Monday, December 2 - 5 Years (Mission, TX)

 

December 1st  we have been full timing for 5 years!     My how time flies.   We are still enjoying this life style.

We are on our 3rd RV and our 3rd truck which may sound excessive for 5 years, but we now have the RV we wanted from the beginning..

 

We have not been doing much since Thanksgiving. Just trying to get some stuff done on the rig and vehicles. We had Mr. Clean Balde wash and wax the Kram-a-lot on Friday and for only $10 more (rig was $90) he did the car. Both look nice and shiny again. Should have had him do the truck but I didn’t so I will get that done in the next week or so.

Saturday we wanted to get dog food at Petco in Mission. On the way we drove thru Retama Village to see if anyone we knew was out and about. We quickly saw Mark Hall so we stopped to say hello to him and Dortha. They were doing chores so we did not stay long but we will see them again soon.

The strip center with Petco also had some other stores we wanted to take a look at and an H-E-B Plus. Should not have gone to H-E-B because I saw a 40” Samsung LED that would fit in the same space as our 32” LCD and  I just had to have it….and so I do.

It really has good a picture and sound but it would not fit on the TV mount from the 32” so I removed the mount and just set it up on the table stand. I have 3 months to figure out how to secure it.

We have been having AC problems in the little Mazda for a couple of months and it has progressively gotten worse. There was a refrigerant leak somewhere so this morning I took it to a local repair shop. Remy’s Auto & Truck Service and had them take care of the problem which was a leaking line. All fixed now and hopefully no more leaks.

Ginger put out the Christmas decorations today so we are ready for Santa.

Tomorrow we are having lunch at Cheddar’s with the Drays and Steinmillers and then coming back here to discuss Christmas brunch plans.

Thursday, November 28 - Thanksgiving Day (Mission TX)

 

Today is Thanksgiving. A day to be spent with family and friends. A day to remember loved ones that are not with us.

In the words of John Fitzgerald Kennedy:

As we express our gratitude,

we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words,

but to live by them.

We spent Thanksgiving with Ed and Marilyn. We drove over to Llano Grande and ate at the club house with other friends Jan and Tom and their family.

The conversation was good and the food was very tasty. There were several different salads to start the meal with.

The hot food was sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, carrots, green beans, corn, mac and cheese, meat balls, pork roast and of course turkey. It was all Yummy.

For dessert there was pumpkin, sweet potato, cherry, and pecan pies.

After dinner we went back to E&M’s and relaxed and just talked until it was time to go home to the boys.

Once we were home we talked to the children and grandchildren. Wished them all Happy Thanksgiving, told them we loved them.

 

Kelsey sent me this picture in Lalia and I just had to share.

Have a good weekend!!

Wednesday, November 27 - Just Getting Caught Up (Mission, TX)

 

We have not been too diligent in keeping up with the blog. Facebook has kind of taken the sails out of daily blogging.

I will try and give a brief synopsis of what we have been up since September.

We were supposed to stay in Maryland till Oct 11 and then head to Coffeyville KS to work at Amazon for their “peak season”. Well we had to leave Maryland a week early because we could not tolerate those damn stink bugs anymore.  They look for places to hide for the winter and when the weather turned cold we got infested with them in a matter of days. They were so bad that when we brought in the slides to leave I had to get out the shop vac and spend an hour vacuuming them from the slide seals. Finally got all I could find and we headed out.

We made it to Coffeyville of Friday, Oct 11 but we did not have to report for orientation till Thurs the 17. We could have started a week earlier but we would have to work the 5:30am to 4am shift so we waited a week and visited with the Williams and Lehenbauers. The Lehenbauers and us were supposed to be on the same shift but they got the night shift and we still had 1 day off together… for a few weeks then their shift advanced a day and we had no time off together. Fortunately we still got to pal around with the Williams as Bob W. and us worked the same days and hours plus Barb was our dog walker.

We thought that having worked there before and being familiar with the job, Amazon, and the campground things would be a little easier this time but in fact they were worse. The weather was much wetter than 2 years ago and when it rains the campground is just full of mud and puddles. Not much fun when you have to walk the dogs after 10 1/2 at work or when you have to stand in 4 inches of water to get something out the basement storage in the rig. We did not really want to work there this year and were just looking for any excuse not to and finally we decided to just throw in the towel and give our notice. Our bad but we did not retire to work that hard.

So we made arrangements to get in to our site at Bentsen Palms Village early and we said our good byes to our friends and left Coffeyville on Nov 15.

1st stop …was Winstar Casino for 3 days of r n r. This is about the nicest casino RV park we have seen and that includes several in Vegas. And when you sign up for a players card your first night is free and $5 off the regular $25 fee after that. I even came out a winner though Ginger not so much but we had a nice birthday weekend for her and her best birthday present was having her great niece born on her birthday. Better than anything I could give her.

Laila Mackenzie

On Monday we headed to Hondo TX to check out the Alamo area Escapee park.

We stayed there a week for a 1st time visitor rate of $45 plus electric. We spent the week exploring the area thinking this might be a good place to lease a lot to use as a home base. After a week that did not look to promising. It’s a so so small park but really not too much to offer and constant noise from US90 and trains all night long. Office staff was not informative at all.

We did get to visit our friends Dan and Pat Sullivan and Kit and Jerry Bertlesen at Fort Clark Springs in Bracketville. Also made it to San Antonio to see the second installment of the Hunger Games. Both Ginger and I are fans of the books and the movies.

Once our time was up we moved further south to our site at Bentsen Palms. Today we visited with Roger and Joyce Steinmiller. They own a lot a mile up the road at Green Gate Grove and we saw their new pup Hershey and their new Mobile Suites.

Tomorrow it is back to LLano Grande for Thanksgiving dinner with Ed and Marilyn.

Well that catches us up for now.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving