Transitions -- 2018

December 10, 2018 – Palmdale RV Park, Los Fresnos, TX

So, I have been reminded lately that I have a blog and it is not up to date. There are updates to be made for sure. It looks like the last time I posted anything was at the end of August. That was a long time ago and much has changed. As most people know, we have been in Texas since the middle of October busy redesigning our lives again. I’ve been sitting here trying to get my Christmas address list up to date and maybe actually print out labels since I now have the technology to do such a thing easily…. Once I learn how to use Office to make labels. I’m listening to Don and helpful friends work on putting up posts on the screen porch that they are building onto our new mobile home.

We’ve been living here since about October 20.

Edie

I will digress for a while and bring you up to date as to how we got to the place we are now. Last time I wrote, we had just returned from Camp Deer and were finishing up the sale of Kelly’s house. 

At the Cake Walk - Fall festival

First day of school

Hand stand

September was supposed to be nice and slow as we wanted to spend time with Edie. We did that. Each Tuesday we drove into the city to pick her up from school and take her to gymnastics class. We had a little time between school and gymnastics to spoil her with Happy Meals and the Mall of America. Those were fine September days. Whenever possible we found an excuse to spend some of the weekend with her family for Papa Murphy’s pizza or a cookout. When we weren’t doing that, we were busy finishing some details on the house.

Back at it's original parking spot

Kelly's House

The motor home did not sell this summer so a week before we sold the house, we went over to Lazy Days in Anoka and picked up the camper to bring back to Texas. The sales manager said that we could leave it in Minnesota and they might sell it in the winter. He said that the batteries might not freeze. That was a easy decision. Besides, we needed a place to stay while we traveled and for the first couple of weeks once we got here. It made moving stuff to Texas so much easier since we could move our clothes and household supplies back into the camper. So we used it for moving. Don pulled the trailer with the motor home and I followed in the car. We took about 10 days to get here stopping for a couple of days in Springfield, Hannibal and Lake of the Ozarks.

September 28 marked the culmination of our summer’s work. It was a little bit frosty when we got up in the morning and sugar maples were turning to yellow and gold around Kelly’s house. Our trailer was loaded with furniture and household goods thanks to brother Ludwig’s help a couple of days earlier. The house was empty as was the garage and shed except for the few items that homebuyers Scott and Jill said they wanted. We threw in that miserable Cub Cadet lawn tractor that we nursed through the summer. We donated a C-clamp and explained to Scott how to use it to keep the gas from leaking back into the engine between starts. We also gave him the name of the small engine guy in Stillwater who had been so helpful. The motor home was parked out front and ready to go. We had spent the night there. All we had was a few items left in the bathroom so that we could take our last shower before we took off. I took a nostalgic walk through the house checking it out to make sure it was as “neat and pristine” as I could make it. We have a lot of wonderful memories in this house, not just from this summer but from the years that Kelly lived here. So my feelings were mixed as we closed and locked the door for the last time. We hooked up the trailer to the car and I lead the way over to Hatfield RV Park in New Richmond where we wanted to empty our tanks and hook up the trailer to the motor home. That took some extra time as Don had to grind off our hitch to get it to fit the motor home.

Fixing the hitch

Once we finished that we moved everything over to Wal Mart on the other end of town where we thought we’d spend the night. We made it back to the closing just before Scott and Jill arrived with their family. Since we were not the sellers, we were left out of the actual transaction and our only reason for being there was to hand over the keys. We also had few minutes to visit with Scott and Jill who had become our friends through the process of buying Kelly’s house. Scott said that he planned to sit on his front porch and enjoy a beer at the end of this day. As a new Wisconsin resident we had introduced him to New Glarus Spotted Cow and left him with a couple of bottles in the refrigerator of his new house. We didn’t stay that night in New Richmond but decided to head down the road on to our next adventure.

9/28 – Tomah, WI at Wal Mart

9/29- 10/1 - Springfield Illinois at the Illinois State Fairgrounds

10/2 – Hannibal, MO, Wal Mart

10/3-4 – Home of Lee and Max Ellmaker at Lake of the Ozarks

10/5 – Marina RV Park, Waco, TX

10/6 – Kyle, TX – Wal Mart

10/7 – Los Fresnos, TX, Palmdale RV Park

We arrived at Palmdale on October 7 and went to work getting this place set up. It was delivered on October 17. Walking out of the park office and seeing our house coming through the gate was exciting. Given all our jokes about “valley time” and manana, I was never certain that things would happen exactly as we were told. But the mobile home pulled into the park 3 days later than planned just as we expected. The movers stopped and got out to figure out how they would get it over to Lot # 25.

This was pretty much the most exciting thing that has happened around here since the last house was brought in. People gathered in their golf carts and on bicycle to watch the undertaking. Slowly and methodically, the movers turned the corner, cutting across the lawn, placing sheets of plywood over cement patios so as not to break them and positioning the house so as to back it and place it behind 2 big palm trees. It was a remarkable undertaking and we had some talented people working for us. Once it was in place, we went out for lunch. When we returned, they already had the house pretty much tied down enough to keep it from being blown away in a hurricane.

Our new kitc

By October 20, we had our plumbing and electricity hooked up so we could sleep here on air mattresses on the floor. Our bed didn’t come until November 7. We are furnished enough so that we can live comfortably now. We brought a few pieces with us, bought some stuff new and some from the neighbors. We are looking for a dining room table at auctions and on Craigs List.  We are using lawn chairs and a fold up camp table for eating. Works well.

Reading to Grandpa

Reading

The highlight of our fall was our trip to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving with Kelly, Jason and Jett. We flew out on November 19 for 9 days and stayed in their basement. Each day we would wake up to Jett’s cheerful little voice. She has a lot to say but her grandparents are a little slow in learning her language. Much of the time we spent sitting around the house just watching her and reading whatever book she brought to us from her extensive library of toddler books.

On Thanksgiving we cooked copious amounts of food and Jason’s parents, sister and niece came with even more food so that we had enough to feed at least two more families. This included 7 deserts, almost one per person. Jason and Kelly took us on a tour of one of the many DuPont mansions (Hagley Museum) in the Wilmington area just down I95 from them. Besides that, we ate a lot of leftovers.

Some photos to show that it hasn't all been work and some of the best pictures of our beautiful granddaughters we have received from the kids.