Here we are, on the road: Yep, still here in Birch Bay

Sunday, August 14, 2011 Lorraine’s report

So the time is getting short and we are winding down our time here at Latitude 49 in Birch Bay, WA. This past week was busy as usual.

Susy and Kaitlyn left us early Monday morning. I guess I don’t know why Allegiant Air doesn’t fly on Tuesdays, but they don’t. Susy had to be back at work sooner rather than later, so they had to leave. It’s so hard to let your children go! I had a great birthday weekend, visiting with my daughter and granddaughter and all my friends. Thank you everyone for making my birthday so special for me!

Tuesday found me at my oncology doctor’s for my yearly exam. I had the blood work done a week earlier, so he could give me the results. Great news….my cancer markers were normal for me, and there was nothing new. This time he told me I could see him or see my regular doctor instead of him in a year if I wanted, I told him I would see him next year. Can’t tell you what joy this brings me. I continue to pray to God that it stays this way.

Wednesday was Chuck’s turn. We drove to Mt. Vernon so he could get his new hearing aids the VA ordered for him. He had the sweetest smile when he came out of the examining room; he was wearing his new hearing aids and could actually hear normally. I’ve notice the television doesn’t have to be turned up as loud as it used to be, and in the car the sound is turned way down, compared to what it used to be. He has been using them everyday since and says they don’t hurt his ears like the other ones did. Hurray!

We had errands after that and then went to get new phones for us. My AT &T contract was completed on my birthday this year. I had picked up my phone 2 years earlier in Wasilla, Alaska, and could finally get out of that contract without paying a penalty.

Thursday, Chuck was busy making reservations for us for when we leave here and head to Utah. I had phone calls to make. Completing that Chuck went with Joe to work on repairs that need to be made to our house in town, Joe had stuff to work on in Chuck’s woodshop; and I went with Alice to the mall. I needed to learn/fix things on my new phone. We all decided we should be home by 4 pm.

Chuck had made plans to meet friends, Steve & Lin. We went by their home and then went to dinner to the New York Pizza & Bar Restaurant. We spent a wonderful evening visiting and catching up with good friends and to top everything off, the food was excellent! Thanks Steve & Lin!

Friday Chuck worked on something on the washing machine, to make it easier to work on the next time. Again we had errands to run, and headed into town. We stopped at Boxx Berry Farms for raspberries and I was able to freeze some for the winter.

Chuck then stopped at an RV place for siding for our house that Joe told him about. Seems a chunk of vinyl siding came off the front of our old house. The leasers said the wind blew it off, but their boys play basketball there and we think they jumped on it and ripped it off. Anyway Chuck was able to get matching vinyl to fix it at that RV place. Thank goodness, I could see us shelling out a lot of money to match, replace and fix it.

Following a late lunch, Chuck and I rested and waited to hear from Joy and Rick. They bought a lot at Beachwood and were coming down to complete their business. We planned on hooking up with them. They arrived after 5 and Joy and I wanted to go to the Silver Reef Casino. They guys didn’t want to go, so Joy and I went together.

Now Sandy and Richard had given me cash tickets from the Reef to play on for my birthday. Susy, our daughter gave me some also, as did Sandy of Steve and Sandy. I took the $45.25 from my friends back to the Reef. I ended up with $180, clear! And Joy and I had a blast that evening. Thanks everyone.

Saturday Chuck went to the house to fix the vinyl siding while I again had more errands. Chuck called me when he finished on the house, I was just about done; I picked him up and we headed home. We made plans to go to dinner to Bob’s Burgers with Rick and Joy. They came back to our rig and we had a rousing game of Pass the Love, with Joy whipping us all up. We said our goodbyes to Rick and Joy, planning on meeting them in Quartzsite this winter.

I went to church this morning. Chuck dropped me off and picked me back up afterwards since Misty had a grooming appointment at noon. From church we went over to see Rick and Joy again. They were on their new lot, so Chuck got to see it. Again, we said our goodbyes and came home. See you both next January, and safe travels.

This next week will be our last full week here before we leave and head out to Utah. We are looking forward to being on the road again. We have been here since February 22, six months and a couple of days. Since we went on the road four years ago, we have not been in one place this long.

Until next time….Lorraine

8/14/2011 Chuck’s report

Well, as the title says, we decided to stay here and not go to Leavenworth for the Lewis and Clark Rally. Will think about you folks and hope you have a good time there, maybe next time. It was a toss-up until the very last, we didn’t really make up our minds until Thursday morning to stay here vs. attending the rally.

We did get some bad news however, Loretta Lynn had to cancel her appearance for the Lynden fair this week, I think I heard something about a broken foot or the like. Too bad but we’ll get by without seeing her again, hopefully there will be another chance some other year.

We had a quieter week this week, compared to some. I think I mentioned I managed to repair our clothes washer, it’s still working too. We went to the Verizon store and Lorraine switched over to their service instead of AT&T she had. We both got new phones but kept the same numbers, both on Verizon service now. Lorraine is having fun figuring out the new stuff on her phone.

We also went to Mt. Vernon to the Vets where I got my new hearing aides. I’m still adjusting to them, it’s a bit hard to tune out some of the noise but I can at least hear those noises now. It is especially hard to tune out the background voices when we are at a restaurant or other “noisy” area but everyone says I’ll get used to it. Lorraine has already commented about how I don’t have the television or radio turned up so high so I guess that’s a good thing.

I spent some time at our house, we have it leased out now but there was some work needed on it. Joe told me of a place that might have some vinyl siding that would match the stuff on the house so I went by to check them out. This place is going out of business and happened to have 4 pieces that were very close, maybe a bit lighter but close enough. Lorraine dropped me off and when she came back she said it looked very good, could hardly tell which pieces were new except for the location where the old ones were missing when she left.

I did some work on setting up our schedule for our trip through Utah this next month. I actually made reservations at a couple of places, something we don’t do very often but wanted to make sure we had some place to park and use as a home base while we are out exploring while we are there. Sure looks like a lot to see and do, we’ll probably be busy playing tourists once again.

Our friends Rick/Joy came down to Beachwood on Friday. Lorraine and Joy went to the casino that night, they were only there for a couple of hours but Lorraine came out a winner, yea. We also invited them over to our place for a friendly game of “Pass the Love” last night. I think we played two games and Joy only lost two hands the whole night. Seeing as how we were playing for “fun” rather than for money, maybe she should have gone to the casino and used her luck there. But we had fun and enjoyed their company.

This morning, Lorraine got ready for church and I took Misty to the groomers just before church was over. We stopped over to see Rick/Joy at their place before they headed back home to Canada this afternoon.

We came back to the rig and started our blog, had to stop right here and go pick up Misty, she looks pretty good. She sure didn’t like being in a cage, we never did train her to use a cage. We could hear her barking from outside the place when we parked the car. Once we got back here, she settled right down.

The weather has been fairly nice this past week, cloudy, cool mornings but warming up with sun every afternoon. The normal highs for this time of the year are mid to high 70s, we’ve been in the upper 60s, low 70s but nice anyway. The forecast was for rain today/tonight but it’s been just overcast so far. But I’ll still take this over the very hot temperatures some parts of the nation are still getting. We haven’t been using either heat at night or air conditioning during the afternoons, just have the vent fans running and the windows open.

The plans for this week are to complete Lorraine’s round of doctor visits, I have to see my doctor at the veterans place and then we should be good to go for another year. Lorraine’s mammogram and oncologist visit were both good, no signs of cancer from either, YEA. We will make at least one visit to the Lynden fair, not sure what day we’ll go. We’ll probably have a couple visits with friends and then "Here we are, on the road” will be our theme once again.

I’ll add some of the few pictures Lorraine took this week and get this posted.

We met Lynn and Steve for dinner, a good time.