Oregon Living 2022 – Blog #12 – Fun Times and a Sad Time!

 

Sunday, March 20^th., 2022……  Nicer day today. Still not full sun so it was rather chilly but no rain, which is good. After breakfast, Cathye headed off to church while I held down the fort and worked on the blog and watched my Nascar races. Corey is coming over today and the family will be joining him. They will work for a while, then join us for dinner. One of Cathye’s volunteer workers at SHEM, is a chef and recited (from his head) ingredients for his favorite lasagna sauce, which she wrote down and made up yesterday in advance for our meal.  They got the bench out and installed in the island. It all looks really nice out there and will look so much nicer when spring fills in all of the plants and flowers! She did such a nice job and I’m so proud of her! Jacob and I also took some time to dig up the sprinkler risers that will be in the way when the new patio gets built. We found that the garden sprinkler heads were easy to move and I cut them away before the start of the project and will re-join and install after the job is done. The larger oscillating sprinkler lines that shoot out 30-40 ft for the lawn are also in the way and will have to be rerouted.  For the time being, we just exposed them so I can cut and move the lines out to their final places after the deck and the new flowerbeds are done. If it was just a little warmer out there, I would have spent more time on that but for now, it’s good to go. Dinner was really good. I have told Cathye that I have always been critical of other folks’ lasagna, comparing it to Lydia’s which was the best I ever ate – but hers was truly delicious! We all ate and ate. But there was some left for tomorrow and that’s good for me!  After cleanup, the troops headed home and we settled in for the night.  We did get a call from Janie and we talked more about their rv trip up here and also, we discussed the trip from here to ID and back. More details coming on that in the next few days.       

Monday, March 21^st., 2022……  Rainy again this morning.  But not enough to stop us from going out with the dogs and then heading out for some errands. Today we go get our marriage license!  We first went to breakfast in Albany at Pops Branding Iron. It is always a good place for a quick meal. We then drove to the courthouse and found the marriage license desk. What we didn’t know was that we were required to have an appointment!  So, we made one for tomorrow and will also complete the application online, even though we are needed there in person to get the license. No worries. We then hit Lowes and made Jamie an extra key and took it and his new cell phone to him. Cathye decided to get him a Jitterbug phone from Lively. It’s easy to use and we have preprogrammed in three numbers for us and Robin. In case of an emergency, he also has an alert button which will get him instant help. It makes us feel better knowing he’s got that with him (if he remembers to take it!) when he goes out especially late at night. We got back home and rested and had a bite for lunch then I went out and worked on my ladder project for a bit. I have it ready for drilling so it’s coming along!  We had the rest of the lasagna for dinner and settled in to watch taped shows until it was time to call it a night.     

Tuesday, March 22^nd., 2022……  We slept in a little later because our appointment at the courthouse wasn’t until 10:30am. We got up and got going and had the coffee on and the dogs out and walked and breakfast made before 9:30am. We headed out with the paperwork already done online so when we got there, it went quickly.

Once we got back home, I went out and worked on my ladder and finally got that project finished. It now rolls nicely and with the extra steps on the older ladder, I can now reach everything on the motorhome. I put it in it’s spot in the rv garage and then went on to help Cathye with some of her projects. We had picked up a small old patio table for the garden but it needed to be disassembled and painted, so I took it apart and cleaned it up and masked off the glass for her. She’s deciding what color she wants to paint it.  Most of the day was super nice. Spring is finally starting to show it’s face up here now and we are glad to see some warmer days and some more sunny ones too! Temps today were in the 70s, which is unusual but hey, we’ll take it!  I just wish we could get more of them in a row so the ground would dry out enough to mow!

Wednesday, March 23^rd., 2022……  Today we needed to concentrate on the patio deck project.  We have a layout already in planning (we do need a permit for this job) so we already know the deck dimensions. All of the construction on that is part of the bid, but we still have to buy two gazebos for out there. One will go on either side of the main structure and we know that size. We found the exact one we want at Costco but they are a little too big for the space we have allocated. Costco has some other ones online but we wanted to make another trip back there to check on the floor model for exact size where the posts hit. We found what we needed and also bought the requisite $250.00 worth of groceries and other things while we were there!  When we got back home and settled in, I went online but found out that everything we liked was out of stock and they don’t expect it to be back in until late April. I will spend some time looking elsewhere for what we want.  

Thursday, March 24^th., 2022…… This morning was supposed to be my acupuncture appointment but Bonnie texted me last night that she wasn’t feeling well and needed to cancel today’s session.  No worries, because we have our friends Oma Lea and David coming over this afternoon for lunch and I needed to straighten things up both in the house and out in the garage.  Since I am between projects in the shop, it was a good time to do a deep cleaning out there. I also needed to clean up the ‘little Rylee hairballs’ that are all around the house. I have a small stick vac that does this job in record time!  I was done and went to help Cathye in the kitchen but she had everything under control. So, I went online again and we found and ordered two 11’ x 13’ gazebos from Amazon.  Delivery is set for 3/30-4/4.  Oma Lea and David got here around 1:00pm.  We had a nice time with them. They are both avid gardeners and have a really large property with plenty of nice trees and flowers and both vegetable and flower gardens that are amazing. They liked what Cathye has done with her island and they all spent some time out there together and enjoyed the sunshine. Perfect!  Later, we had a nice meal and a nice visit. They live in the Coastal foothills outside of Philomath about an hour west of us, so we will likely be spending more time with them in the future. After they left, Cathye went out to work on her plantings and I started thinking about where to store the several boxes of gazebo parts out of the weather. I settled on the rv garage but I need to work on rearranging it beforehand. I was lucky enough to get several nice storage shelving units from Cathye’s place and these, up till now, were just shoved in there and have been used for temporary storage of items for our future yard sale (maybe in July?). I will need to move things around sooner than later.        

Friday, March 25^th., 2022……  Friday, we took off and went shopping. We hit Costco again this time for some clothes and flowers. Costco stocks my favorite shorts and I stocked up! Cathye found shorts too. When we got back, Cathye took her new items out to pot. We kicked back and rested and watched tv for a few hours and then went back out and worked some more outside. We ate leftovers and watched tv until bedtime.

Saturday, March 26^th., 2022……  This morning, after our walk with the girls, we headed off to Kristi’s for breakfast then drove over to Sweet Home. Our neighbors, Rich and Linda, are rockhounds and their club was putting on a rock show at the local high school. We wanted to go see what they had. I was shocked to see so many people attending. It was packed with many vendors displaying and selling their collections. Of course, we had to buy stuff! Cathye was looking for something for Penny and Cherrelyn as gifts for putting together her bridal shower and we found what we thought they would like.  Earlier, Cathye had received a call that the wooden sign that she had made for us was done and ready for pickup, so we did that on the way back from Sweet Home. It turned out really nice!  Even though it might be considered premature a little ahead of the wedding, I went ahead and put it up anyway because we love it so much!  

We had a few minutes to rest and then she changed and I drove her over to Penny’s house for the shower. I spent the next 3 hours working on the shelving units in our rv garage. I got some of the stuff staged outside and then stacked and screwed the units to the garage wall so it would be more stable. I stopped after a bit, resting and watching tv until she called to come get her. I took both the dogs and headed over. Penny’s neighbor’s black lab, Gunner, has never met Rylee. He was excited to say the least. She’s been fixed. He hasn’t!  But it was ok and they got along fine.  The girls shared a little about the party. Here are some of the pics that I can post…

We got back home and she helped with the shelving project and we got everything back on the shelves. I still need to get some more pvc pipe to add one more shelving unit but that will be for next week. We came in the house and snacked because I ate earlier and she had Chinese at the party. Later in the evening, I went on Facebook and was shocked to see Wendy Carpenter’s post about her mother passing yesterday. Bud and Linda were dear friends back in Calif. but I didn’t know that Linda had been ill. I called and spoke with Bud, who is doing as well as can be expected. It's good that all of his family was there and got to say their goodbyes. Sweet lady and she will be missed!  I hope to see Bud make it up here sometime when he is ready.