More Preparations

This has been a great first full day of vacation. Of course, yesterday was my first day, but we still had to get up early so Harry could head to work for the morning. Today we woke up at our usual 5:20 am, but we stayed in bed, falling back to sleep and waking up at 7 am! Wow! That is definitely sleeping in for us.

It has been a beautiful sunny day; currently we are at 53 degrees. It feels great in the sun, but the breeze definitely still has a nip to it. Still no leaves on the trees.

We worked today packing supplies for our trip, and made one more trip to a local store for a few more small items. I am on the last of four loads of laundry for today, after which we will start packing our clothes for next week! I also finished wrapping presents for Schaun’s birthday. So it has been a nice organizational type of day. Tomorrow it will be time to pack the car!

Tonight we are heading out for Chinese for dinner! Yum. My favorite. A great start to our time off!

Making Preparations

I’m on vacation! Yay! But my first day today was basically filled with readiness preparations. I was out of the house bright and early this morning heading to Walmart for needed items. Harry was still at work this morning – he’s so dedicated! He started out his vacation with one last half day of work. Lucky him!

Here’s our front lawn, which is finally starting to look like it has a little life.

After Harry got home from work, we had lunch, and then, for most of the afternoon, we worked on getting stuff together. We are starting to get organized for our trip. I made brownies to bring to the rally, and put them in the freezer. We started putting dry ingredients together for our recipes, for ex. pancakes to have for breakfast one day, and other yummy breakfast foods. I also started wrapping Schaun’s birthday presents. I was a very busy beaver today.

I don’t think I have to worry about my tulips growing too much before we get home. So far they have been growing very slowly.

The rest of the bushes and trees are still not even showing a bit of life yet.

I am so looking forward to hitting the road and heading to a warmer part of the country. Even if the weather isn’t hot, it’s going to feel so wonderful to us!!

More vacation prep to come tomorrow!

Time to Relax

Well! Here I am, on vacation! But I don’t feel like it yet. Of course, it’s only been a couple of hours. I probably drove my co-workers crazy today, because I couldn’t seem to resist keeping my attention at least partially fixed on the passage of time throughout the day, and mentioned a number of hours left in the workday probably once or twice.

I didn’t get a chance to take any pictures tonight, but I have definitely noticed a change in our lawn’s appearance over the past couple of days. We raked it on Sunday, so that helped, but then, even better, it rained most of Monday and Tuesday. So things have been greening up! I will take some new pictures tomorrow. Another sign of spring – we came home today to a flyer stuck in our mailbox letting us know that a bear has been sighted in our neighborhood again. Presumably the same bear – remember me mentioning him or her last year? We must be their favorite springtime haunt with good stuff for “spring breakfast” in our garbage cans. Well, our development, not us specifically – one thing about having cats – no self-respecting bear is going to forage for their meal out of our garbage can.

Tonight I will just be hanging out and relaxing, but tomorrow, it is really time to start packing – I don’t think I can procrastinate any longer!!

The Final Stretch

Well, wonder of wonders, it stayed relatively warm last night. When we got up this morning, it was 40 degrees! (Sorry, maple “sugarers”, but I hope your season has come to an end.) We are supposed to have a rainy couple of days. I guess that April is trying to live up to its “April showers” title. Things should be starting to green up soon.

Today is my early and long day at work, but I don’t mind it as much because….today and tomorrow are my last days of work and then I will be off until April 20th!! And tucked into the middle of that very nice 2 week stretch is our trip to Tennessee! I have been looking forward to this since we registered for the rally in September, and I can’t believe that it’s really almost here!

Makes for a nice Monday. Have a great day!!

Another Nice One

Today was another really beautiful day. It was 50 degrees and sunny out. The only thing that was not so nice was the wind blowing which is still pretty cold.

But still overall, a really nice day…and while my sister and I were out for a bit perusing a local craft show, Harry was in the front raking out our packed down front yard.

My niece had fun decorating our driveway.

This was one of our quicker visits to the craft show. We actually only spent about an hour there. That’s not to say we came home completely empty-handed.

Here is Denise with her find…

…and I was very excited with my purchase. Harry and I had actually been talking about finding something exactly like this, and then I walked into the show and at the first booth, I saw…

and it’s propped up on a box containing my other find of the day – something to satisfy our sweet tooth…

After Denise and Hannah headed home, we finished up the front lawn.

The wind was working against us, but we managed to get most of the lawn cleaned up.

And now, we are in and ready to relax for the rest of the day. We started organizing and getting clothes out to pack for our trip, and I did three loads of laundry yesterday. We have done enough for one weekend. We still have Wednesday through Friday yet to get organized and ready to go.

Time to enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Awesomeness

Today is just an all-around nice day.  

First of all…

…our pellet stove is back up and running. So great! I really missed the stove for the week and a half that it was out of commission. It adds a great atmosphere to our living area. But also, we are used to the way that it heats the house. We turn it way down overnight, because both Harry and I like a cool area for sleeping. But even though we turned the electric heat down as well, both of us were hot almost every night. Last night it was so nice to be comfortable again!

The second awesome thing is that we didn’t get any more snow than we had in the pictures I posted yesterday. By mid-morning it was warming up a bit and by afternoon it was raining! It’s been a long time since I’ve been so happy to see rain.

This pretty unimpressive picture is to show that the grass is starting to get a little green. Yes it is! Look, real hard – in between the fence and the bush to the left. See it?

I found a few more flowers coming up in the back.

And the other reason that I am feeling great is that work is over for today, and I only have TWO more days to work before vacation!! woohoo!!

Here are Ariel and Crookshank enjoying their other favorite window sunny spot. They both love laying on blankets which makes it easier to keep them from leaving quite as much fur all over. We put one on the love seat, and an old blanket on each of the extra beds in the house, which catches a lot of their fur. It seems to work out pretty well.

 

I don’t know how they are going to like traveling. We are going to start acclimating them to riding in a vehicle this year, so that it won’t be something new next year when we have the fifth wheel. Our current plan is to put one of their blankets on the back seat of the truck for them to lay on. So we shall see how it goes this summer when we start taking them on short drives.

Tomorrow I am heading to a local craft show, so that should be fun. And also, Harry and I have to really start getting serious about packing!

Have a great day everyone!

So Far, So Good

I am happy to report that so far our spring storm has just been a little bit of a thing.

For those of you who are thinking, oh no! more snow pictures….well, that is the reality of living in upstate New York. I have lived here my whole life, which means I am finishing up my 45th winter season! And actually, I grew up in the Adirondacks, which is 3 hours north of here, and I remember huge piles of snow in our back yard from plowing that were so large we could use them for sledding, and of course, we had much fun building snow forts and all the other good stuff that kids find to do with piles and piles of snow. I remember days when school was cancelled because it was so cold the buses wouldn’t start. A whole day to go outside and play in the snow! Yeah, that’s when I really loved winter.

After I became an adult, winter was just the reality of life, and I never really thought about the fact that there were places where it stayed warm all year round, where snow was just a rare occurrence that might happen a few times during the winter season, or even every few years. And I have to say, I didn’t really mind winter then. It was just the way it was.

But now that Harry and I have other plans, and we (hopefully) have only three more winters up here in the cold and snowy north, we have definitely gotten tired of the weather up here. And we are both looking forward to the return of the warmth, green grass, and everything else that comes along with summer in the northeast!

However for today, we will have to watch some more light snow come down, and soon I will go to work, where everyone coming in will be saying what a long winter it’s been, but aren’t we glad we missed a big storm, etc. etc. etc. Yup, that’s life up here in upstate NY.

Morning bath time at the Riker house…

…followed up by a nap to rest up after all that hard work!

Three more days to work until vacation!