Some Progress

Billings, MT  High 89  Low 52

The dry wall hanger came on Saturday and got his part of the repairs done. Today the finisher started doing his thing. However, his work won’t be finished until everything dries which probably won’t be until Friday. So very slowly things are getting done.

However, about 80% of the house is painted. Todd and Michaela are doing an excellent job and the walls look so clean and fresh.

Michaela getting into those hard to reach areas.

Jim rebuilt the floor and sides of our old trailer that we use to haul stuff. He’s already made one trip to the landfill and a trip to Goodwill. Currently the backseat of the truck is filled with stuff for another trip to Goodwill and the trailer is almost ready to go back to the landfill.

I’ve spent a lot of time shredding stuff that I had forgotten we left here. Lots more yet to go.

We also went to a potluck at Renee and Dick’s house. We spent some time planning our 50th Class Reunion which is scheduled for September 2017. I can’t believe it’s been almost 50 years. My classmates all look as good as they did in high school. I’m the only one that has gotten old.

Jim, David, and Renee

Nancy and Claude

Margaret and Claudia

Lynn (holding Sidney the eagle)

Claudia and Delores

Dick and Larry

Nolan

Good food, good friends, good reminiscing.

Happy Father’s Day

Billings, MT  High 84  Low 56

My dad and I in 1949. I sure do miss him. Wishing all the Dad’s a very Happy Father’s Day.

Friday was Todd’s 30th birthday. Hard to believe it’s been 30 years since I was cussing out the nurse in the recovery room. She wanted me to lay on my left side and I wasn’t going to do it. I had toxemia and they induced labor in order to save both our lives. Supposedly laying on your left side will help to bring down high blood pressure. But all it did was make me miserable. As soon as they listened to me and let me lay on my right side, my blood pressure started to come down.

However, I didn’t get to see Todd for many hours because I was so sick. Jim kept reassuring me that Todd was doing great but finally about 4:00 in the morning the nurse took pity on me and actually snuck him out of the nursery so I could see for myself that he was small but just fine.

We went to Guadalajara for his birthday dinner. Good choice.

Todd and Michaela

Everything is moving along with the house. Not fast enough for me but we should have the dry wall done next Saturday and then hopefully things will move rapidly after that.

Gotta Love Those Wings

Billings, MT   High 71  Low 49

Several of you commented on our friends who travel with 9 children. Dana has written several really great posts about how they full time with such a large family. If you are interested in their story, please check out her blog at Traveling Tribe.  I also want you to know that this is one family that we would definitely camp next to. I am old and not very patient with kids anymore, but these children are incredibly polite and respectful. Just a total delight.

Jan – you mentioned the old kitchen floor. This is what it looked like before:

And after:

Very different and it has taken me a little while to get used to it.

Todd got a new grill for his birthday and he and Jim had bonding time putting it together. I think Todd did most of the work though.

Then Todd grilled our dinner for us. It was soooo good. Always love it when I don’t have to cook.

While Todd was putting together the grill, Jim was busy taking apart the old back steps

and building new ones. Still need to paint the railing.

We still don’t have a dry wall person yet. Hopefully today.

We have been having severe thunderstorms almost every afternoon and had some pea sized hail a couple of days ago. There was a tornado that touched down in Baker, MT in the extreme eastern part of the state which has also been hit really hard with large hail.  I will be so glad when this unsettled weather finally settles down into summer.

This was our beautiful sky last night.

Updates and Some Good Friends

Billings, MT  High  93  Low 61

We are having record heat here in Montana. Normal this time of year is in the 70’s and we are having temps in the 90’s. Kind of like most of the rest of the country. And with all the heat comes the afternoon and evening storms. Eastern Montana has been hit really hard this year with hail and wind damage. And yesterday, a tornado touched down in Baker, MT (which is on the eastern border) and destroyed several homes. Be safe out there.

A couple of updates:

Retired Rod – we haven’t heard much of anything on how he’s doing. I do know the family is waiting for the radiology report. Other than that I just don’t have any information to pass on to you. As soon as the family wants to share some news with me, I’ll do an update post for him.

Scooter – our mighty hunter is hanging in there. She had another seizure last night and the cough from her congestive heart failure is worse. But her good days still far outnumber the bad days so we are treasuring every minute we have with her.

The house – don’t even ask. Our biggest issue has been finding somebody to do the dry wall for us. Our contractor has not been able to find anyone because the competent ones are all so busy with other jobs. So we have been trying to find someone on our own. I think we have somebody to do the job and we’ll find out for sure the first part of this week. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

We did get the new floor put down in the kitchen and laundry room which is definitely progress.

I took a break and met up with some of my high school classmates. That was a lot of fun. I actually remembered to take a couple of pictures but the one I took of Karen was horrible so Karen – I am not posting it. We will have more get-togethers this summer and I am looking forward to those.

Lynn

Nancy and Renee

Saturday morning Jim and I decided to go to the Strawberry Festival in downtown Billings. We were really looking forward to trying out a bunch of strawberry foods. They block off several streets near Skypoint (an art sculpture).

We found a good parking spot and as Jim stepped up onto the sidewalk, he caught his foot on a brick and fell down hard. Scared me because I thought he might have broken something. But he got right up and only had one spot on his arm that was bleeding. He was ready to go. However, today he is extremely sore and not moving very fast.

The Strawberry Festival was a waste of time (IMO). Not a strawberry to be found. The Lion’s club was offering a pancake and sausage breakfast and the strawberry syrup was as close as we got to strawberry anything.

Lots of vendors selling clothes, jewelry, art, crafts and other things. I am not a shopper and I certainly don’t want to buy anything. We don’t have room for anything. All in all – very disappointing for us. Other folks really seemed to be enjoying the shopping experience.

One fun thing happened at the festival. We were wandering around trying to find strawberries when we passed a booth with beautiful hair clips. Our wonderful friend Dana was manning the booth with one of her sons. Dana and Vaughn are full timers and travel with their 9 children in a toy hauler that Vaughn has modified to fit their needs. It made our whole trip downtown worthwhile to catch up with her. We hope to see them again this summer.

446 Miles

Billings, MT  High 81  Low 50

That’s how far we drove yesterday. I know that will come as a shock to many of you since 175 miles in one day is a long day for us.

However, we needed to get back to our house in Billings. We have had some major water issues in the house for the last month. Todd and Michaela have had to live without water, heat, or a refrigerator for a couple of weeks. And the repairs still aren’t complete.

Thursday Todd called to let us know that the hoses and valves on the washing machine where leaking and we had more water damage. Jim decided that enough was enough and he needed to be here to take charge. We had planned on two days to get here but when he got behind the wheel Friday morning, I knew we were going to Billings.

Another reason we are here is because the kids are buying their own home which means we have to get ours ready to sell. Not sure what all is going to happen this summer or how long we are going to be stuck here. One day at a time.

It is good to see Todd and Michaela and we are all excited about their new home. They are hoping to go to closing this month. This will also give us a chance to catch up with a lot of folks that we haven’t spent much time with during our short visits here in Billings.

Heading North

Blackfoot, ID   High 81  Low 50

We have not done any sight seeing on this trip. So there won’t be much to blog about until we finally get to Montana.

We headed up Highway 93 towards Caliente. Highway 93 is a long stretch of straight road. I really enjoy this route.

We lucked out and were able to get a pull through site at Young’s RV in Caliente and we didn’t have to unhitch the truck. Jim wanted to watch the NASCAR race and the one station we could not get was FOX which is where the race was shown. Bummer. The town also lost power for about two hours and it got quite warm. A couple of folks turned on their generators but we survived just fine.

Lots of snow still on the mountain tops.

Our next stop was in Ely. We stayed in the Hotel Nevada and Gambling Hall parking lot. We were joined by a few trucks for the night but it was quiet and very safe.

We had a lilac bush right outside the door and Jim picked me a flower. I love lilacs. Brings back memories of my Grandma’s back yard.

The next morning we headed further north to Jackpot where we parked in Cactus Pete’s parking lot. They have an RV park right next to the parking lot for $22 a night but we just wanted a place to park for the night. No antenna TV but the park offers a limited cable.

When we were in Las Vegas, we put up a fence to keep Scooter contained so she wouldn’t try going up and down the steps to the bed without us there. That had a consequence we hadn’t counted on. Skittlez tried to dig into the crate to get to Scooter. This is what her nose looks like from digging. That pink spot on the top of her nose isn’t supposed to be there. It’s all supposed to be brown. Not sure what we’re going to do but we’ll have to figure something out.

Tonight we are in one of our favorite RV parks. Fairway RV Park in Blackfoot, ID. This park is actually part of the fairgrounds. It’s $25 a night for water/electric with a dump station. But the sites are level and the girls love running through the grass. It’s never busy even though I’m sure it’s packed during the fair.

We are going to spend two nights here because it is supposed to be windy tomorrow. Friday we head into Montana.