March – Running Fun!

Three years ago we attended an event in Sebring called Run the Track. It’s a 3.74 mile race around the Sebring Raceway. It’s a pretty small race with only a few hundred people, but it’s a fun event. One of the best things about this race was the long sleeve running shirt that we got. So we decided that it would be nice to do it again, and get another shirt – well worth the $25 cost!

Not only did we get another long sleeve running shirt, and have a good time – but I came in 1st place in my age group! That was pretty exciting!

That was only the first great running event we had going on in March. It was a long time ago – over a year!- when we signed up for a half marathon that would be taking place in Sarasota, FL. We have done several other races over the past few years, and for all of them we traveled to the location on the morning of the race. Races always start pretty early in the morning, and since we have to arrive early to find a parking spot, we’ve always had to get up in the middle of the night to have enough time to get ready. For this race, we decided that we were going to splurge and get a hotel room right by the start. Being Sarasota, and right by the water, it was really pricey, but it turned out to be totally worth it!

We left for Sarasota on Saturday morning. We had found a Groupon for a place to eat in Sarasota, and being St. Patrick’s Day we decided to eat earlier in the day to avoid the crowds. That turned out to be a great idea, because the meal was really filling. We were barely even hungry again for the whole rest of the day!

After eating, we drove a couple miles to Lido Beach and were lucky enough to find a parking place. We went for a nice walk on the beach to pass the time until it was check-in time at the hotel.

Around 3:30, we left to drive over to our hotel – the Hyatt Regency Sarasota. This is easily the most expensive hotel we have ever stayed at. The view was awesome, but other than that, I can’t say it was that much over and above other places where we have stayed. But the best part about the location was it's proximity to our race – that parking lot over to the right in the picture was where we needed to be in the morning.

And then it was race day! Harry took this picture as we were walking over to the start line. It was so relaxing just being able to get up in the morning, have our coffee and breakfast, and then just stroll on over about 20 minutes before the race started.

I took this picture as we were running over the Ringling Causeway.

One of the nicest parts about this race was that the race photos were free to download. This is the first race we have done that didn’t require you to purchase the race photos. 

So here we are coming in! Our official time was 2:42:34. (It took us three minutes from the official start to actually get over the start line. They start people in waves.) I was extremely happy with our time. This was the first half marathon that I actually ran all the way through!

There’s the Causeway! We ran all the way across this and then back. That was the first 6 miles of the race.

And then we took a nice leisurely walk back to the hotel where we could shower before we headed for home. It was a great weekend!

February Was Cruise and Company Month!

After a quiet uneventful month in January, we knew that February was going to be the exact opposite. We had a cruise coming up early in the month, and after that we were having our first official company! When we bought the park model last April, we decided right away that we were going to use the Florida room as our living area, and leave what was originally the living room for a guest area. We set it up before we left for the cruise, and I loved the way it looked.

On Sunday, Feb 11th we drove to Sebastian to pick up my mother and stepfather and from there head to the cruise port in Port Canaveral. Being Sunday morning, it was very quiet and we had a quick and uneventful trip.

I always love the first look at the ship!

My sister surprised us with some magnets for our door! (Her oldest son, Matt, was staying in our room for the cruise also.)

Just a few photos to show the fun we had on our cruise…

Our cruise went to Key West, Cozumel and Costa Maya. We didn’t plan any excursions for the cruise, and just planned to walk around the port areas. That is the one thing I would change for any future cruises we go on. It always sounds like a good idea to just walk around and enjoy the area, but the immediate area near the cruise port is always so touristy, with people just nagging you to buy their merchandise. It’s probably going to be a few years before we go on another cruise, but I will keep that in mind for the next one.

But the actual cruise portion of the week was wonderful. We had three rooms in a row, so we had a nice long balcony area, and it’s always so great to have time to chat with family members that we don’t see all the time.

When we arrived back home, the fun wasn’t over yet! My mother and stepfather came back to Avon Park with us to extend the enjoyment for another week and a half.

We packed a lot into the time we had. We went for some drives and gave them some tours of the area. We went on a tram tour of Highlands Hammock State Park, and enjoyed checking out the locals.

We also spent a couple days at Epcot, and had a wonderful time exploring the different countries in the World Showcase area.

While we were there, Harry enjoyed his favorite – a plate full of German food from an all you can eat buffet!

It was a whirlwind 10 days, and they enjoyed their time so much they are planning to come back next winter for three months! We reserved a spot here in the park, and they are going to live in the fiver and enjoy soaking in a little  of our nice Florida winter weather.

Back to the Blog After a Fast Winter; January Recap

Wow, it’s April! This, by far, has been the fastest winter season since we first sold the house and headed south over six years ago. I guess that just means that we are enjoying life!It has been over seven months since we arrived here in Avon Park, and we have made a lot of improvements in our new home, but I will save that for another blog post.

I am still working at Home Depot, and it’s been a really good experience. I like my job, and I like the people that I work with. In the middle of January, I finished training and received my fork lift license. I like loading the trucks and using the forklift to prepare deliveries, but it’s sometimes a little nerve-wracking. Every week I get a little  more experience, and pick up a few more tricks. When I return in October hopefully I’ll remember some of it!

I looked back at my pictures for January, and other than getting my forklift license at work, it looks like it was pretty unremarkable. Harry and I were both still training for our half-marathon. In January I ran an average of 17 miles a week, for a total of 74.5 miles during the month.

I have been thoroughly enjoying my kitchen. I have spent the past several months doing all kinds of baking….bread, pies, rolls. It’s been a lot of fun – both the cooking part and the eating part!

This happened in January…and also February, March, and now again today. Every month we’ve gone over to check on the rig. As far as we can tell, she’s come through the winter very well – other than needing a good wash!

Every month I’ve looked around for “calling cards”, and haven’t seen any. There isn’t any food in the place, so nothing really to attract any visitors. We have a company who sprays in our place a few times a year, and we think we are going to have them do our rig before we move back in for the summer. I don’t want to bring any big bugs back up north with us when we move!

Speaking of heading north, we have about 7 weeks left before we do just that. We’ll be going to Charlotte for a few days to visit Harry’s son, and then moving north to upstate NY. For the first time, we are going to have a seasonal site at Iroquois Campground, and we’ll be spending July through September there. This is a picture of our site. It’s a corner site and we have a huge living area. We are looking forward to it!

This blog post kind of turned into a hodge podge of this and that, but only because there wasn’t much going on in January. February was the complete opposite, so I’ll continue with that in my next post.

More Updates and Improvements

It’s been another good week around here. It was cold like most of the rest of the country, but our house seems to hold up to the weather pretty well. One of the best things we did was to replace those windows in the park model portion of the place. They were the original windows and didn’t do anything to insulate from heat or cold. We did break down and turn the heat on over the past few days, but it didn’t run a lot. When we replaced the a/c in August, we got one that had a 2.5 ton heat pump with a back up auxiliary heater for when the temps dip below 35 degrees. So that is more than enough to keep us comfortable in the few times that the weather gets like it did the past week.

We were talking a couple days ago about the ceiling fans. The one in the bedroom is starting to go. It had three speeds at one time, but only one speed is working now. And they are really dated, of course. It doesn’t seem like any previous owners of this place (I think there were two) were into doing any kind of updating. Then we remembered we had recently gotten a coupon from Home Depot for 18 month interest free financing, so we decided that must be a sign! There was a minimum amount that had to be purchased to qualify, so we threw in the kitchen lights as well.

We ended up only being able to replace the fan in the kitchen area, as the fans we bought turned out to be too big for the bedroom (which was the one we really needed to

replace in the first place, but we will just have to order a smaller size for the bedroom).

The new one is so much more streamlined. It makes the area look larger! (You can see the old one in the next picture.)

The other big thing I want to do, (but it’s not going to happen until next winter), is to get a slipcover for that couch.

The shutter-like object standing behind the couch is a room divider. The main function for this area is going to be as a guest room when we have company, so we will use the divider to make it into a more private space.

We also got the other cabinet for the kitchen. It is a better height for the microwave and also provides some much needed storage space.

The new lights in the kitchen area…

You can also see my breadmaker in its new spot.

So far I have made one recipe for white bread, and a Cuban wheat bread. Yum. I don’t think we will ever be going back to store bought bread.

I bought a cookbook with 300 bread recipes. I see a lot of new types of bread in our future!

We are getting to the end of what we will be doing as far as improvements for this season. Gotta let the bank account recover for a while!

Welcome 2018!

Wow, I can’t believe I haven’t posted since the middle of October! And I was doing so well. Irma threw me off my rhythm, and then I just never got it back. But I’ll do my best to catch y’all up on the last couple of months.

We’ve had mixed reviews from our jobs. Harry’s job at Publix has come and gone. It just wasn’t for him. He was doing bagging and bringing in carts from the parking lot, with a little floor cleaning thrown in on the days that he worked the evening shift. Between having to bend slightly to do the bagging and hefting around rows of carts outside, his back was taking a beating. It got worse and worse, and finally in the beginning of December, he had to accept the fact that he couldn’t keep it up. We decided the job wasn’t worth the toll it was taking on his back. So he is now staying home and keeping stuff caught up around here. His back is still not back to normal, but once it is, he is going to get back to working on our painting and other improvements that we haven’t done anything with for the past couple of months.

My job at Home Depot, on the other hand, has been going great. I really love the work, and the people that I am working with as well. The job is similar to what I did at Amazon – picking product for orders. However, there are a lot of differences. Some of the orders are online for pickup. Those I bring to the service desk, or another location in the store if they are large. Then the customer just comes in and picks them up at some point. Sometimes I will get a call on the store phone I carry that the customer is there, and their product might be back in Receiving or some other place. So I have to go get it and bring it up to the service desk. There are other orders that are delivered. The customer either came in and placed the order, for delivery, like an appliance or some flooring. Or they ordered online and chose the delivery option. So after picking the order, I have to arrange it on pallets and get it wrapped up and ready to go on the truck. I am also being trained in driving equipment – the fork lift and reach truck. It will be at least another few weeks before I feel ready to take the test to get my license. And of course, the other big difference is that there are customers walking around all the time too. So I get asked as I walk around the store where this or that product is located. I am getting better at knowing where stuff is, so I don’t have to pull out my phone and look it up! I am enjoying the challenge, and it’s been a really positive experience. In other good news, I have also found out that they will let me do a seasonal leave of absence when we go north next summer. So I will be going back to work in October when we get back here.

On the home front, we are just loving life here in our little house. This place is the perfect size for us. After the rv, it seems really large anyway. We have bigger plans for coming years, but this year we have just been making small improvements. One of my favorites - we did not like the steps that came down into the Florida room. They were really rough and not made for bare feet. So a few weeks ago, Harry got some wood and made some replacement steps. They look so awesome! I listed the old steps on Facebook Marketplace and they were gone in a day.

I have been really enjoying the kitchen here. I’m not sure why this kitchen seems more conducive to baking and cooking than the one in the fifth wheel. It’s not that much larger, but I guess I’ve been inspired anyway, because I have been doing so much cooking and experimenting. In the past couple of months, I’ve made pizza dough, dinner rolls, pies, and I am about to start making my own bread, as soon as my breadmaker arrives in a few days.

 

The kitchen is coming together! That kitchen cabinet at the end is where my breadmaker is going to be sitting by the end of the week. I hope!

Luckily for my waistline, our exercise is still going very well also. We are training for a half marathon that we will be running in Sarasota in March. So between that and my active job at Home Depot, I haven’t gained any weight from all my baking and cooking…and eating! Phew!

We had a lot of fun decorating our place for the holidays. We got one of those zero percent financing coupons from Home Depot so we used that to stock up on basically everything in the Christmas decorating field.

So I guess this update is long enough for one day. I shall attempt to get myself back into the swing of things and get back to posting more regularly.

Happy New Year!

Getting Busy

The traffic around the park is really starting to pick up. The official season starts November 1st, and a lot of people apparently coming in during the weeks right before that. Every day there are more people driving around in their golf carts, and several rvs have come in also over the past days.

The new grass is really starting to fill in. It’s been a little over a week and already you can barely see the lines between the individual pieces of sod.

The grass is called St.Augustine grass. It’s a very hardy, tough, hot weather grass. It feels weird to walk on compared to what we are used to from up north. We understand it takes 3 to 4 weeks before it will be rooted and ready for mowing.

Harry replaced the light on the outside a couple days ago. We had another outside light next to the sliding glass door on the inside on what was the older part of the house. When they added the Florida room, they put another light outside but it was very rough looking from 10+ years of being exposed to the weather.

We weren’t using the light on the inside so Harry removed it and put it up outside. Eventually we are going to get a motion activated light for the outside but this will do for now.

We have been going for an evening walk every night. The weather has gotten so nice, and the evening breezes are very pleasant. We’ve even opened the windows a couple times.

We have been doing great with our exercising. Since it gets so warm during the day, we’ve been getting up early and going for our run at 6 am. I love watching the sun come up as we are finishing up. We get to see some beautiful morning skies.

Harry got a call from Publix and he starts work on Tuesday afternoon. I am waiting to get a call from Home Depot, probably on Monday or Tuesday. We are both excited to get going with our new jobs.

Finally!

Well, this blog post title could refer to a few things…finally a blog post!?! Haha I was doing so well with posting every few days before Irma, and then two weeks away just threw us off our game. I’m not sure what we’ve been doing since we got back, but it’s gone by fast anyway.

But happily, the title refers to more than just that. We have had some exciting days!

This has been our view of the house since April….sand, sand, sand. The past few weeks we had really gotten sick of it being tracked in all the time.

But last Thursday we had such a welcome sight!

Yes, our sod finally came in!

Since then we have had great weather for the sod. Not super hot, and quite a few rain showers. Plus our new sprinkler system is working nicely. Love looking out the windows and seeing green grass!

We have had a couple other welcome changes. Last week Harry got a couple calls for job interviews – with Lowe’s and Publix. He had the Lowe’s interview first and then the interview at Publix on Thursday. He had a good feeling about the Publix interview and his instincts were right on, as later the same day he had a phone call offering him the job! Yay! What good news.

Our good news streak continued over the weekend when I got an email from Home Depot about an application I had submitted. They were inviting me to interview for the job of lot associate. I had the interview yesterday. When they heard about my previous job experience, especially the work I did at Amazon, they offered me a job as an order picker. It sounds a lot like what I did as a picker at Amazon, except in a building that is probably a quarter of the size of the Amazon warehouse – and all on one level! So I am extremely happy! And now that we both have jobs, I can take a deep breath and stop worrying about whether we will find work down here. It was a leap of faith for us to give up the sure thing at Amazon and come down to Florida instead, and I am so glad that it has worked out like we hoped it would. We have both taken the drug test and they are doing the background check, so hopefully we will be starting work early next week.