OUR SNOWBIRD & RVing FRIENDS Back In OHIO

We've had a different day today, but will try my hand at typing this Blog. I continue with testing to make sure that everything is ok following my past year with surgery, and will wait for all results. Today's test required that I spend twenty four hours doing nothing, but will try the Blog since I feel well. So far all results are good. We have had a fun couple of weeks meeting with and visiting our snowbird and RVing friends. We are here at the campground with Sandy and Micky whom we met here last year. They have been spending summers for the last twenty years in this park. So last winter while in Florida, we stopped at their winter home in Melbourne FL for lunch one day. We had a great visit there and have continued such visits here at Timashamie, as you can see, here at their summer home. You can see that they have been here long enough to have flower beds and a following of finch and hummingbirds. Sandy said that as soon as they get here in the spring the birds seem to know they are here. They are at the feeders as soon as they fill them! I intend to get more pictures close-up to show the birds better. I just need to go back and sit on their porch and wait for them. They are not afraid of people. Another day we went to Hartville OH to meet up with Bill and Bette who began full timing about the same time that we did. We met them through a newspaper article in the Canton Repository and have visited and kept in contact ever since. Our plans are to winter near them in AZ part of this coming winter. That was a great visit and we were glad to get it in before Bette had to go for knee replacement surgery. Take care Bill and Bette and hope to see you again real soon! We also learned that a couple from our church are seriously planning on parting with their home and beginning their full time adventure. Wannabes, Bill and Jane, were also a wealth of information for us as they have already been west with their trailer. So Bill and Gary have been pouring over the maps. They also had a need to pick our brains and hear of our experiences. So this was done during and after a good picnic dinner. The bugs finally chased us in doors. It was a great evening and we are planning to do it again. Best of luck on your plans Bill and Jane, I am sure you will love it! Then on Saturday our full timer friends, Bob and Donna, stopped by for a visit in between visits with other friends and Donna's grand daughter's wedding, which they flew home for. They should have left today to fly back to their home on wheels. As you can see, I forgot to get the camera out that day, so I went into the archives and picked a picture from when we met up with them at the Finger Lakes in NY. So glad that you stopped Bob and Donna, and we will look forward to meeting up with you in the west!! Later Saturday evening, we were sitting out under the awning when Sandy and Mickey drove by in Micky's new toy! They had been out for a joy ride and ice cream. But they didn't bring us any!! Can you imagine that for friends?

The care looks great, but they say that it needs a lot of TLC. Have fun working on it Micky!! I imagine that his son-in-law will have a hand in it also!

While Micky works on his project, Gary has been busy building the cabinet for under my desk top that is on order. He is doing well and it looks good. Still more elbow work to be done and the doors and hardware are still not here yet. Hopefully, it will be done before we leave Ohio.

I am looking forward to using the finished product. It will be great for my scrapbooking!!

And I think that will be the last big project for the motorhome. Nothing has been real expensive, but we need to quit spending money. The only thing left that we had planned is drapes for the living area and curtains for the bedroom. But I am not sure if that will all get finished. Time is running out!!

The remainder of the stay here will be mostly visiting and a couple day trips for Gary and our grandson. Then school begins!

Have a great summer and take care!

OHIO SUMMER IS FLYING BY!!

We got back from Mentor on Saturday with enough time to rest and then go to the Friends Disaster Service's annual BAR-B-Q at the First Friends Church in Salem. You can see our Sunday School class busy at work here getting ready for the thirsty patrons!

It did not take long for the large tent to fill with hungry people!

We got to visit with a lot of friends that we only see in passing on Sunday. They also had God's Quad quartet singing for those who wanted to stay for a while. The usual hayride kept the children busy, hoping that the rain would hold off for a while. We did manage to get home before it hit hard! Then there was the annual Silent Auction of gift baskets. There was a lot of nice things there! We had a great time visiting and meeting new people. Mary Lou it was great meeting and talking with your husband and daughter!

Earlier in the day we stopped by the Miller's south of Middlefield OH on our way home from Mentor, to pick up pies baked by Miriam that we had ordered a head of time. The Miller's do traditional Amish family style dinners in their home. We had the honor of partaking of such a dinner with friends, Linda and Ray Zeppernick as well as Karen and Bill McElwee a couple weeks ago. I found out at that time that she sells pies and Gary's favorite apple butter! So I ordered some since we were to be going by there this past week. I could not pass up the opportunity to take a picture of their flowers around their house. They are beautiful!! We had been in Mentor to visit my sister in her new home and to go with her to take our brother to the doctor.

We had reports from our cousins that his blood pressure had been high when he attended the church conference in Dennison OH. And he said that it had also been up when the lab tech took it at Parker Place when they did his last blood test. So we figured it was time to follow up on it. He thought that it was caused by his medication, but the doctor is not in agreement with this. So she is sending him for an ultra sound of the leg arteries on Sept 2nd. I will be going back up to go with them for that. After all of our running around we decided to have pizza for dinner!! I had been hungry for that for some time! We enjoyed it on Pearl's back patio while enjoying the comfortable temperatures (they had dropped some through the week) and watching a little bunny frolicking in the yard. Wayne left in time to go watch the sunset!

The night before our trip to Mentor, I had some of the girls that I had worked with out to the campground for a picnic. What fun!! Wish we could do it again before I leave. But I imagine that they do not have the time like we do. We sat around the camp fire until almost eleven pm.

We also picked Debbie's brain about how to go on Facebook, those of us computer illiterates!

Here you can see Debbie also giving Janet some pointers on using a good camera. I think that an expensive and complex one like this would intimidate me!!

This is Janet with her sister, Norma.

Everyone gathered under our awning to visit when they first arrived. Norma and Deb Caldwell got their first tour of our house on wheels before we ate.

Part of the group relaxing after eating all of the great food they brought!

We were waiting for a couple more friends to arrive,

Becky and Joan.

They did come in before dark and just as we were beginning our walk around the lake!

Back at the table and so much fun and LOLs!

Gary had gone to a Car Show in N Georgetown last week and plans to attend again this evening with his friend, Rick.

N Georgetown is not much more than a cross roads, but when they announced for everyone to be sure to register their car, there were 101 already registered!!

Last weekend was Italian Days in Salem. So our grandson had to be in the parade with the Scout Troop. It was so-o-o hot that I am sure they were glad that they got to ride in the trolley.

Earlier the same day, we had a picnic for the Wyatt's. The ones who came had a great visit! Sandra, sorry that you did not make it, but I am sure that Mark needed a day to recoup after your vacation before returning to work. We would have felt the same way. Shane and Andrea and your families were missed, we will look for you the next time!

Janet, Gary's sister, had stopped out earlier, but as the breeze disappeared she went back home to her air conditioning. Like I said it was HOT! So the kids sure made use of the swimming pool right by our camp sight. Our grandson sure has enjoyed the pool this year! And it is so nice for us to be so close by. Our sons and daughter-in-law and grandson were here also.

View of the swimming pool from our front window in the motor home.

This was another week in the summer of the gypsies. Hope you are having a great summer!!

SUMMER AT TIMASHAMIE CAMPGROUND

I can't believe that it has been three weeks since I have posted a Blog! How time flies when you are having fun?? We have been keeping busy here at home as well. This morning Gary is busy putting in a new commode since the old one quit working yesterday. Yesterday he also had to get a new receptacle for his 50' extension cord as the two air conditioners had melted the old one. We wondered what the problem was when the power kept going off and then coming back on after a few minutes. I guess it was too far from the electric source for the both air conditioners. So now we just use one conditioner at a time! It was a good thing that we found the problem!! Last week it was caulking around windows where water must have come in. Not a lot, but the carpet was damp! Hopefully that problem is solved also. I still say that a motorhome is more maintenance than a regular house!! In between some of these fixes, we have had time to go to a couple concerts. One was to hear the Glick family again. They are from Wooster and were singing and playing at a church in Cortland OH. They each played several instruments and sang and are very enjoyable. One of the girls learned to yodel when the family lived in Wyoming nine years when they were growing up. The other daughter has made a three week trip into China to deliver Bibles printed in Chinese since the last time that we saw them. It was interesting talking with her about it after their program. Of the group that went, she was the one who got stopped!! A scary thing, but she said that she would not be afraid if it were to happen to her again. They let her keep a couple Bibles for her own use and confiscated the rest to be picked up on their way back out. The rest in the group delivered theirs safely. So it was a wonderful experience for her and she would do it again! I did not take a picture of them this year, as I had taken many last year when we went to hear them two times. But the music and Word was the important thing! The other concert that we went to was a Hawaiian one with dancers at the band shell in Waterworth Memorial Park in Salem. My battery on the camera died half way through the evening, but thanks to our friends, Bob and Eugenia, we have pictures of the flame twirlers to show you. They also were enjoyable. I believe that Bob Sebo of Salem was responsible for bringing them in to Salem.

We have also been trying to catch up on our visiting! Ray and Donna brought their motorhome out to Timashamie and spent a night.

They also brought their dog, Cooper, and a lot of firewood. Cooper sure made Gary and I realize that children are easier to raise!! It just takes longer.

So we still have firewood stacked up. I am sure that it will last us as long as we are here. After all, with temps in the 90's, who wants a fire??

Then Eugenia and Bob invited us for dinner one evening after Eugenia and I had spent the day scrapbooking. Much accomplished, talk and scrap booking! She showed me their pictures of their Italy trip. Just gorgeous. I had to enjoy them as we will never get there!! We have enough to see right here in the good old USA.

And Dick and Jane invited us another evening.

This was so enjoyable, no cooking for me!! Now I just need to pick a time to reciprocate to all. Dick sent us home with a bicycle for our grandson, and he sure has been buzzing around here on it. I told him that he needs to slow down since he does not have a helmet here. His mom will have our heads, if he gets hurt!! Thanks again, Dick and Jane!!

Gary has also finished a couple other projects inside here and has one more to go. Since we have not had TV in the living area since June of '09 except when we had cable connections (which was not often), we changed out the TV. He took out the big old analog TV up front over the dash and put a shelf inside of the cabinet. Then he mounted a 22 inch flat screen TV on the front of the cabinet door. The door was made from one side of a cabinet in the bedroom that he had taken out right when we bought the motorhome. (We made much better use of the bedroom space without that cabinet.) He will use the other side on his next project, my desk. The Formica top and cabinet doors have been ordered for the desk also. Yipee! It will give me so much more space for scrapbooking!

Then in the bedroom Gary thought of a way to store blankets, off season clothes and his engineering books, hidden from view!! It makes a much better floor level for getting in to bed and he is so glad not to have to look at that STUFF all of the time!! He built a raised floor (9 inches) with three four foot floor panels that lift for access to the storage.

He got the idea from when he built a box on my side of the bed for me to step up on. We hid shoes away in it!!

Now you can see the finished project and it is all covered with carpet. It looks good and is so handy even for reaching the cabinets over head also!! And the only weight that it added is the wood as the STUFF was already there!!

My next project is getting rid of the day/night shades! Friends of ours were out for a picnic last Sunday evening and Patti and Esther took measurements for new curtains and/or drapes for both the living area and the bedroom! Our husbands patiently waited outside with a snack tray while we were inside in the heat! Thanks, Randy and Bill for being so patient!! Gary had already had his share of heat when he cooked burgers over a hot camp fire. He even singed his arms! But we sure enjoyed the food and the visit. We need to do it again before we hit the road going west. And I forgot to use the camera again, as usual. Next time!

I just finished this in time!! The commode is finished so we can relax now. Or maybe I will go to Walgreen and copy photos??? Hopefully, it will not take so long for the next Blog. Check back with us and have a wonderful summer!!