case of hitch itch every time we go out and look around. It’s going to be such a great feeling to pack up, and head down that road! <sigh> Still four months to go…

In the meantime, we are gearing up for our next project…the downstairs bathroom. This one should be easier, as we are not replacing the vanity and mirror, just the floor. We’ll be getting started on that this weekend.

Almost Done!

2012-01-07T19:57:00.001-05:00

The upstairs bathroom is almost finished!

These are a couple pictures of what it looked like before…

(I couldn’t find a picture without the mess.)

and now here is our new and improved bathroom...

new paint color
new floor
new toilet
new vanity
new mirror
new lights

Next up…downstairs bathroom…but not tomorrow. We’ll start that next weekend.

Busy First Week of the Year

2012-01-06T07:03:00.001-05:00

Another fast week around here! We had a little two day cold snap, and now we are back into the high thirties for highs. Tomorrow it is supposed to be 40!! Wow! Lots of people coming into the office these days bemoaning the lack of snow in our winter this year. Not me – I think it’s just fine.

We had the plumber here on Tuesday. He was here for quite a while even with Harry’s prep work, so we are waiting for the bill to see what the damage was. Oh well. At least everything looks good, and we can now move on with the upstairs bathroom.

Before…

and after…

It is all ready for the new floor to be overlaid on top of it. That will be happening tomorrow. Then we can move the new mirror and vanity into the bathroom, and get the closet put back together. Almost there!

The other job that the plumber finished up was the installation of the new showerhead and faucet in the downstairs bathroom.

Before…

This is the cut out closet wall in the office. I wish I had taken a picture of the showerhead/faucet that we had in the downstairs bathroom before this week. Suffice to say, this new one is a HUGE improvement.

and after…

This weekend is going to be another busy one – getting lots of stuff accomplished around here. More items being checked off that list!

2012 Camping Plans

2012-01-02T06:50:00.001-05:00

We had no sooner parked our fiver back in the driveway last September after our trip to Lake George than we got busy planning for the next season.

We haven’t completely nailed down the exact dates yet, but generally we have planned one trip every month between May and October. It would be awesome if we could just take a short camping trip more than once a month, but working on Saturdays makes that pretty difficult. Even so, I’m pretty happy with the camping plans we have made for next year.

Mid-May

Hartwick Heartlands Campground – Cooperstown, NY

We are excited to have found a campground near Oneonta, NY which sounds big rig accessible. It is maybe 2 hours from here. You are probably thinking – Cooperstown – Baseball Hall of Fame…

however, we are interested in staying there because it is where Harry’s parents lived. Also, he has a brother still in the area. We have not been there since we have been together. And I have a friend who lives right there as well. So we hope to be doing some biking and socializing during our stay at this campground.

June 12 – 17, 2012

Lake George RV Park – Lake George, NY

We are excited about this stay! We will be attending our first Heartland rally – the NY state chapter. It is at the same rv park where we stayed this past September. It is also about 2 hours traveling time.

We walked around the campground and checked out the sites when we were there, so we know where our site is located. It’s a great spot, where we should be able to get our satellite up with no problem. We are looking forward to staying there again.

Mid July

Brook n Wood Family Campground – Elizaville, NY

Their picture got blurry when I enlarged it a bit, so I had to leave it a little smaller. Hopefully you can see something in the picture without straining your eyes too much! This campground looks very nice, and also sounds big rig friendly. It gets really nice reviews. We are going to take a ride out there to check it out in the spring, but it looks to be about an hour, hour and a half from here.

This campground looks very kid friendly, with lots of fun things to do. That is why we chose it, because we plan to spend a few days there taking my sister’s kids camping. Should be a lot of fun!

Mid August

Iroquois Campground and RV Park – Peru, NY

We chose this park because it is only 15 minutes from where my childhood home is located. We have been trying to get together for a few bike rides with my mom for the past three years, and we are hoping that this year is finally the year when we can make that happen.

A year ago October we went to my mom’s for the weekend, and I shared some pictures from our trip to Rulf’s, a local apple orchard. This rv park is only a minute or so from that apple orchard.

September 26 – 30, 2012

Copake KOA – Copake, NY

This is the second Heartland rally that we will be attending in 2012. It is the one for the Northeast region. We just lucked out that both the NYS Chapter rally and the Northeast Region rally were scheduled at

places that are basically right in our backyard. Copake, NY is also in the Hudson Valley, which is where we live, and we figure it is about an hour traveling time for us.

October 14 – 22, 2012

Seashore Campsites – Cape May, NJ

This is our last outing for the year. Yes, with this one we probably officially qualify as rally groupies! LOL

We are heading down to one more Heartland rally in Cape May.

We were already thinking of going to Cape May in October to hopefully enjoy one last little bit of warm weather. So when we saw the NJ Chapter had reserved sites at this campground in October, we figured it was a sign!

So there it is, our trip plan for the year. It will be a nice break from the past two year’s pattern of spending all the warm weather season working on the house. We will still have projects to accomplish around here, but we will be looking forward to the next trip while we are checking off the items on the list.

New Year 2012

2012-01-01T09:59:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year 2012! I said to Harry this morning, now we can say NEXT year we will become fulltimers! Yeah, I know we’re really only one day closer, but it sure sounds good.

This morning we checked out one of our gifts from yesterday. My mom and stepdad gave us a griddle for our Weber Q.

Now we are all set for breakfast this year when we are out with the fiver!

(And Harry looks real sharp in the red polartec vest which was another one of his gifts.)

OK, so you must have known this was coming…no first blog post for a year would be complete without the ever-present TO DO LIST. But this one is a little different – this is our last major list of stuff that we want to do with the house. By the end of the year, we will be ready for the house to go on sale. All of our improvements will be done, the place will be completely empty of extraneous stuff, and we will be ready for the next step! So without further ado, here is the 2012 TO DO LIST.

Stain the sliding glass door to the deck
paint the downstairs office
clean out basement
wash basement floor and walls
replace downstairs sink faucet
replace downstairs bathroom floor
paint the downstairs bathroom
paint garage to kitchen stairs
dismantle shed
empty above garage storage area
rent dumpster (and fill!)

We also have some fun plans for the year…but that’s for another blog post!

Have a great day everyone!!

Prep and One More Xmas Celebration

2011-12-31T21:19:00.001-05:00

While I headed off to work this morning, Harry got busy with his list of what he wanted to accomplish. We have the plumber coming on Tuesday morning, so Harry wants to get the prep work done before his arrival. We figure that everything that Harry gets done ahead of time is that much less time the plumber will charge us for.

Here is the old flooring cut away down to the floor board. Before Tuesday morning, Harry is going to cut this next layer away so that the plumber can get right down to business. To the left of the picture you can see the new flooring with a strip of tape down the edge.

Before and after in the downstairs office closet…this is where the plumber will need to get to replace the hardware for the tub.

And, if that wasn’t enough, Harry also primed the wall in our bedroom….

Before and after…

Harry was one busy beaver today!!

When I got home, it was time to head to my sister’s for another Christmas celebration. (I planned that right huh? ) My mom and stepdad came up today, and we all got together for dinner.

Another beautiful day for traveling! The high was around 47 degrees, and still no snow!!

This is the view from my sister’s house….

We opened a few more gifts. Well, I should say, we HELD our gifts and Andrew unwrapped them for us. haha (He takes this duty very seriously. )

After a delicious dinner and great conversation, it was time to wrap up a fun evening and head for home.

Two more days off to enjoy!

So long, 2011!!

Best Laid Plans

2011-12-28T15:57:00.001-05:00

Brrrr…still no snow, but it’s cold outside! I’ll take the lack of white stuff, though, and every week brings us that much closer to camping season 2012!

It’s been a good week – we have been attempting to get the upstairs bathroom done before the end of the month, but it was not to be.

Harry started in on the floor on Monday.

He did a really great job, especially in the closet area.

However, Harry discovered an issue when he removed the base of the toilet to replace the floor in that section of the room. The flange was rusted out. Yes, I have learned a new term.

So we have to have a plumber come and replace it. The bright side is that we will have the downstairs tub faucet and drain replaced at the same time. So another item checked off the list.

We believe that the rusting was caused by the condensation we have on this toilet every summer. So we went to Home Depot yesterday (again!) and bought a toilet with an insulated tank so we won’t have a repeat of this issue in the future.

In the meantime, we bought the paint we need to finish up our bedroom – otherwise known as plan B.

We also celebrated the holiday with Harry’s son Andrew this week. Our Christmas dinner tasted just as good the second night!

Only a few days left to 2011!

Sleepless in Northern NY

2011-12-26T01:30:00.001-05:00

Well, not exactly sleepless, but awake at 1 am. So I decided to come have a cup of tea to soothe me back to dreamland, and do a little blogging about our day…

We started out on Skype, watching the little guy open a few of his presents. It sure is great to be able to be there from across the distance and share those kinds of moments.

After our Skype time, I had some time to do some more personal training time on the Wii. I am trying to get into the routine of making it a part of every day. Some of those Yoga moves are crazy – it’s been quite a while since I could move my body into those positions!! But I guess that just means I will be able to tell I’m making progress.

From there it was just a nice relaxing hang out kind of day. We cooked a big turkey dinner, but it didn’t seem hurried at all. We planned dinner for 2:30 in the afternoon so we had lots of time to do the cooking, while we watched A Christmas Carol (the one with George C. Scott – that’s my favorite).

You would have thought we had some company coming with all the food we laid out for the spread.

After dinner, we actually went outside to take a walk. The thermometer said something like 42 degrees, but the wind was cold. So we only went one lap around the development, which is a half mile.

And then it was more relaxing for the rest of the day. The cats got into the spirit of things.

Hope everyone out in Blogville also had a great holiday!

Well, I’ve had my cup of tea, so without further ado, I believe I will return to this night’s regularly scheduled programming……good night all….

Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T08:00:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone! We’ve had a great Christmas weekend so far, and today promises to be another wonderful day.

Yesterday was a busy day. I had my usual Saturday morning at work and it was pretty quiet. Most people were not running to their local credit union to do their business on Christmas Eve.

After I got home, I had some fun on our Wii, trying in advance to burn off the calories coming my way today! Then I decided to get a head start on today’s cooking. I made the dressing, and then started on dessert – Pumpkin Walnut Cheesecake.

Pumpkin Walnut Cheesecake Ingredients

Crust

butter
1/8 cup sugar
1 cup graham cracker crumbs

Filling

1 1/2 lbs. softened cream cheese
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
6 eggs
1 lb. pumpkin
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 cup heavy cream

Walnut Topping

6 tsp. butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup chopped walnuts

Rub bottom and side of springform pan with softened butter.

Pour in crust mix and turn pan so that the mix adheres to the bottom and side.

Leave excess crust mix on the bottom of the pan.

At medium speed beat cheese and sugars together.

Add pumpkin, spices, eggs, and heavy cream. Beat for about 3 min.

Pour filling in to prepared pan.

Bake in a 325 degree oven for 1 hr., 35 min.

For topping, beat butter with brown sugar. Stir in chopped walnuts.

Place topping on cake, shut oven off, leave the cake in the oven until oven cools (at least 1/2 hour).

Our fridge is full, so for once the cold weather came in handy. The temperature in our garage last night was 38 degrees, so we were able to cover the cheesecake and put it out in the garage for the night. This morning I brought it in, and released the side of the pan.

Hopefully it tastes as good as it looks!

We’ll find out later.

Hope everyone out there has a wonderful and blessed Christmas Day!!

Lovin’ It!!

2011-12-22T18:55:00.001-05:00

Yes, I am once again raving about this awesome weather! It was a balmy 48 degrees tonight when I came home from work. So Harry and I decided to take a walk around our neighborhood.

Here I am, on my way back into the house tonight after enjoying a great walk.

Harry took a few pictures of the Christmas lights.

Our neighborhood looks very festive!

Only one day left before Christmas Eve…ready or not here it comes.

Turning Over a New Leaf

2011-12-21T18:31:00.001-05:00

Today was a very nice day off. I made my usual after payday trip to Walmart for groceries. We are beginning the third week of a new way of meal planning. Over the past months, I noticed that a lot of our meals had turned into pre-made, processed foods, like breaded chicken, fish, tater tots and those meals in a bag. There were many times when I would come home from work and have no idea of what sounded good for dinner. So I would dive into the freezer and pull out something that you could turn into a complete meal in 11 minutes or so. Usually something that had a gravy and probably more salt content than I would normally use in cooking in a week or more.

Well, about a month ago, I decided that I needed to make a change. Hopefully also one that was a little more healthy. So I came up with a plan. I decided that I would plan our meals two weeks ahead. For the most part, I find a meat, a salad and some kind of veggie for each meal. I have been scouring cooking sites for dishes that sound good and relatively quick and easy to make. Then, as I come up with a plan for a day, I compile a shopping list for everything I need as far as ingredients.

So I thought for today I would share the recipes for today’s dinner.

Last night I made 4 Bean Salad. This is a dish that I remembered from my childhood, but I have never made it. I didn’t really care for it as a kid, but I was hoping that my taste buds had matured! LOL (They must have, because I thought it was pretty good.)

Four Bean Salad

1 can each:
garbanzo beans
kidney beans
green string beans
yellow wax beans

Dressing:
½ cup sugar
½ c red wine vinegar
½ cup salad oil
½ cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper

Wash and drain all beans well. Pour remaining ingredients
over & chill for 24 hours, stirring once or twice.

The side was Baked Noodles Romanoff

1 (8 oz.) pkg. egg noodles
1 c. cottage cheese
1 c. sour cream
1/2 c. grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 c. herb seasoned bread crumb stuffing
1 tsp. parsley flakes

Cook noodles.

Combine drained noodles with cottage cheese, sour cream and grated cheese. Turn into greased 2 quart
casserole.

Sprinkle with stuffing and parsley.

Bake at 350 degrees until brown, about 25 minutes or longer if kept in
refrigerator unbaked.

The meat dish was Lemon Pepper Chicken Breast. It was fried, so not completely the most healthy choice. So although it was tasty, I definitely won’t be making it frequently.

Lemon Pepper Chicken Breast

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/4 c. butter
1/2 c. flour
2 tbsp. lemon juice
Garlic powder
Pepper

Melt butter in skillet. Wash chicken and dust with flour.
Season well with garlic and pepper. Brown breast in butter.
Continue cooking until chicken is done, turning frequently.
Pour lemon juice in skillet. Simmer 2 minutes on each side.

Yum…a delicious dinner, if I do say so myself…

An Awesome Christmasy Weekend–Minus the White!

2011-12-18T13:04:00.001-05:00

Yes, this is our view from our front window, and I love it!

So far this winter has been a welcome reprieve after last year’s.

This was December last year.

I know there are several months left to the season, but I am enjoying every single day without the white stuff while it lasts.

Other than the weather, it’s been a nice Christmas kind of weekend around here.

The first great thing about this weekend was that I had Saturday off! Two solid days off! What a nice treat! And yesterday was a great day, as we traveled over to my sister’s house for our holiday get-together.

The kids were excited about their gifts.

A couple hours later…the finished project…

We had no idea what a project it would be to put this marble mania thing together. Wow! But the end result was worth it.

We got a few very cool and useful gifts as well.

From this small package comes these pieces…

which turns into this great table!

Also we received an awning tie-down kit, and…

a cover for our hitch!

After we left my sister’s, we went in to Albany and saw the new Twilight movie, which was great fun. I enjoyed watching all the shoppers scurrying about doing their shopping, and knowing we had nothing else left to buy. That was an awesome feeling!

Today has already been productive as we have painted the second coat on the bathroom. And now I am settling in to watch the Giants game.

Edit: Ok, so let’s just say the Giants game was NOT the highlight of the weekend.

One Coat Done

2011-12-14T16:18:00.001-05:00

It’s been a busy day, but a great one at the same time. We finished the first coat on the bathroom.

I think it is going to look very nice. It’s a smoky gray with a little bit of blue tint. The new flooring is a little darker gray so I think it is going to look really nice with the white vanity and mirror.

When we weren’t working on the bathroom, we were running a few errands. What an absolutely beautiful day! It is 46 degrees here today! So far I am not minding the winter overly much. I just hope it keeps up!

Look! Grass!! By this time last year, we already had several inches of snow, and it never melted all winter.

So far, the fiver is lookin’ good. No evidence of critters! Harry keeps replenishing the peppermint oil on his cotton balls throughout interior of the fiver.

I thought the sky over the camper was pretty tonight.

A Day Off

2011-12-14T07:36:00.001-05:00

It is so nice to be able to have a later start to the morning. On my usual Wednesday off, Harry still has to work. So we usually motivate and get ourselves going at our normal way too early time. However, Harry took today off as well, so we are enjoying our coffee and hanging out reading blogs and forums.

I had a comment last night in response to my short little entry about our countdown having entered a new phase. Rick and Kathy Rousseau mentioned the possibility of putting our house on the market earlier and then living in the trailer until Harry was able to retire. We would really love to do that, it sure would cut our cost of living, and we did throw the idea around briefly. But we just don’t see any way that it would work. Right now we are lucky that we can keep our fiver in our driveway, and we had a 50 amp outlet installed in our garage, so we have power and water access. If we sold the house though, say later next year, we wouldn’t have anyplace to go in the fiver. Being so far north, parks around here start closing in early October. We don’t have any family in the Albany area who could offer us a place to park. And Harry can’t retire until early February. So there’s a period of about 4 and a half months left where we can’t see where we could land.

So this is our current plan…we intend to put the house on the market mid January 2013. (It won’t be long until we can say next January.) Harry will retire at the end of February 2013. If by some miracle, our house should sell quickly, we figure that our closing and Harry’s retirement would be probably around the same time. That would be the best case scenario, but only time will tell if that works out for us. Chances are we will have to settle in for a period of some months while we are waiting for the house to sell. Once the weather warms up enough that we can de-winterize the fiver, we will move into the fiver out in the driveway so that our house will always be “show-ready.” I will work until the house sells. And then, off on the road we go!! So that’s the plan.

Today’s plan…work on the bathroom. So I guess I better get moving!! Pictures to come later…

399!

2011-12-13T20:09:00.001-05:00

After watching it tick down over the past few weeks, we were happy to see the countdown to our house going on the market hit under the 400 mark this morning. The next “milestone” of sorts will be the one year point, which we will hit in just one more month.

It’s been a pretty quiet week so far, just work and all that good stuff. We have more exciting bathroom work coming up tomorrow. Harry has taken the day off, and we are going to get started on the paint job. So pictures to come tomorrow!

More Before Pics

2011-12-11T12:36:00.001-05:00

Well, our ol’ friend Murphy showed up, and it looks like painting will be waiting for another day. Not big stuff, fortunately, just a bit more prep work than we expected, and we still have some taping to do before the painting job starts. So here are some more pictures of what the bathroom looks like now…

This is the new vanity and sink top.

This is what the new faucet is going to look like. Nothing is actually attached, just sitting in place.

I finally figured out that closing the blinds improved the lighting situation.

All ready for a makeover!

Brrrr…

2011-12-10T18:45:00.001-05:00

Although not as cold as last winter (so far), neither Harry nor I are enjoying the start of the colder weather which has gradually started to drift in over the past week. The high today was in the 30s, and tonight’s lows are supposed to be in the high teens. Both of us are looking at blogs with pictures of people hanging out in their shorts and t-shirts and Christmas decorations on palm trees, and dreaming of that day when we will be able to experience the same.

In the meantime, here we are working on the upstairs bathroom. That vanity will be going out tomorrow. The floor will be replaced, and the wall is going to be painted a soft bluish gray.

Today Harry was working on priming the areas before the first coat starts going on tomorrow.

We have also been enjoying our Wii this week. I am happy about the fact that it gives us something inside the house to do that gets us up off the couch. Plus, it’s fun! A win/win situation.

More pictures to come of the bathroom tomorrow!

This and That

2011-12-07T15:26:00.001-05:00

As you can see from the picture, it is a rainy, dreary day today. But, at least it’s not snowing. Living up here in the north country, believe it or not, many people like the winter cold and snows. So I am starting to encounter people at work who are saying, I’m sick of this weather. I want it to snow. Not me – I will take this warmer weather as long as we can get it.

The past week has been busy. Harry is still working to build up the walls in the bathroom, to prepare them for a coat of paint. He has been adding a new layer of spackle for the past couple of days.

Yesterday, a new item arrived which I am hoping will help us both stay a little more active over the coming winter months. We bought a Wii! We enjoyed several hours of friendly competition last night. We are still waiting for the second remote to come, when it will be easier to play some of the games. It doesn’t take up much space either, which will be convenient, as we can take it with us in the fiver.

And probably the most exciting recent event, this morning Harry and I met with a person from the state Retirement Office for a retirement planning session. Once an employee is within 18 months of their eligibility for retirement, they can schedule this meeting. Harry has now passed that magic date! Yay! He can submit his application for retirement when he is within 90 days, which is next December! So now we have some real figures for our budget planning which will be very helpful, and we know what the process entails. It was definitely worthwhile to attend the meeting – and I feel like we have taken one more step in the right direction.

Lovin’ Sunday

2011-12-04T17:07:00.001-05:00

I love Sundays – and today has been a really nice one! We started out bright and early this morning with a trip into Albany for some Christmas shopping. My sister Denise and I hoped to beat the holiday shopping crowd by going early. Harry took this picture of us before we left the house around 7:30 am.

What a great morning! The stores had a few shoppers, but they weren’t packed by any means. We had a really fun morning, and a lot of laughs, and by 11:30 we were heading home after a very successful outing. I am all done with my shopping – woohoo!! That’s a great feeling. I sure don’t know why I’m so on top of stuff this Christmas season, but I’ll take it!

Harry spent some time putting another layer of spackle in the bathroom. We hope to be to the painting stage by next weekend. Then we will be ready for the new floor and vanity. We will probably be working on that into the new year, but we’re going to have a good start on it anyway.

Well, another weekend almost in the books. Dinner is in the oven, the Giants are playing (although they are losing at the moment ) and Amazing Race will be on in a few hours. Another great Sunday!

…And Back to Work

2011-12-03T17:32:00.001-05:00

We’ve taken a few weeks off from “housework” with family visits and holidays. But today we were getting back to it!

Harry started while I was at work this morning. He began the prep work in the upstairs bathroom, spackling holes and taking down the old medicine cabinet and towel bars.

By the time I got home from work, he was finished with the first round of spackling, and almost ready to put up the new mirrored cabinet we purchased, oh, about two years ago.

It seems so great to see this last room being worked on. I was beginning to think we wouldn’t be getting started in here until after the holidays.

The hardest part was getting the lights up and leveling them.

And here is the finished product…

Ta-da!!!

I can’t wait to see it all finished, but it will be a couple weeks before we get to that point.

Been a Busy Week

2011-12-01T06:04:00.001-05:00

Wow, I can’t believe it’s already Thursday! This week has flown by.

It’s official – I read a news article that the Northeast has had its warmest November in 10 years. It’s been great for our pellet situation – our heat has not come on since Sunday morning! We used 6 bags of pellets for the month of November, for a grand total of 9 so far this winter. By this time last year, we had probably used three times that amount. So far so good – I really don’t want to buy more pellets next summer. Every year we have about a ton, ton and half left over and then we buy another ton. Next winter, I would like to be able to use up what we have, since hopefully we will be getting out of Dodge. So the weather this year so far is cooperating with my plan.

We emptied out three more boxes of clothes into the garbage bin last night for today’s garbage pick up. The boxes were labeled “off season - Harry” but given the styles, size, and condition of the clothes, I think their season came and went quite a few years ago. The goal is to have the storage area over the garage cleared out by spring.

This weekend we are going to start the prep work for the upstairs bathroom. I’m not sure that we will meet the goal of finishing it before the end of the year, but hopefully we will get a good start on it anyway.

PS in answer to a comment

Here are some of the many bags of clothes that have made their way from our house to the local clothing collection area over the past couple of years, and I’m sure there will be more over the coming months. Believe me, no place wants to take in what we threw out last night.

And One More!

2011-11-27T17:26:00.001-05:00

What a beautiful weekend! This is a picture I took a few weeks ago, but this is what our day looked like today. (There just aren’t any more leaves on the trees.)

Harry and I actually walked this afternoon in sweatshirts, and I warmed up enough to take mine off for our last two laps. I think our high this afternoon was in the low 60s. All around the neighborhood, people were out decorating their houses and working around their yards. Everyone was remarking on the weather, and saying, “we’ll take a few more weeks of this.” Well, I don’t know if that will happen, but I certainly won’t be complaining about it if it does!

We had another great weekend for getting things accomplished around here. Yesterday we did some more cleaning out, some more pitching. Harry’s sister and brother-in-law stopped by, and we gave them a tour of the fiver. I meant to take pictures, but in the busy-ness of chatting and catching up, I forgot!

I love Sundays, especially when football is on! While we were watching some football, Harry and I enjoyed a nice little afternoon snack, some cream cheese and red pepper jelly on crackers.

While I was listening to the football game, I was working on Christmas cards!! We only send about 40 of them, but still, I am usually sending them out around, oh…the third week of December. I usually consider it a great year if I get them out before Christmas. This year they will be going out – tomorrow! Yes, they are DONE!

Now I am done for the day, and ready to relax with my kindle. Supper is cooking in the roaster oven. It’s time to hang out and enjoy the rest of the day.

Celebrating Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T09:00:00.001-05:00

I hope everyone had a very nice Thanksgiving holiday. Ours was very nice. It started out with sleeping a little later than usual. That was only a little after 7 am, but still, compared to our normal 5:30, it was a great start to the day!

Of course, the little guy was going strong, so on top of conversation, we also had “playtime” breaks.

It was great to be able to relax, and sit around just chatting and spending time with family.

Schaun provided the entertainment.

As usual, there was a lot of good food, and we all ate a bit too much.

All too soon, it was time to think about heading home. Unfortunately, both of us have to go to work today. No black Friday shopping excursions for us.

It was just starting to get dark as we were getting on the road for home, but you can still see what a beautiful day we had!

And for much of our trip home, we were able to watch an all-natural light show.

It was just an all-around great day!

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-24T07:45:00.001-05:00

Wishing you all a happy and blessed Thanksgiving! Wherever you find yourselves today, may your day be filled with love, laughter, good weather, and an abundance of good food!!

Thanksgiving Travel Day

2011-11-23T20:37:00.001-05:00

Today we had another early start, but it was nice not to be heading to work. We packed our suitcase this morning, with Ariel hanging around and climbing into the bag when our backs were turned.

Hopefully one night away won’t be so traumatic. In October when we went on vacation, she was attached to me for about 2 weeks after we got home.

After we got ourselves organized and the car packed, we headed off to Albany to pick up a couple pies at Grandma’s.

Grandma’s is a well-known local restaurant in the area, serving home-style food and all kinds of yummy pies for dessert. But a few times a year, around the holidays, they shut down the restaurant entirely and just turn into a yummy pie factory.

No, that’s not a traffic stop up ahead. That’s a police car preparing to assist the traffic coming in and out of Grandma’s all day.

I took this picture quickly as I was standing in line waiting to pay for my pies. Sorry, it’s a little out of focus.

They are very organized, and we were in and out very quickly.

Then we headed off toward MA. It was a dreary day, but it could have been worse. We stopped behind this car on our way out of Albany.

We were also lucky that we were heading toward Boston, because the traffic in the other direction was much heavier.

We took Schaun to his first movie this afternoon. We didn’t stay for the entire movie, but it was fun for awhile. I think Schaun’s favorite part might have been the pretzel he shared with Papa beforehand.

After our visit with Gretchen and Schaun, we are now relaxing in our hotel room for the evening. Ahhh!

Fun Times with Family

2011-11-20T17:08:00.001-05:00

Today was another nice November day, warm with a high in the 60s. This can keep up as long as it wants as far as I’m concerned!

My sister Denise and I headed out this morning to a local craft fair, while the “hubbies” stayed at our house with the kids. We found a few things, but I didn’t take any pictures for the blog, on the off chance that a recipient of said item might see their gift prematurely.

After a couple hours at the craft fair, we ordered a pizza at a local shop and headed home.

In the meantime, the kids were having a good time at the playground at a nearby school.

It was nice to sit around, enjoying conversation and just relaxing on a Sunday afternoon with some football playing on the tv in the background.

Hannah was enjoying a puzzle game that Harry and I bought recently so we would have something new at the house for the kids to play.

She did a great job!

I am actually almost done with all of my Christmas purchasing. Denise and I are getting together one more time in a couple weeks, and then I should be all finished. Well, except for wrapping gifts and writing Xmas cards…

In other news, Harry was reading a thread today about rv ovens and distributing the heat more evenly. One of the suggestions was to place either a pizza stone or unglazed quarry tile on the bottom of the oven. We were talking about it and realized that we had a pizza stone out in the garage that we never use. So out we went!

Yes it fits!

And, also we are finally heading down the home stretch in the office….the place where we have put all the miscellaneous junk we have moved out of all the rooms as we have worked on fixing them up. The blue box is shredding, and a couple of the other boxes contain stuff that is going, and we KNOW where it’s going. A couple of the plastic containers are going with us as storage.

We are almost done in here!!!

Speedin’ By

2011-11-18T07:52:00.001-05:00

Yes, the time is moving right along. Next week is Thanksgiving already. And, I’ve even made some progress on my Christmas shopping. You’d think with all the time I spend planning that I would not be surprised that the holidays are already upon us. But it’s crept up on us quickly after all.

This was the sky this morning. This is what we call a “snow sky” but thankfully, we are not getting any snow this morning. Although they are getting some not that far from here, to the west of Albany in the lake effect areas.

(I spoke too soon, we are getting some snow flurries now, but not enough to show in a picture. We tried. But that’s ok! Better than having enough snow to show up.)

There really hasn’t been much going on around here. The normal weekly stuff – going to work, coming home, having dinner, etc. – exciting huh?

The type of cleanup we are doing these days is the low key kind. Every week before garbage pickup, we just throw in a few more things to take up any extra space.

I find that the winter months are the hardest time to stay motivated. The grey skies and cold temps don’t energize me. By the time I come home from work, it is already dark. Even though we’re already planning some getaways for next year, and I know that we need to get stuff done NOW so we don’t have it all left to do next summer, it’s so tempting to look outside at the dreary view and say, I don’t feel like it, let’s wait and do it next week. Unfortunately “next week” too often turns into a repeat of the same. Well, there are four more weekends left to this year – we shall see how much we can accomplish.

And More Planning!

2011-11-15T18:44:00.001-05:00

It’s been a busy few days. We had our little guy at the house until Sunday. His mom arrived on Saturday to spend the weekend as well. So it was very nice not to have to make the return trip back to MA. Yesterday it was back to work for another week…enough said about that.

The weather continues to be very pleasant for this time of year. Halfway through November now, and we are only on our sixth bag of pellets for the season. This is the best start for the heating season that we have had since I have been in this house (which is for the past four years).

Now that our company is gone and our relaxing weekend is over, I hope to get back to THE LIST, starting tomorrow! The time before the end of the year has decreased to only about six weeks left. And we continue to plan fun get-aways for next year’s camping season, which means we have to get crackin’! The next major item is the remodel of the upstairs bathroom.

I read a very interesting blog this morning…entitled Talking vs. Doing. It really gave me some food for thought, and I considered the path that our journey has taken over the past couple of years. Two or three years ago, when Harry and I were making plans and starting our preps for hitting the road, it did seem like such a monumental undertaking, all of the house improvements that we wanted to do around here, and purchases that were yet to be made. But now, the house remodels are winding down, the rv and truck have been acquired, and many of the “start-up” items on our list have been purchased. The tasks ahead are starting to seem more do-able, and the finish line is even starting to appear off in the distance. Harry and I are both so glad that we didn’t let the initial apprehensions we felt deter us from taking the first steps.

Home Again, Home Again!

2011-11-11T15:41:00.001-05:00

Our home is home again!

Even though it was a cloudy day, and cooler, it was nice enough so that the guys could come this morning and cut down the tree. We called the repair place and told them we would be coming to get the fiver this morning.

We were so happy to pull into the parking lot and see her sitting right where we left her yesterday. It was a very quick process to head inside, fill out the requisite paperwork and pay the bill.

We haven’t completely gotten the hang of getting her in the driveway, so it wasn’t a really pretty process. But hey, pretty process or not, she is back in her spot and looks great. Both Harry and I are so happy to have our fiver back. It sounds crazy, but we really missed seeing her sitting out there, even though it was only for one day.

Harry took a picture of the area that they put the caulking on, but you can’t see it too well in the picture. We have some nicer days coming up over the next week, so he will try to get some better shots then.

Happy Veterans Day!

Off to the Repair Shop

2011-11-10T19:05:00.001-05:00

Today was the day. It has been about a week and a half since a tree branch collapsed during an early snow storm and hit the top of the fiver. So today was when we took a trip over to the repair place to leave the trailer to be looked at and repaired.

Both Harry and I thought that today seemed like the easiest hitching up process we have done yet. Everything went very smoothly, and it only took us about a half hour to get everything together and head off down the road.

Schaun was really great, and hung out in his car seat “reading” his books while we were busy hitching up the trailer.

It was another beautiful day for traveling. I feel like a broken record, but I really like the song that’s playing! LOL

The repair shop was even closer than we were thinking it was – we were heading down the road at ten of ten and by quarter after ten, we were turning into the driveway.

We dropped off the fiver, and stopped into the office to check in. We explained where the damage was, and were told that they would check it out either tomorrow, or maybe even this afternoon.

Here is our big empty driveway, BUT it won’t be empty for long!! Because, shortly after we arrived home, they called from Dedrick’s. They had already evaluated the damage from the tree branch.

They cleaned the areas, and found that some of the areas that appeared to be damaged were just rub marks from the tree branches. The owner recommended rather than using a repair kit, that Dicor self-leveling roof caulking be used, as it would blend in better than patches and would sufficiently repair the damage. So we gave them the go-ahead to do the repair, and a few hours later, we heard from them again – the repair was complete!

We may go back tomorrow to pick up the fiver – it depends on the weather. If it is nice enough that the guys can come and take down the tree in the morning, then we will drive over in the afternoon and pick ‘er up. We are first on the schedule as long as it’s not raining, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the weather cooperates.

A Great Day with Our Company

2011-11-09T18:42:00.001-05:00

We were up pretty bright and early today for our trip to MA to pick up our little guy.

And it was another beautiful day for a drive.

The weather continues to be mild and pleasant. So far we are only on our fifth bag of pellets for the cold weather season.

We met Schaun and daddy at our usual meeting spot, and soon were on our way back home.

This is Schaun’s “oh no, Grammy has her camera out again” look.

We had a fun day. It was nice enough out this afternoon that Schaun was able to go out and play. And I had to do my grandmotherly duty and bake chocolate chip cookies. Papa and Schaun checked out all the books that haven’t been read since the last time we had “little” company in our house.

Tomorrow, we will be hitching up and bringing the fiver to the repair place. Our driveway is going to look so empty.

Picture Perfect

2011-11-07T19:46:00.001-05:00

I took this picture yesterday as we were tying the Xmas tree on the back of the truck for the trip to Denise’s. I don’t think that sky could possibly be any bluer!

Our wonderful spate of warm weather continues. We are still hanging out in the high 50s and low 60s.

Yesterday afternoon we packed all the holiday decorations in the truck and headed off.

I snapped this shot of Harry as he was trying to secure the tree for transport!

It was a great day for a drive.

We unloaded all of the loot we had brought, sat for a while just shooting the breeze and then headed for home. Another pile of stuff gone! Phew! Sometimes I feel like I’ve been talking about getting rid of stuff forever.

Tomorrow is the last day that we have to work this week. We have another visit with our little guy coming up – we are picking him up Wednesday morning and he will be here until the weekend.

More Downsizing

2011-11-05T19:38:00.001-04:00

After I got out of work today, the main project on my agenda was to sort through our Christmas decorations. We had already started our planning in this area – we purchased a small tree that we will use in the fiver, and my sister is going to take our Christmas tree and my village. But I still wanted to sort through the rest, and break it down into what we wanted to keep, and what could go. Harry’s daughter is coming next weekend, and this way she can look through everything else and take what she wants.

So…this was before…

All of those boxes held our holiday decorations, except for the plastic tub in front of Harry. He had his own container to sort through – with all of the various computer hardware, cords etc. that have been hanging around since we started cleaning out the office.

And this is after – I have condensed our seasonal stuff down into these three containers, and the bottom one isn’t even full.

We are going to take a quick trip over to my sister’s place tomorrow – to take her the tree and village.

I am happy that we have another pile of boxes sorted through!!

Fun Times Ahead

2011-11-04T08:02:00.001-04:00

Harry and I are already looking forward to next year’s camping season. Driveway camping was nice this summer, but is no substitute for the real thing! Our plan is to have at least one “out of the driveway” camping trip every month of the season next year. We are thinking May will be our first chance for a trip away, but if it warms up in April, we could do something then as well.

So far we have two specific trips planned – both of them connected to Heartland rallies. The first one is to the same campground in Lake George where we went a couple months ago. That is going to be our June trip.

And a few days ago, we signed up for another rally, this one at Seashore Campsites in Cape May, NJ – next October. The rally is over the weekend, but we are actually going for a week. Because I work at a credit union, there is a rule that you have to take at least one week long vacation per year. I have worked at two financial institutions and they both had this rule, so I guess it’s a banking thing. Anyway, next October will be my week long vacation. All of our other outings will just be long weekends.

I am having fun coming up with places within two or three hours of us. We are trying to stick with campgrounds in the area since we don’t want to have a long trip when we are only getting away for a few days. It’s not going to take long to fill up the summer months with one camping trip in each. But I’m enjoying the process.

Merikay asked in a comment recently about whether the mouse-free stuff was working. So far, we have no signs of critters in our fiver. So, between sealing up all the cracks, spraying the mouse free on the underside, and putting cotton balls with peppermint oil all over the place on the inside, it seems like so far we have succeeded in keeping any unwelcome visitors out! So far, so good!!

Lovin’ It!

2011-11-03T19:34:00.001-04:00

Another beautiful day today! I am love, love, LOVING this weather!

Although a lot of our leaves have fallen for another year and even our sunny days are somewhat gray, I am still so happy at the weather we have been having. I’ve mentioned our weather a few times already in the past weeks, so I decided to take a look at the statistics for last year compared to this year, to get some real numbers to go with my opinion.

This is what I found out. For October 2010, we had 16 days that had a high over 60 degrees. We had a low under 40 degrees fifteen times.

In October 2011, we had 21 days with a high over 60 degrees, and only 10 nights with a low under 40 degrees.

Out of 31 days, that’s not bad! Guess that’s why we only used TWO bags of pellets for the whole month of October!

The difference became even more obvious when I looked at the stats for November. The average high for the first nine days of November last year was 45 degrees….vs. the projected average high for the first nine days this year – 56 degrees.

So, it wasn’t just my imagination, or wishful thinking.

The insurance adjuster came this morning and looked at the roof of our fiver. His opinion is that we only need a repair of the affected areas, and not a replacement. We were glad to hear that, because we have been leaning in the same direction. We are going to take it next week to a Dedrick’s RV Mart in Coxsackie, which is about 30 minutes from here, and have the repair done there.

Tomorrow is Friday!! Yay!! Have a great day everyone!!

Beautiful Week

2011-11-02T18:19:00.001-04:00

So far this week has been a wonderful autumn week. Our temps are back up in the high 50s which has been so pleasant. So far this winter we have only used two bags of pellets in our stove. That is a huge improvement over last year. I keep hoping that this keeps up and we have a nice, mild winter.

The snow has melted from the top of our fiver, which enabled Harry to get up there and check it out. We have a section of about twenty feet which shows multiple gouges about four to five inches long. The insurance adjuster comes tomorrow morning, so we will see what he has to say. The damage seems to be more extensive than it looked at first. We are thinking we may be taking it to get repaired after all.

We Were Lucky

2011-10-31T05:49:00.001-04:00

Well, we think that we made it through this little episode without any major damage. We aren’t 100% sure yet because Harry has not been back up on the roof yet. It was about 50 degrees here yesterday and the snow was melting. But the roof was too wet and slippery for Harry to be up there traipsing around. He did set up his huge step ladder on the side and went up to take a look while I held it steady. The tree made what almost looks like claw marks on the side, but no punctures that we can see.

We have a call in to the insurance company, but we don’t know that anything is actually going to be done – we just wanted it reported in case. The guy who does RV claims doesn’t work on Sunday, so Harry will probably be hearing back from him this morning. Harry ordered some Eternabond last night, so if nothing else, he will be putting that over the affected areas.

This storm was a killer for some of the trees in our little development, which is a little weird, because we really only got maybe 6 or 7 inches. It’s not the first wet snow we’ve had in the past few years, but it did the most tree damage I can remember.

This is our neighbor’s oak tree, right across from our driveway. It’s a beautiful tree. I took this picture first thing in the morning when it was still weighted down with the snow. Later on we could see that there were some major breaks.

And elsewhere in the development…

We sent a message to the company that takes care of our lawn. They are going to take the maple tree down. It is too badly damaged to leave it up. So we won’t have to deal with any more leaves or tree branches on our fiver from that tree. But it’s too bad – it was a pretty tree.

It is supposed to be warm all week, that is, in the fifties. So our snow will be gone very soon. I hope we don’t have any more for quite a while. Yeah, I know…but a girl can hope, right!??

Uh OH!!!

2011-10-30T09:00:00.001-04:00

Well, we didn’t lose power, but as we feared, the heavy, wet snow brought down branches. And when we got up this morning, it was to discover this…

A branch from this tree fell right on the fiver.

Our first priority was getting it off the roof, so Harry went up and cut the branches on top of it.

After Harry got most of the branches clipped, he tied a rope around the tree branch, and we PULLED!

The good news is…nothing went THROUGH the roof.

But it looks like there could be some damage to the rubber of the roof. We will know more when more of the snow melts. We haven’t opened the slide yet, but it appears that nothing was damaged there. But we will be calling the insurance company about the roof, if nothing else.

It could have been SO much worse, so we are thankful for that, but still wasn’t a great way to start a day. <sigh>

Fun on a Dreary Day

2011-10-29T19:20:00.001-04:00

Being Saturday, I headed off to work bright and early this morning. Although there was nothing bright about it. What a dreary day! The clouds were low and heavy with the impending storm.

I only had to work for a few hours, as I traded shifts with a co-worker and opened for a change, as well as getting out a little earlier than usual. So that was a nice start to the day.

I took the above pictures as we were traveling to Lake George. You can see that the majority of our bright foliage is long gone.

We were glad that the snow didn’t come in early so that we had a chance to get our little trip in first. The place where we went for lunch, The Docksider, turned out to be a cute little restaurant situated right on Glen Lake.

It is open year round and was decorated for Halloween/fall.

Greg and Beth, and Mike and Carol, are the first Heartland owners that we have met in person. We enjoyed telling them about some of our newbie adventures!

From L to R…Harry and me, Mike, Carol, Beth and Greg

It was great to meet them and we are already looking forward to our first Heartland Owners Rally next June!

After a great lunch, we headed for home, and happily we landed just as the flakes were starting to stick!

It is definitely the heavy wet variety of snowstorm, and we are keeping our fingers and toes crossed that we don’t lose power.

Ughh!

2011-10-29T05:43:00.001-04:00

My sister and I were saying yesterday that we both can remember “green” Christmases not that long ago when we both used to like white ones. But now that we’ve decided we’ve had enough of the white stuff, it just keeps coming and coming. That’s right, another storm coming up the pike today.

The blue arrow is pointing to our approximate location. We are pretty much smack in the middle of the range, but I’m sure hoping that we’re closer to seven inches than we are to ten. If that 4 – 7 area would just dip a little lower, that would be fine with me!! However, no matter how much we end up with - YUCK! And it’s going to be that heavy wet stuff, so on top of it, they’re warning about the potential of losing power. I am so over winter already, and it’s only the end of October…<sigh>….

We actually have/had a fun day planned today, assuming the snow doesn’t come early and put a crimp in our plans. We have signed up for a Heartland Owners rally in Lake George next June. It’s going to be at the same campground we stayed at in September. The couple organizing the rally are coming up today to check out a possible restaurant for the group to go to one evening, and we’re meeting them and another couple for lunch at the restaurant. Hopefully we will get to Lake George and home before the snow starts flying. Update tonight, and probably snow pictures…

How Many More?

2011-10-27T21:05:00.001-04:00

This is what it looked like when Harry got home from work today…

and this is what it looked like about ten minutes ago…

And it is still coming down!

We HOPE this is our last full winter up in the snowy north!

Had to Do It

2011-10-26T18:42:00.001-04:00

Maybe if I hadn’t been off today, it wouldn’t have happened. But with a high of about 46 degrees today, there wasn’t too much sun outside to warm up the air in here, and by this afternoon, my nose was cold! So…had to break down and turn up the thermostat so the pellet stove would kick on and warm the place up. However, making it to the 26th of October sure wasn’t bad.

This is the view of the front yard from our living room. This picture of the tree is from this past Sunday. There is nowhere near that number of leaves on the tree now. By the time, the rain and other assorted varieties of precipitation passes us by in the next few days, our trees probably will be mostly bare.

It sure was nice while it lasted.

It was a slow news day. Harry had an appointment this morning and I tagged along. Afterwards we went for a nice late breakfast. By that time, the morning was pretty well over. Add in some grocery shopping and other odds and ends and there went another quick day off. A day off sure does speed by!

A Look Back at the Beginning

2011-10-25T18:18:00.001-04:00

It won’t be long now until we have to turn on the heat. We have not turned it on yet, and I am still hoping for November 1st. Our house has cooled, of course. But it holds the heat really well, and has ever since we replaced all our windows with Pella windows in 2008. You can see here what the house looked like back then – notice the front door and the windows in the living room.

That was the beginning of our house remodeling project, so you can see that we have been at this for quite a while now.

The house was a mess for much of the summer of 2008, but we were definitely pleased with the results.

Notice the rust colored carpet – that was back before we started replacing everything with the wood flooring.

We also added the garden window in the kitchen.

So that was the beginning of it all. We certainly feel that we have made the house much more marketable. Although we may not financially recoup the monies that we put into the house improvements over the past three and a half years, if we are able to sell the house in a timely fashion, we will consider it all a success!

<sigh> As I’ve been been writing this, I’ve been listening to the weather forecast. We have a chance of snow for this Thursday evening – maybe 4 inches or more.

NO, I’m not ready yet!!! Come back, beautiful fall weather!!

A Wonderful Weekend!

2011-10-23T16:14:00.001-04:00

This has been just an all-around nice weekend. It is absolutely gorgeous out, with a temp of 57 out there right now, and with the sun, it feels so pleasant! Right now we have our windows open, and the fresh air is wonderful. We may eke out one more week without heat. If the weatherman is to be believed (yes I know that’s a stretch), by next weekend our highs are going to be down in the 40s and our lows down in the 20s. So this might be our last hurrah before the cold weather moves in.

On top of the nice weather, we have had some time to relax and enjoy the weekend, and we also got a lot done. Just a perfect kind of weekend.

Yesterday Harry started working on the roof of the fiver, cleaning it up, and today he headed back up for awhile more to apply the treatment. Here are the final results…

What a great job he did! The fiver is done now, and ready for the winter months.

We also spent some time working on the guestroom. As you can see, the closet especially needed a coat of paint.

It is pretty well set. I think the closet may need another coat, and there may be a few touch-up spots. But for the most part, we can knock the guestroom painting off the list.

And, if that wasn’t enough for one weekend, we also replaced the kitchen light…

Here is before…

and, only about 30 minutes later, we had a brand new look…

I love it!!

We also drove over to Walmart this afternoon for a couple items, and not far from our development we noticed that the 4H club was having a chicken bbq fundraiser.

So when we got back, we fit in time for a walk to pick up a yummy dinner…

Notice I haven’t given up on my flip flops just yet….

See what I mean?! Does that sound like a wonderful weekend, or what?

Hope you all had a great weekend too!!

Brisk Fall Day

2011-10-22T18:26:00.001-04:00

The day was a little cooler today, but inside our house, it is still nice and toasty warm. Still haven’t turned the heat on – I’m hoping for at least November 1st!

Harry was busy this morning, finishing up the winterizing and cleaning the roof of the fiver.

He took this “before” picture of the roof. The air conditioners and falling leaves have not been kind to our roof.

I was a little worried about him working on the roof while I was away at work, but he promised to be careful.

I took his picture as he was hard at work when I got home.

There was also one more spot that Harry wanted to get mouse-proofed. No little critters are going to sneak their way through here.

We are now ready for the winter months. Although every week that we don’t get cold weather, I think - we are one week closer to spring!

In the meantime, I was busy working on painting the downstairs guestroom. I made some good progress. I was able to get the majority of the room edged and three walls painted. The lighting was getting very dim when I was finishing up so hopefully I don’t have a lot of missed spots – I will be checking tomorrow. I am hoping that by the end of the weekend, I can check this room off the list!

A Quick Note to Start the Day

2011-10-22T07:20:00.001-04:00

We’re at the beginning of what promises to be a busy, and I hope fruitful, weekend. I will be heading off to work soon – hope the day goes by quickly so I can get home to my project – painting!

Harry will be working this morning on cleaning the roof of the fiver. He has promised to take some pictures of his progress, so I will be giving an update on that later as well.

Finally, last but certainly not least, a BIG congratulations to Laurie and George on their special day!! I hope you guys have a wonderful day, great weather, filled with everything good! Harry and I wish you all the best for an awesome future together – wish we could be there!!

Knock on Wood

2011-10-20T07:53:00.001-04:00

I’m almost afraid to put this into print, but so far our fall has been so….warm!! Believe me, I’m not complaining – I’m just so surprised at our good luck. In all other respects, it is definitely fall, the days seem dark, the leaves are covering the lawns, and those fall winds are blowing. As far as the temperatures go, even our weatherman has been remarking on how nice this fall has been – our highs have been over 60 most days, and our lows have mostly been in the 40s. Wow.

If that could only continue for another month or two! We still have not turned our heat on, not even once.

Not much else has been going on this week. I spent yesterday finally picking up around here, getting all of our suitcases and vacation stuff put away. I am fully recovered from my cold now, and happy to be feeling better.

We are almost to another weekend. Harry will be finishing up the winterizing of the fiver, and I am going to get busy on the next item on the to-do list – painting the downstairs guest room. There are only ten weekends left to work before the end of the year, and that last one is Christmas weekend, so I don’t plan to work on the house that day. Time to get motivatin’!!

Back to Work Day

2011-10-18T18:22:00.001-04:00

Yes, it was back to the ol’ grind for Harry and me today. Ok, enough said about that!!

I may have mentioned a couple weeks ago that we got a coupon from Home Depot for 12 months with no interest for a purchase over $299 (yeah, like that number is hard to reach ). So yesterday, we headed over to pick up the rest of the items we need for the improvements that we want to finish up in the house over the winter months.

This isn’t a great picture – I had to turn the light off in order to take it, but I think you will get the idea…

You may remember our kitchen remodel back in February (9 months ago already!) – well, the only piece not redone was the light fixture, which is just a little, ummm, shall we say, outdated?

This is the replacement…

We are also replacing the flooring in the two bathrooms,

and the faucet and shower fixtures in the downstairs bathroom…

That is the last, yes LAST, of the purchases we need to make for the house for our planned improvements. (Other than a few gallons of paint which I don’t count, since we will buy them as we need them.)

I can see it – the light at the end of the tunnel – it’s just a little brighter!!!

Laid Low

2011-10-17T08:40:00.001-04:00

I sure am glad that we came back from VA when we did. All day on Friday, as we were traveling back, I had a sore throat and was feeling a little sluggish. But by Saturday morning it was a full blown cold. Yuck. I haven’t had a cold in quite a while, maybe even over a year, but this one knocked me for a loop. I spent Saturday and Sunday on the couch, sleeping on and off. I am feeling somewhat better today, thank goodness.

While I have been sleeping off this cold, Harry has been busy – he checked the batteries, freshened up the peppermint oil that is hopefully doing its job repelling little critters, and he worked on winterizing the icemaker in the rv. He had to put air into the water lines, and manually operate the icemaker to blow air through. The only piece he has left is to put some antifreeze into the water lines. Now the outside of the rv is pretty well set for the winter. Harry has ordered some roof cleaner and treatment which should be coming soon. This Saturday looks like it will be a perfect day for working on the roof.

Today is our last day off before we go back to work. I took it off because who wants to go back to work after vacation on their birthday! That’s right, today is the day! I turn the big 45!! In honor of that day, I am going to relax and enjoy one more day off! And, my favorite – Chinese – for dinner tonight. Yum.

Have a great day everyone!

Back Home

2011-10-15T08:18:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was another dreary day, and we spent much of it on the road. I managed to bring home a cold with me, which was not really my intention. We definitely saw more colors in the foliage as we traveled north, but I wasn’t able to get very good pictures from the car.

You can see how dark it was from the pictures. All morning we traveled through rain and wind, and a little bit of fog, but by later morning we were finally driving out of the storm a bit.

The previous evening at the hotel, we ordered a hot sub from a local sub shop. We had a great brainstorm and ordered a cold sub to take on the road with us. We stopped at a rest area on I-78 in Pennsylvania and enjoyed a yummy lunch. It wasn’t a quiet spot with all the traffic zooming by, but it was just nice to be out of the car for a bit.

We were out of the car for about 20 minutes when we noticed those black clouds were catching back up with us. So we decided we better be moving on!

Finally, we were heading down the final street to our house. A lot of leaves have turned and fallen while we were gone. I don’t know why, but leaves blowing by on the road always makes me think of Halloween.

The trees are turning quickly now, but the temps for the upcoming week still look pretty nice – in the mid to high 60s. Looks like we may possibly make it to November without turning on the heat!! I sure hope this is a foreshadowing of the upcoming season!

Travel Day

2011-10-13T18:04:00.001-04:00

Well, we are on our way home. It’s been a good week, but we were ready to head out this morning. Both Harry and I remarked at how different it is staying in a place like this as opposed to taking our fiver someplace. Going somewhere in our rv truly does feel like we have taken our home with us. Having our own bed, our comfy chairs, all of the supplies in our cupboard, with our own pots and pans, and also a big thing is being able to bring our cats with us. I am so glad that our future times away from home will be spent in our own place.

Today was a dreary day for traveling. We started out with breakfast out at a local Pancake & Waffle place. Although they had every possible breakfast item – Harry enjoyed a sausage omelette.

The scenery didn’t change very much as we traveled along from Williamsburg toward our hotel stop in West Virginia. I much prefer travelling on sunny days, and from the weather forecast, I think that tomorrow may be more to my liking.

It was definitely a travel day for truckers – we saw bunches of them on the roads.

After about five hours on the road, we landed at our hotel, and we have ordered out from a local sub shop. Yum.

We just turned the news on, and there’s a tornado watch in Virginia. I believe the highlighted watch area includes where we were during the week. So we definitely picked the right day to head out!!

We will be leaving tomorrow morning for parts north. Time to go home….

In Search of Shopping

2011-10-12T09:23:00.001-04:00

On Tuesday Harry, Denise and I went looking for some places to spend some money! Well, probably Denise and I were going to spend the money. Before we left the house, we searched the internet looking for some unique shops in the area. We came up with a couple that looked promising – New Town and Riverwalk in Yorktown. There is also a Prime Outlet village here. But we have a Prime Outlet not far from where we live, so we didn’t want to go there again. We were hoping for something different – some place to maybe find some unique Christmas gifts.

So off we headed in the car. We went to New Town first. Bottom line, it looks like down the road it may be a nice place for a shopping trip. Right now though, there were maybe twelve shops there, and only one that was a gift type shop. The rest were all selling clothes. There was a lot of construction going on in the area, and quite a number of vacant shops. So we checked this place off our list and headed on to number two - Riverwalk Landing in Yorktown.

The trip there was nice and very scenic. To get to Yorktown, we traveled on the Colonial parkway.

Now! Riverwalk Landing has to be the best example of promotion through advertising that I have ever seen. Take a minute to look at the link for it I have provided above.

What would you expect to see when you arrived here?

To quote…

“River Shop - sample specialty waterfront shops designed in the spirit of Colonial architecture that offer clothing, jewelry, quilts, art, patriotic items, home decor, and more.”

This looked like a cute little shop, but it was closed.

Other than this place, right nearby there was ONE other shop, which sold every kind of patriotic item that you could imagine – yup – patriotic clothing, quilts, paintings. I didn’t notice if there was any jewelry there, but there may have been.

Then, as we walked along the path by the river, there was a little sign across the street with an arrow that told us to go up these steps to get to scenic Main St. with more shops.

So we climbed the steps to see what we could see…

Voila! Main Street!!

Don’t get me wrong – this was a cute little place, and very scenic. If we had come looking for someplace to take pictures and explore the sights, it would definitely be on the list.

But for a day of shopping, not so much.

Harry and Denise expressing their opinion of the shopping possibilities to be found here.

So anyway, the shopping trip was a bust. But we had a nice day exploring, even though we didn’t spend any money. Well, other than on lunch – we had to go console ourselves with food.

I had a question the other day about Colonial Williamsburg and the need for tickets. A one day pass is about $38 for one person approximately. After you pay for your tickets, there is a path from the Visitor Center to the village, or you can take the shuttle, which is included in the ticket price.

A lot of the stuff is outside – the courtyard where the soldiers do their drills, the encampments. The only time you need the tickets is to actually enter the buildings. As we walked toward Merchant Square, we started seeing parking spots. So if someone was going to Colonial Williamsburg, and didn’t care about seeing inside places like the courthouse and the Governor’s mansion, you wouldn’t really need to spend the forty bucks per person. You could park in the Merchant Square area and walk around the township area. Just an FYI.

Today is going to be a laid back day. We are just going to relax and Harry and I have massages scheduled at 1:30 this afternoon. Ahhh!

Colonial Williamsburg

2011-10-10T08:14:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, after a leisurely morning, we decided to head over and check out Colonial Williamsburg.

We started off in the Visitor Center where we purchased our tickets. In hindsight, I think we might not have purchased tickets if we realized that we could actually go almost everywhere without one.

It was a good walk from the Visitor Center to the village center. There were shuttles available, but we just decided to follow the pathway.

I tried to imagine what it was actually like to live back in Colonial times. It might be cool to have someone drive me around in a horse-drawn carriage.

But being in the stocks might not be so much fun.

It was a hot day to be marching around in full colonial dress. I was trying to imagine what this would be like in July and August.

At the Governor’s Palace, there was a maze in the garden, and we sat down on a bench outside while the kids explored.

It was a great day, and probably the most walking I’ve done in a long time! I enjoyed it a lot.

Today Denise and I are going to check out the shopping in the area. It looks to be another nice day!

Arriving in Williamsburg

2011-10-08T19:11:00.001-04:00

We had a nice relaxing day, well, as relaxing as it gets when you’re traveling 5 hours in a car.

And it was another beautiful day! For our first two days of vacation we have had wonderful weather.

We have arrived at King’s Creek and are very pleased with the house! It is going to work so perfectly for our two families!

So, here is the tour…

Here is our little home away from home for the week…

This is the view from our front porch…

When you go in the outside door, there are two “apartments” and we have both of them.

This is the living area for the smaller apartment…

and this is our bedroom.

This is the living area for the larger apartment, which is what we will probably use most of the week.

Here are Harry and Mike checking out something on tv.

The larger kitchen…

Denise and I went grocery shopping and probably bought enough food for a few weeks.

In the above picture, you can see the stairs that go upstairs – to a couple more bedrooms.

You can see that the kids are working hard at unpacking their stuff.

We have settled in somewhat and are relaxing and enjoying the feeling of not having to go anywhere tomorrow!

Nothing Like a Good Night’s Sleep

2011-10-08T08:34:00.001-04:00

Ahhhh! We sure slept great last night, and how wonderful not to have an alarm clock this morning. On a normal weekend, I’d be at work already!

After going through at least two hours of New Jersey bumper to bumper traffic, it sure was good to land last night. We had our burgers and fries around 8:30 or so, which is much later than we usually eat dinner. So we intended to stay up for a while, and after a little channel surfing, I was excited to find the movie “Avatar” – one of my favorites!! We watched it for about an hour before my eyes started closing in spite of my desire to watch the movie, and Harry was not far behind me.

So, after sleeping in all the way to 7:30! we headed downstairs to enjoy the complimentary breakfast, and now we are just motivating slowly. We will head out in about an hour or so for our destination. For those of you who are wondering why we don’t have the trailer, this is a vacation that was planned during our “pre-fiver” days. We are headed to a timeshare resort in Williamsburg, VA, where we are going to be sharing a townhome for the next week with my sister Denise and her family. Check-in is at 4 pm so we have a lot of time to make our way there. I believe it is about a 5 hour trip from here, although we often make it there in a shorter time than the one predicted by Mapquest. (What’s up with that? )

An update and more pictures to come later!

On Our Way

2011-10-07T21:25:00.001-04:00

We were both off to work early this morning, and home by 2 to get ready to hit the road.

It was a beautiful day for a drive, but there was a lot of traffic.

As we traveled along, the autumn colors were few and far between.

We were really glad that we weren’t on the other side of the road going through some of the traffic we were seeing, but our turn would come. When we got close to New Jersey, we hit the traffic, and it took us about 40 minutes to go about 4 miles.

We got to the hotel around 8:30 and found a Five Guys nearby shortly afterward for a couple burgers and some fries. We are enjoying the sensation of being on vacation!

Tomorrow, on to Williamsburg!

Almost There!

2011-10-06T06:05:00.001-04:00

It’s been a crazy week. Due to various schedule changes, and people being off, I opened the branch Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday! Three early days in a row! Yuck. Today I am back to my normal, and I actually get to sit and enjoy my coffee while I watch the news. I love my normal schedule. Usually Monday is my only early day.

We finally got started on our packing last night. Our big suitcase is chocked to the zippers with warm weather clothes, and a little bit of the cold type – this time of year, you never know. Whatever it is, chances are it’ll be warmer than here – it’s 37 degrees outside this morning. Our house is still holding the warmth very nicely though. I haven’t even been tempted to turn on the pellet stove. I think part of the reason we’re staying warmer inside longer is that I have resisted the temptation this fall to open the windows very much, even though I am usually a huge fresh air advocate. Now instead, it’s stale and warm!

Two more days to work – we head out tomorrow evening for parts south!

Slow Week

2011-10-04T19:50:00.001-04:00

So far this week has seemed long. Probably because I’m looking forward to the end of it! This is going to be a quick update though, because I haven’t done too much the past couple of days other than go to work! In three days we will be hitting the road and heading for Williamsburg, VA – new pictures and things to blog about coming up soon!