A Great Day with Our Company

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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!??