A Bitterly Cold February 2014

Well 2013 has come and gone and I have not blogged in some time.  We have not been anywhere in the RV since Thanksgiving but hope to head back to our little piece of heaven in Sulphur on Valentines Day.  This winter has been a cold one for most of the country and we have not been left out.  This week has been the worst since the bad ice storm earlier this winter.  It started on Sunday with a snow storm and somehow I had to get John to the airport.  He is spending this week in Las Vegas for an education fair with his company.  His flight wasn't scheduled until 1:30 pm but the snow was coming down and we had several miles and lots of big hills to get up and down.  So about 8:15 am we headed out as he had agreed to just wait it out at the airport so I could hopefully get home before it got worse.  Yes, you would think what's the problem -- you have a 4-wheel drive jeep!  Well that jeep is in the garage for repairs.  It seemed to be having electrical or alternator problems so it could have left me stranded in the middle of a highway so we had to drop it off for repairs knowing we wouldn't see it for several days.


About 1 1/2 hours or more later I made it home safe and sound and John's flight took off safely at 1:30 pm.  That little Ford Focus with its anti-slip feature was like a little tank getting around.  The visibility was only about a car length and the roads had not been touched so I was very happy to get home and stay put for the day. 


We have had several more storms predicted for the week so I rearranged my work schedule to try and get my work days in between storms.  Monday the weather was fine so I worked all day.  Tuesday I planned to stay settled in at home for the next big snow but woke up to find out the snow had gone north of us and dumped a bunch on the northern part of the State.  The girls and I played at home for the day and then I joined some friends in their brand new home for some beef stew that evening.  They finally got to move back into their new home after rebuilding from the May 20th tornado.  The home is beautiful.


Wednesday we had another day without weather so off to work I went and then out to dinner with a dear friend for burgers.  I really enjoy spending time with her.  We can talk about anything.  Today we are snuggled in at home again waking up to a couple of inches of snow on the ground and, other than having to go grocery shopping and the vet hopefully tomorrow, we plan to stay put until John gets back home. 


Needless to say throughout all this the temps have been insanely cold.  We have had highs about 15 degrees for two days now with some wind chills anywhere from the actual temp to -5 degrees.  Takes your breath away. 


I actually made a hotel reservation for John for Saturday at the airport hotel in case he does arrive home on time and I can't get to him as there had been more snow predicted for that day.  Today, however, it appears we may have sunshine and 40 degrees on Saturday!!  But alas, that only lasts a day and more snow and cold temps predicted for Monday and Tuesday.  It's looking like more normal temps for the end of next week so we might actually get to travel south to Lake Arbuckle for the weekend.


Well that's enough for now.  Back to working on a jigsaw puzzle and maybe some baking.  I just thank the Lord for keeping our pipes thawed and taking us through this bitterly cold weather safely.  John did teach me how to winterize our RV if the heater went out but the Lord is taking care of me.

The Ice Storm on the First Day of Winter 2013

Winter came in like a lion on December 21, 2013.  The rain came down and down and down and froze all over the trees.  Although it was pretty and didn't have a huge affect on the roads (except bridges and overpasses) it was horrible for the trees.  In the RV park we stay in near Blanchard, OK it devastated probably 80% of them.  So very sad.  The good news is that it doesn't appear that any of the RVs

or vehicles were harmed.  The few vehicles that had tree limbs come down on them, had them come down softly rather than cracking and falling several feet.  

The owner of the park told me that she has seen it worse one time and that was about 2006 or 2007 and that the trees actually recovered.  It just takes so long.

I assume we will see and hear lots of chain saws once the ice has melted.  Most will have to be cut way back if not all the way to the trunk. There are a few that will have to be sawed down completely.  

When the storm started it dawned on us that we had not topped off our gas tank in the RV the last time we were on the road and we only had 1/4 tank of gas in it.  Ugh!  The generator will not run with only 1/4 of a tank and if the power goes out we are in a bit of a jam.  We certainly did not want to have to winterize the RV in the dark and freezing temps and have to find a place to go until the power came back on.  So off to Walmart John went to get some gas cans and gas.  He arrived home safely with 15 gallons of gas if we needed it.  We then found out from the park owner that they typically do not lose power in the park in ice storms and that she had lots of gas for us to use if needed.  She has it for all their heavy equipment they use in the park.  In the end the power only blipped off and on twice and for a very short time so all was good and we didn't need to fire up the generator.  

I wonder what is in store for us the rest of the winter.  Hopefully not more ice storms.  Snow is not a problem but I sure hope the ice and these bitter cold temps we have been experiencing are over.  Looking forward to sun the rest of this week and warmer temps.  They are predicting 60 degrees in a few days.  Awesome.  

Winter Has Arrived on December 5, 2013

Well winter has arrived with brute force on December 5, 2013.  This is our 3rd winter in our motorhome and I think this one is going to be the hardest so far.  Winter for the last 2 years wasn't bad -- very little ice or snow.  I'm not sure that will be the case this time around.  An arctic blast has blanketed a huge part of the country and we will not see anything above freezing for a week.  This is the coldest we have seen here in 30 years.  Our days are going to be in the low 20s and our nights as low as single digits.  I'm very happy we live in kind of a deep hole between two major roads so we are protected from the wind.  While others are seeing 15 mph or more we are well under 10 mph so wind chill isn't much of a factor here like in the city or up on the hills.  


Yesterday we saw some freezing rain and mostly sleet but this morning woke up to 1-2" of snow and it is still lightly snowing. It's very pretty and about 20 degrees.  We are having to put sweaters and winter coats on the dogs to take them outside.

This week we are dog sitting for some friends who are on a cruise in the western Caribbean.  Boy are they in for a shock when they arrive home Sunday!!  So we have 3 dogs to get ready to walk each time they need to go out but they seem to like playing in the snow.  

Life in a motorhome in this type of weather can be interesting.  Since this is the coldest we have ever experienced it makes me a bit nervous but so far so good.  We are under a metal cover that has metal walls around it on the bottom as well so we are a bit more protected than the others in the park.  We have a thermostatically controlled heated hose hooked up so we don't have to wrap our hose.  Where we connect to the water is in a hole in the ground that is quite deep with a cover on top of it and that seems to work well keeping that part from freezing up as well.  We are leaving all the lights on in our storage bays to give it all a bit more heat underneath and we have central heat that heats up where all the water pipes are underneath.  Where we hook up the hose to the coach is behind a bay door and when you open that up and feel the area with your hand it all seems to be warm as well.  So hopefully we should be good to go with the pipes not freezing up.

Inside we are needing to keep all the night shades pulled down to help hold the heat in a bit better since our windows are single pane which is a bit of a downer.  I love light and want to be able to see the snow but it just makes it harder to heat.  We finally broke down and are running a space heater at the front of the coach where it is the draftiest.  So all that is left is putting on some extra clothes and watching the level of the propane tank.  We have a wonderful guy that delivers propane directly to us once a week but I'm sure he would come on an off day if we were running out.

For all of you that are experiencing this very cold weather, stay warm and safe.

The Cold Nights Have Arrived

We are having a magnificent Fall season this year.  I love the cooler temps.  The days are warm enough not to need a coat and the evenings and nights are crisp - sweatshirt weather.  John and I have taken so many walks with the dogs enjoying the outdoors.  This week the temps are now taking a bit of a bigger dive and we have had a couple of nights below freezing so winter is coming.

The first weekend in November we were able to drive down the Talimena scenic drive from Talihina, Oklahoma to Mena, Arkansas and it delivered!  The colors were amazing.  After arriving in Mena we traveled up to Fort Smith which was also very pretty and spent the night there before heading home the following morning. 

The thermostatically controlled heated hose is plugged in, the blankets and warm jackets are out and ready to use and the propane tank is full so we are ready for the winter to come. Our last two winters in the RV have been pretty mild with respect to snow and ice - not like the winter we had 13" of snow on Christmas Eve!  We were still in our house then.  Everybody is saying we are supposed to have a hard winter so we may get a taste of some significant snow and ice this year.  At least we are parked under a metal cover so that should protect us a bit from it piling up on top of our coach. 

We are in the process of downsizing some of our vehicles and things.  We have had two cars where we live in Newcastle and another vehicle at our lot near Lake Arbuckle that we use to get around down there and it tows our boat and waverunner.  This past week we traded one of our cars off for a Jeep Wrangler and hopefully have a buyer for our vehicle at our lake lot.  Now all we need are buyers for our motorcycle and our car and bike hauler that we use behind our RV.  So the jeep will replace our motorcycle -- we can take the top off and have 4 wheels under us instead of 2.  It will be nice to be down to two vehicles.  We can tow the jeep behind the RV with all 4 wheels on the ground which will be much easier than loading it on a trailer. 

John has Thanksgiving off so we are hoping the weather is good enough for us to travel to our lake lot in Sulphur and spend the holiday there.  I hope all of you have had a wonderful Fall season as well. 

Our Fall Vacation

Our fall vacation was kind of a staycation.  We and the girls spent a week at our lot in Cedar Blue near Lake Arbuckle (Sulphur, OK).  It was an absolutely gorgeous week.  Temps were in the 60s to 70s during the day and sunny with lows in the 40s and 50s at night.  We enjoyed the outdoors for hours each day and the girls just ran and wrestled with each other.  They slept like logs at night.

We got some projects done.  We cleaned out our storage shed and filled up the back of the SUV with lots of trash.  Wow, you can actually move around in the shed now and find things!  I painted the trim on it as well.  John setup a new more permanent system for running our sewer hose from the RV so he doesn't have to crawl under it anymore.  The boat went to the shop for a tune-up and winterizing and we cleaned up the lot and restacked the wood pile.  John finished up the projects by winterizing the waverunner.  The projects kept us from sitting on our blessed assurances too much! 

On Wednesday we took the girls with us to Pauls Valley and met John's sister, Jo Ann, at Wacker Park in where we ate lunch and enjoyed visiting for a couple of hours.  They have a pretty rose garden there and the smell of the roses was really nice.  On Thursday we drove to Gordonville, TX to check out the Cedar Mills Marina and Resort on Lake Texoma as a possible place to vacation next year.  After our big spree this year to Yellowstone, the Black Hills and the Badlands for two weeks we decided to find a nice RV park on a lake close by where we could easily drive the motorhome and a separate vehicle to pull the waverunner.  This place was very nice and had a small RV park with all the sites near the waters edge.  It's only about 75 miles south of us at Cedar Blue and it will be nice to enjoy the evenings by the water.  We plan to head that way in late June.  They have cabins so friends and family are more than welcome to join us!! 

Each evening this week we took the girls for a walk after dinner before the sun set and then enjoyed a campfire.  John and the girls laid in the hammock beside the fire while I bundled up with a blanket in a comfy chair next to it.   

On Saturday much needed rain came down. Poor little April she doesn't like storms and gets so nervous.  So a dose of Benadryl and snuggled in Daddy's lap made for a peaceful afternoon for her.  Our motorhome has a built-in unit on the dash that has the radio, camera screen, weather radio, etc.  Every time we have any weather that can set off a weather radio that unit just comes on automatically and the weather radio starts broadcasting for wherever we are.  It's wonderful and creepy at the same time that it can just come on automatically. 

Saturday afternoon we tried out the cafe at the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur for lunch.  The prices were good as was the food.  The cafe has huge windows all around it that look out onto the beautiful grounds.  You can access the grounds and the cafe without having to pay any admission fees.  It's a very peaceful place to visit and the museum is very well done.  You should plan at least 3-4 hours if you visit the museum.  Lots to see.

We finally had to break out the winter jackets for ourselves and the girls Saturday night.  By early evening it was already down to the upper 40's once it got dark.  I love this time of year!

Sunday was another beautiful day and after church we finished up the rest of our projects and got to enjoy the afternoon.  We have decided to sell our motorcycle and SUV and get a used Jeep Wrangler.  So we cleaned up the SUV and took pictures so we could post them online.  The jeep will be safer than the motorcycle and we can still have fun with it, especially with the top off.  When we travel we plan to pull the jeep and hopefully find a good buy on a 3-wheel scooter as backup transportation/2nd vehicle if needed.      

On Monday vacation came to an end and we had to head back to the city.  It's a rare occasion that we actually stay close to home for a week's vacation but it was great and very restful.  Much more so than traveling around the country. 

The RV is in the Shop

We were finally able to drop off the RV to the truck repair center this past Sunday afternoon.  We were having mechanical problems with it and just needed to wait to repair it until we could stay with friends.  Bless these friends.  They are angels!  When an RV has to go in for repairs you are at the mercy of the repair shops and truck centers and it could be days or weeks before it is done.  So not having to incur the enormous costs of hotels (especially with dogs) is an incredible blessing.  It's so nice that we can give back to this couple by house and pet sitting for them when they are away.  They have 3 dogs, 3 cats and a bird so lots to take care of. 

On the way to the repair shop the problems were horrible and I was a bit concerned we wouldn't make it, but God answered prayer and we were able to drive the entire distance without the help of a tow truck, although it lurched, sputtered, quit running once and wouldn't restart for a bit.  We are being told they think it is a bad fuel pump so they are starting with that.  We pray that it's that simple but the symptoms definitely fit.  Just hard to imagine that a fuel pump would go bad on a brand new RV in the first 7 months.  Maybe we had some bad gas or something.

We are enjoying our time at our friend's home as are the girls.  Lots of animals for them to play with.  As you probably saw in my last post, Bailey had been attacked by a dog and gave us the scare of our life over Labor Day weekend.  She is finally back to her old self but it took a while.  Half way through the week after the attack she started to drink tons of water and was peeing everywhere, including on herself in her sleep.  She had also become very lethargic.  So back to the doggy ER for a slew of blood tests, urinalysis and ultrasound to see if there was more going on then we thought.  Thankfully, nothing showed up so we went with the easy and most obvious thing and that was to stop the steroid ointment I was rubbing on her belly.  Between it being rubbed onto her skin and her licking it, that was the most likely culprit.  So she got a good bath and sure enough, slowly but surely she started to improve and she is finally back to normal with some abdominal scars to show for it. 

We are hoping to get our house back on Friday so we can maybe get back down to our lake lot the following weekend.  We love our weekends there and miss them as we haven't been down there in a month.  Since putting in the tornado shelter we have been tossing around ideas of what to do with the yard to make it more attractive and cover up the large cement shelter in the middle of it.  We have come up with some ideas but until we can get back down there to measure some things it's really hard figure out what we can do.  I think one tends to think there is more space then there really is when all you can do is visualize it in your mind.  So I see a new project on the horizon.

While we have been staying with our friends I have had a chance to really dig into my large and tedious job of scanning all our photo albums as well as my Mother's albums.  They have been stored in these people's garage for two years and I have been very slow to get through this project.  So we hauled our printer/scanner with us and I have spent many hours this week scanning and enjoying the pictures.  In fact I've set some albums aside to look through with my sisters when they visit next spring.  It will be fun to reminisce.  We had several large boxes of albums stored and I had gotten through some of them prior to this visit but today I am now down to one box!!  Amazing.  We will be spending 1 1/2 weeks here in October house and pet sitting for them while they are away so I hope to bring an end to this project during that time.  We'll see.  The albums are too heavy and take up too much space in the RV to keep them so digitizing them makes the most sense.  Then we can burn them to discs to share with the family if they want any of them.  After all how many times does one really get out all the family photo albums to look at them.  Not very often!  Aren't computers awesome. 

Signing off for now.  Have a great week.

Labor Day Weekend 2013

Labor Day Weekend is coming to an end and overall we had a nice weekend.  We took in a movie on Friday and saw The Butler.  It was a good movie and the time passed quicker than I expected.  We left the theater experiencing a lot of emotions though.  Both of us grew up in the time period the movie covers but didn't personally experience the horrors that black people experienced.  I was raised in Minnesota and don't recall having any black people in our city so all I knew was what I saw on TV and at my age I wasn't much interested in watching the news.  We also didn't have to deal with integration at our schools or anywhere else that I recall - including the counters at Woolworths!  I recommend seeing the movie.

We enjoyed an afternoon in the pool and eating pizza with friends on Saturday.  The girls were able to go with us and Bailey seemed to enjoy being carried in the pool since it was hot.  The two girls chased each other around the pool and had a good time as well.  We hadn't had any time in the last few months to just relax with our friends and enjoy each other's company so it was a nice way to end the day.

Sunday started out as a good day with Sunday School and church but it didn't end on such a good note.  After dinner I was walking the girls in the RV park on leashes when I came upon one of our neighbors out walking his dog as well.  His dog is about twice the size of ours but the three of them had interacted before and seemed to get along just fine.  The two of us visited for a bit while the dogs hung out.  The owner of the park came by on her golf cart to see our girls and while they were jumping up on her and she was egging them on this guy's dog suddenly grabbed Bailey by what appeared to be her ear and started hauling on her.  She started yelping and while his owner was trying to get her off Bailey she then grabbed her by the rear leg and abdomen.  Bailey was screaming at this point and I thought we were going to watch her die.  I was able to reach down and grab this dog's mouth and she let go and didn't attack me - thank goodness although I wouldn't have cared if it saved Bailey.  Poor Bailey was a bit bloody on her abdomen and vaginal area but it all appeared to be surface wounds.  Everybody felt horrible as this attack was totally unexpected.  The dog's owner thinks she went into protective mode when the girls were jumping on the park owner.  We went ahead and took her to the doggie ER as I was pretty sure we would need antibiotics at the very least.  Bailey never yelped or acted like she was in pain once away from the dog which was a relief.  After a thorough checking over they felt she was fine and gave her antibiotics, some pain meds and some ointment for her injuries.  The dog's owner also paid our vet bill which was nice of him. 

A lot of people who come into the park have dogs but we probably will not allow our girls to interact with them from this point on.  This was just too close for us and they have each other to play with as well as some other doggie friends they we see all the time. 

Today we started the day by making hotel reservations for when my sisters and their husbands plan to visit in March and April of next year.  Can't wait for them to come.  Should be fun.  My Aunt, who is 85, may also join us but that remains to be seen.  I'm hoping her health is such that she will come.  Then we took the girls to visit a nice lady that Bailey and I met at the hospital after the tornadoes.  She is now in a rehab center and doing well.  She was in a vehicle that got hit by one of the tornadoes and ended up a paraplegic.  She had a dog with her that was gone and she was unable to look for her.  To add to all this she isn't from this area.  My hats off to the Red Cross and FEMA as this sweet lady had no income and didn't live here and they were able to secure her hospital care and now rehab as her life has drastically changed.  They are also helping to get her disability.  Another feel good part to this story is one of her PT folks at the hospital went out and found her dog amazingly enough and is fostering it for her so she gets to see the dog about once a week.  We had a nice visit with her today and she is getting herself around in a wheelchair.  They are working with her to learn how to take care of herself as well as how to get around out in the community.  The Red Cross is also working with her to get her relocated to her home state with a family member when she is ready to be moved.  WOW is all I can say.  She had a big smile and has always had a great attitude throughout all of this.  She is a joy to visit.  I know she would like to go to a park or something so I hope we can take her out sometime to do that or maybe a movie or something.  I hope that she can put all this to use to help others who are paralyzed to learn how to cope.

After visiting with this lady we swung by my youngest son's house to see where he now lives and visit with him for a while.  It was so nice to see that he was getting along just fine and paying his own way.  He has rented a house and fixed it up a lot including putting in central air.  It was nice and clean and he had done well finding ways to furnish it.  He also has a couple of jobs.  One is with a demolition company that is obviously keeping very busy with all the places that were hit by the tornadoes and the other is a dozer company.  It seems like both of my sons have a knack for running heavy machinery and both have CDLs. 

We ended the day with the same friends we saw on Saturday and with some more of their family for a swim and cookout.  Since the party was at a family member's home that has dogs ours have not met we decided they needed to stay home where they are safe and sound. 

Back to work tomorrow and really looking forward to that colonoscopy I have to have on Thursday!  NOT!  Just routine but absolutely hate the prep.