Oregon Living 2023 – Blog #41 – Another Square Dance Lesson & Welcoming Old Friends

 

Sunday, September 24^th., 2023…… We had a few things going on today. One was a wine tasting party as a gift from Penny to Cathye for her birthday. The other was our Square Dance class. Penny picked us up early afternoon and drove us to Moore Family Vineyards in Sweet Home.  They are relatively new to the area and she wanted to go see and taste. Cherrelyn met us there and Penny brought a charcuterie board for us to eat. The winery doesn’t serve food. They said they do have a food truck that has started coming in on Fridays and Saturdays but the business has to grow a bit before he can commit to other days. We each got to select our flight of 4 wines to taste. Since Cat and I have a square dance class later, we split a tasting. We chose the sparkling wines and they were really good. But we only got a sip apiece x4 so we will be back! Thanks Sis!

Later, after we got home and rested for the afternoon, we headed over to the senior center for class. They are doing the same calls for three weeks in a row before closing the class and moving on. So this was a refresh for us from last week. One more week and after that they will add more calls. We will miss that first session on Oct. 8^th because we will be off on our Boston trip!  But they are really good and send out emails with the lesson plan for that week for folks to read and that will let me know what they taught so I can help Cat with it before we go back next. After class, Judy and Lynn and us joined some of the Club members at the local Pizza Hut. I was able to talk to the caller (also a Club member) and Club members as well and learned a little about them and their Club operations. I was also able to share about my background. Square dancing has many levels, which are certain calls in a group. It starts with Basic, then moves on to Mainstream, then Plus. In California, we danced at the Plus level. This Club does Mainstream so the teach will only be 20 sessions to get the new dancers to that level. They can then all go to dances and dance the Mainstream sessions (aka tips). Most of Oregon is Mainstream so we will be able to go out and visit other clubs and go to festivals – either with the Club, or on our own. Plus level dancing would be next if they decide to teach a class here in town. That’s way down the road so we’ll see.               

Monday, September 25^th., 2023…… We only had our gym and breakfast on the agenda for today. So, after walking and feeding the girls, we headed off to do that. With nothing else on the to-do list for today, we spent sometime working on the house. My square dance friends from California – Don and Kay Wragg – are coming up to Washington state to visit family. They are going to Crater Lake on the way and will come here after that to stay the night and visit with us. They have never met Cathye. So, we worked a little on the guest room. Our girls like to get up there when we are gone because the window opens to the driveway and they can lounge on the bed and ‘keep watch’ for us to return. Of course we keep a pet cover on the bed for that so we needed to remove that as well as straighten up the rest of the room. I also spent some time cleaning up my room after my shelf project. I had touch up paint cans and a ladder in my room so that all got removed.  I have finished my Nascar shelves and I just got some new cars and displayed them up there with the others. Turns out when the second order l have placed gets here, I will have room for only 7 more before those new shelves are filled! I guess the next step is to do another wall!  I do have two left so we’ll see… 

Later, after dinner, we settled in to watch tv. This is the start-up week for all of the fall shows. We are excited that we can start taping them again. More will be added as they start their seasons. Spa time was next . It’s been quite chilly this last week. We spend a lot less time transitioning from the spa to the house these days!  

Tuesday, September 26^th., 2023……  Today was Costco Day!  But after breakfast, we headed off to Central Bark to get seven 5-gal. buckets of ¾” gravel for around the new potting bed. You get to (or have to!) load them yourselves. I chose to use buckets to make it easier and we really didn’t need that much anyway. We finished loading and drove home and dropped off the truck. We will unload it later today. Next up was driving to Albany. We stopped at Kohls first because Cathye has a gift card from her birthday. After that we drove around the corner and hit Costco. It’s always hard to get out of there with your money! We found things that we didn’t need but got anyway. Hey we are just stocking up, right? We got back and unloaded and put away everything and rested for a bit. Then it was time to go spread rock. It went really quickly and easily but we found out I way underestimated the amount we would need!  We went back and got seven more buckets of gravel and finished the job. It looks great so far…

Next up is filling the inside!  I will wait until Corey comes to work here again (Friday or Saturday) and he can go with me and we will get a dump load of dirt to put into the potting bed as the base. Then we can add topsoil which we already have a large pile of here. Then it will be prepped and ready whenever Cathye wants to plant.  We had bought a roasted chicken at Costco, so we dug into that for dinner. Later, we watched part of the Dancing With the Stars premier and will finish up the rest of it tomorrow. It’s so nice to have it back on regular tv again.  

Wednesday, September 27^th., 2023……  After walking and feeding the girls, we left to go over to Sweet Home to The Point for breakfast. Good as always. We made reservations for tomorrow night. Once we got back home, we had some things to do here. Rylee has discovered that she likes to eat the potting soil that Josh, from the tree service, laid down under the new grass where his truck tore it up. Cathye says there is bone meal in the topsoil, and dogs seem to like to eat that stuff, so I needed to string off the areas in hopes that discourages her a little.

Nothing much on the agenda, except cleaning the house and maybe getting a few things out and ready to pack for our Boston trip. I definitely wanted to get out our passports and get them into the carryon before I forgot!  I also have been told that we are going to be participating in an early trick or treat night for Felix. Turns out that Daniel and Terisa’s friends own and manage a campground and they have a night at their park before they close it for the season. Folks go around and trick or treat and all wear costumes. Even the adults… We have ours so I had to get mine out to pack.  Pics later… Also, we have decided that even though we are vaccinated, we will be wearing our n95 masks at the airports and on the planes.  Problem is, they are super tight and do not fit me very well. To remedy that, Cat added elastic to mine to make it more comfortable. I can’t seem to find it so she needed to dig out the elastic roll and alter a new one for me. She got that done and I got it packed away. Then we were pretty much done for the day.

Thursday, September 28^th., 2023…… Don & Kay Wragg are coming to visit us today. After we got back from the gym, we ate our leftovers from yesterday’s breakfast. We did a quick house sweep and had everything ready. They said they left Crater Lake and stopped for breakfast so they got here around 1:00pm. We sat down and had some afternoon wine and then gave them the 50ȼ tour around the house and property. 

They live in Irvine in a (really nice upscale) manufactured community and they are not used to as much space as we have, so it was a lot to take in! We sat on the patio again and then took some pics of the tiki.  Don was the maker of this work of art.  He has many others to his credit. I think he said he did this one in 2004 or 5. They both said they enjoyed seeing it again and that we are displaying it proudly! They especially liked my addition of Tiki Joe’s red eyes!

We left a bit after that and headed off to the Point in Sweet Home for dinner. We intended to pay but Don ‘coerced’ our server to give him the bill!  If we had known that, we would have ordered the steak and lobster meals!  Ha Ha!  Seriously, that wasn’t necessary so thanks to you guys for that!   After we ate, we drove them around Foster Lake and then back to Lebanon and showed them our little town. We will be going back there again tomorrow for breakfast at Kristi’s. This time I pay! Next up was more time on the deck and more wine. I opened the fireball and some of us enjoyed that. As the weather got a little cooler, we moved inside and went to the dinning room and played Mexican Train for a few hours before calling it a night. Fun time today with my old friends!        

Friday, September 29^th., 2023……  We slept in this morning (8:00am) and got going with the dogs. We fed them and had some coffee and tea before heading back to town for breakfast at Kristi’s. They really liked that place!  After that, we drove them over to our wedding venue at the Japanese gardens because it’s always a pretty place to visit. We walked around the pond and showed them where the ceremony took place. After a few pics,

we came back and they got ready to head out. They will head north and be in Vancouver WA and then move east a bit to see family. I think they said they would be out for a total of 2-3 weeks. We said our goodbyes and wished them safe travels. Love you guys!  The rest of the day we just vegged around the house. We did some laundry and checked the mail. That was about it for the day. Later, we had leftovers from dinner last night and then settled in to watch the taped finale of America’s Got Talent. We were shocked with the results of the final 5! They were all acts that deserved to win and I think Adrian and Hurricane were the best dog act we have ever seen, but they were not our no. 1 pick. Oh well!  It was still a great season.    

Saturday, September 30^th., 2023…… Happy Birthday Gary!  We were up early and out with the dogs and got them fed. I made a run to the landscape yard and got a truck load of dirt. This is for the potting bed. We found we needed more weed cloth so I went out to get that as well. When Corey got here later in the day, we shoveled the fill dirt in over some crushed rock for drainage. I knew we needed more dirt so I went back and got two more loads before it was right. Then Corey brought the truckster over to our top soil pile and we shoveled 4 loads into that to fill up the potting box. The only thing left to do was the irrigation lines for future watering. I laid those out and got them cut and fitted and installed and tested and then buried the lines. If the coverage isn’t enough, it’s easy to tap into the lines with more heads. It is ready whenever she plants.

After the day’s work, we settled in for the evening. Cathye made soup from the leftover Costco chicken and we had that. We sent the rest back home with Corey for his family. We watched a few of our taped shows  - Survivor and The Amazing Race. Both seasons look to be very entertaining. We also wanted to watch The Golden Bachelor premier which we had taped as well. Neither of us care for The Bachelor or Bachelorette but we thought this one with seniors might be interesting. We liked it!  I have now added it on the series manager so we can watch and see where the guy goes in his next life chapter!