Here we are, on the road: Time sure flys when you're having fun!!

Sunday, November 02, 2008

Lorraine's post

What a great week we’ve just had! We are here in Morgan Hill, CA at Thousand Trails RV Park. We are just forty five minutes or so from where our daughter and her family live. We spent the week driving everyday to Sunnyvale, CA; picking up our grand daughter, Kaitlyn, from her day care and watching her until her parents got off of work. We would make dinner or eat out, returning home each day late, totally exhausted. Then get up and do it all over again.

Kaitlyn is such great fun and for a three year old, can run rings around each of us, and wear all four of us out before she collapsed into her bed each evening. She is one very active little girl, we loved the time we spent with her.

Friday, October 31, we went to Kaitlyn’s day care Halloween party at 10:30 am. All the children in day care from the tiny babies to the older pre school children dressed up in costumes and paraded around the play area. The parents were invited to come and watch; hundreds of pictures were taken that morning. It was great fun for all the students and parents.

Kaitlyn’s Godmother, Yami, from Florida, sent her a bunch of Disney princess dresses, so Kaitlyn went to school in one, Princess Belle, a yellow one, and put on another for Trick or Treat that night, Princess Aurora, a pink one. Yami works part time at Disney World to get the great discounts. Thank you Yami for Kaitlyn’s pretty princess dresses. She loved wearing them, and wanted to go out the next day for more Trick or Treats, so we had to tell her Halloween was over for the year.

We were invited over to one of Kaitlyn’s classmates’ home for a Halloween Party. They had turned their home into Batman’s castle, (they had painted plywood and put it in front of the actual house), the parents dressed up as Batman and Joker. They handed out lighted necklaces, candy, rings and pencils to the many children and parents arriving to see the great decorations; the place was really hopping.

Our friends, Joe and Alice from Bellingham, WA came to Morgan Hill for the first time this past week. While we haven’t been able to spend much time with them, we still enjoy their company. We went to breakfast with them today to a restaurant called Black Bear in Gilroy, CA. Good food, good company, the sun was shining and it was warm, what more can you ask for?

Susy and I spent the weekend together shopping but mainly, it is a time for us to just be together. It’s so hard for us to leave each other. It’s great we will be back there for Thanksgiving, and then again for Christmas.

Chuck had a bad ear ache earlier in the week and I had him take the Z-packs we bought in Mexico in January. Hopefully, he is over it and it doesn’t come back.

So that’s it, until next time, bye for now…Lorraine

11/3/08
Chuck's report

Maybe you've noticed, we didn't get this posted on Sunday as has been our usual for the past few weeks. Today is Monday, I'm writing this after we left Morgan Hill about 10:30 this morning and traveled to Bakersfield, California, pulled in about 4:00. After setting up, walking the dog and washing the bugs off the front, it's time to work on this.

The past week Lorraine and I got to play Nana and Papa with our only granddaughter, Kaitlyn. We enjoy spending time with our daughter, Susy and her husband, Mark also. We would get up in the morning, get ready to head out and pick up Kaitlyn from day care. Some days we would just take her back to their house and spend the afternoon playing, others were spent running errands with her along. After Mark and Susy got off work, we would spend time with them, too. Mark has a extra, after hours teaching job on Tuesday and Wednesday that keeps him working until 10:00 so we didn't spend any time with him on those two days.

Last Sunday, we went with them to a pumpkin patch that had lots choices on pumpkins, kiddy rides and other booths for kids. It was about 90F that day, too hot for Lorraine and me. Kaitlyn sure enjoyed spending time there although by the end of the afternoon she was getting a bit tired and cranky, (me too, Lorraine said).

Susy marked up the pumpkins and Kaitlyn and I carved them on Tuesday afternoon. This is the first time I used a Dermal tool with a cutting bit to carve the faces, sure was easier and we were able to make better looking cuts with it. However, I forgot to take any pictures so you will just have to take my word for it, they turned out pretty nice.

Last week's post showed Kaitlyn dressing up in her princess dresses. She sure likes to dress up and Lorraine loves to dress her up. On Halloween, we went to her school for a kids parade then took her with us for the rest of the day. That evening, we went to one of her classmate's house and then did a bit of trick or treating around their house. Again, a very busy, long day for her.

Sunday, Lorraine and Susy spent the day together while Mark, Kaitlyn and I went to Gilroy Gardens for the afternoon. This is an amusement park for kids and has lots of learning opportunity for the kids. Kaitlyn has season pass there and sure knows her way around. It was another nice afternoon for us.

Two of our good friends, Joe and Alice Morin, from Bellingham are starting their witner snowbirding trip and came down to our campground. I've known Joe since we both hired on at ARCO in 1972, we have even worked the same unit and shift a couple of times too. We enjoyed spending some time with them but didn't get to spend as much as we would have liked, wanted to spend most of our time with Kaitlyn. We know we will see Joe and Alice later this winter, probably in Yuma. They stayed at Morgan Hill for another week, we couldn't talk them into coming with us.

One thing that Joe and Alice brought from Washington was rain. It started raining Friday night, almost all day on Saturday and Saturday night. Central California is going through a two year drought and they needed the rain, although we could have done without while we were there. I don't know how much rain we got but some of the areas in the Bay got over 5' of rain. Heck, I could have stayed in Bellingham and experienced rain, although I must say, it was not a cold rain like back home this time of the year.

A couple of nights, Lorraine fixed a nice dinner for all of us. Unfortunately, the park we were in only had 30 amp and that was spotty at best. The power would dip, the surge protector would trip off the power and need reset. She was using an electric fry pan so we had to shut off all the other power users in the coach and with the low power and trips, it took her almost an 1 ½ hours to fry chicken one night.

I watched and it appears the power would fluctuate from 117 amps to a low of 102 amps, too low to operate electrical equipment, especially the air conditioners. Now I am no electrician by any stretch of the imagination but I know there is an apparatus available called an autoformer that will boost the amps, at the expense of volts. I am now in search of one of these, we don't want to go back to that park again without something to help us with the power situation there. I would have thought that after 18 months living in the motorhome, I would have bought all the gadgets I needed. Oh well, live and learn (and spend money).

Tomorrow is election day, make sure you vote. Both sides say the election is hinged on voter turnout, don't be one of the no shows! I say this even if your vote cancels out mine, Mark, ha.

Well, that brings up sort of up to date again. I will try to add some pictures and get this posted. Until next time - - - -

Chuck