Quite busy

Here's what's been going on since we moved into Mom's house:

On Saturday, we met with our old El Verde Road neighbors for dinner back on our old side of town - we had dinner at our usual Henry's Puffy Tacos.

On Sunday, Guillermo and I packed up a few of our things and spent the night at Linda's house, since Linda had to work on Monday and we were going to take care of Jacob!  After having breakfast with Jacob, we drove over to Mom's house, picked her up and we went to Hi Lions Lake and enjoyed the birds, ducks and trails.

Getting ready to identify a few ducks!

There are cormorants in the tree on the other side!

What are those fattish ones?  Canada Geese!

Pausing on a hiking trail

One more time along the lake

Then on Tuesday, we met with friends for dinner at Tiago's Cabo Grill.

Today is Wednesday, and we had breakfast at IHop and as we were coming home, a wreck happened right in front of us!!!!  But for a few seconds there, it could very well have been us that the person who passed a red light hit.  We stopped and stayed with the people in the two cars until paramedics came.

It's hard to believe that we leave for Panama in 5 days!!!!

Living in a different place - again

Yesterday, we checked out of the Staybridge Suites and we thought it was going to be a rough day to pack up the car, since the morning started off with rain.  But during breakfast, the skies cleared and the day remained nice and sunny the rest of the time.  The Staybridge gave us a late checkout which was so entirely helpful, because it enabled us to go to storage, pack up the rest of our stuff, and have a nice leisurely lunch in the room.

Then it was on to Mom's house!!!  We got to her house around 2:15, and unpacked a few things and an hour later we went to pick up Jacob from school.  Then Guillermo and I stayed with Jacob at his house, and while we waited for Linda to get home, we got on our laptops and checked things out.  In the evening, we all went to Kathy's and had pizza, cake and coffee for Mike's birthday.

We'll be at Mom's house the next 9 days!  :-)

new purse

This is only so Rebeca can see the purse that her sweet gift card from Kohl's brought me!

It's a great new purse!!!!

Enchilada dinner

We sure could get used to this lifestyle!  Every morning breakfast is waiting for us, 3 nights a week dinner is waiting for us, someone makes up our bed every day and gets us fresh towels if we want them.  Yeah, that's nice all right.  We've been going to the gym here in this hotel every evening now for the last 3 days and we really like that little gym.  They only have 5 pieces of equipment, but one of those pieces has tons of activities on it.  And all the equipment is well made so it's a pleasure to work-out in there.  Guillermo says he wants a little room with all that equipment one of these days.  We'll see........  Anyway,  we saw on the hotel's calendar that the dinner this evening was an enchilada dinner, and we were skeptical, but turned out to be very impressed.  They had enchiladas, beans, rice, salad, chips, salsas, jalapenos, the usual cheese/celery/carrot plate, and a wide variety of drinks to choose from:  beer, wine, juices, lemonade, sodas, coffee and tea.  The dinner was very good!!!  We'll be working out later, for sure!  :-)

Tomorrow is a pasta dinner!

Our room

Some pictures of where we are living for the next week.

We like it here just fine.  

Friday and Saturday

On Friday, we spent a good part of the day getting everything out of the trailer except for the few things we would need to have a cookout one last time at the RV park.  So, around 5:30, we went back to the park with the stuff we were going to grill and just hung out there the rest of the evening.  Everything was so delicious that Guillermo grilled, and while we ate, we watched the last of the DVD that a friend had lent us.  Lagrimas Negras. VERY dark film, but it was good.
After eating, we washed everything up and took one final walk around the RV park, which is what we had done every evening for the last 2 months.   We loved doing that walk because, especially around the middle of September, the weather seemed to be just perfect and it felt so good to be walking around out there.   We'd always look at the RV's that were there day after day, we'd observe which RV was new to the park, and which ones had left.  It was actually kind of interesting seeing all the different kinds of RV's people had.
Then we went back to the trailer, locked it up, and that was it for our little stint with RV life!!!  It was good and we really appreciate having the chance to experience that for a while.

The next day, Saturday the 16th, we went back to the RV park early and started the preparations for getting the trailer travel ready.  We took down the awning, secured everything inside, unhooked all the cords, wires and drains.  When John came, we helped him ease the truck back up to the trailer and pretty soon, it was ready to go!  It took about an hour after he got there, to get that trailer ready to move.

This was the view we saw everyday from the trailer.

John took this picture of us before he pulled the trailer out.

After he drove off, we got in our cars, said goodbye to various people we had met at the park, and let them know up in the office that we were now out of our site.  Later that afternoon, we drove over to Linda and Mom's house to drop off the few plants we had accumulated and a few other things.

That evening, we went over to John's house as they had invited us to dinner!  So, we spent a leisurely evening with them, enjoying good food, good drinks, and dessert!  It was a full day, and we were pretty tired when we got back to the hotel.

slowly transitioning from RV life to hotel life

Writing from a hotel this evening!

We spent the morning like usual - went by "the house" and walked out in the field, then stopped to get the paper, and then we went by the hotel we planned on moving into either today or tomorrow to see, if we moved in today, what time we could move in.  Well, we were there like at 11:30am and they said we could move in right now!!  So we went ahead and moved our suitcases and the boxes in the back seat of the car up into the room.  When we were done with that, we stopped by Subway, picked up some pizza and a sandwich and went back to the trailer to watch the news. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the trailer relaxing and packing up a few things to take on our next trip to the hotel.

After the evening news, we drove back to the hotel, unloaded what we had packed and then went down to their dining room for a free dinner!!  Taco Salad!  It was great - beer, wine, juices, sodas, coffee, a plate of munchies such as carrots, celery, and different cheeses, and then of course all the fixings for a taco salad.  It was way more than we were thinking they were going to offer!

After that dinner, we went back to the trailer and packed up a few more things.  We took our usual walk around the RV park, and then came back to the trailer to watch a little bit of a DVD there, since the TV at the hotel doesn't have a DVD.

So, we're pretty much all set up here at the hotel now, still have a few more things to bring over.  That's what we'll do tomorrow and then give that trailer a good cleaning to get it ready for John to move on Saturday!!  He and Angie invited us to a cook-out at their house on Saturday so we look forward to that!

Another change coming up

Guillermo and I took it easy yesterday, just relaxing and enjoying some good Peruvian food for dinner at a nearby Peruvian restaurant.  Guillermo had been in Tucson for the weekend, celebrating his sister's 80th birthday and he came in really late the day before, his flight home having been delayed for over an hour.  So yesterday we just hung around taking it easy.  :-)

Here's a picture of his favorite little dog - who was supporting Jason as he watched his favorite team, the Cowboys.

Today, though, it's different.  We've been getting boxes together and making lists and starting to pack up some of our stuff - because we are leaving this RV park on Friday, possibly Thursday.  Although we have to admit the coverage of the Chilean miners is so compelling that we are probably watching a little more of that than actually doing what we need to do.  John is coming early Saturday morning to hook up the trailer and move it out. I think we will both miss the easy and enjoyable life we had here in the trailer and at this RV park.

So, on Thursday or Friday, we are moving into a hotel for about a week, so that we can spread out to get re-situated with our suitcases and stuff.

Pretty flowers

Yesterday, we took scissors when we went by our old property to cut some flowers to take back to the trailer.  Good thing we did it yesterday, because today, the mowers were back, and they mowed down all those pretty orange flowers.  I had planned to cut more of those orange flowers today, since they seem to make excellent cut flowers, but they were all gone.
BUT, our old yard and field look nice and neat again, with the freshly mowed grass.  It will be a pleasure to walk around in it this evening.

Cook-out

Yesterday Guillermo and I spent over two hours at the Drivers License office.  We needed to get the address changed on our drivers licenses and it's something that sure could have been done online, but we had ONE question to ask and it seemed the only way to do that was to go in.  LONG line just to get to where we could ask the question.  Then, once the question was answered, we decided to just stay and get it taken care of, since we were already there.  So,two and a half hours later, we were done.

Today, we had John and Angie over again for a cook-out, and turns out it was also National Night Out, so that was good.  We spent the evening outdoors as supposedly most of the rest of the city was doing, too.  Good wine, good steaks, good dessert, good weather, good company.  It was an all-around good evening!

Getting the coals going.

Cooking chicken and burning peppers (but they were good anyway!)

And, as usual, once John and Angie were here, I forgot all about the camera and so there are no more pictures!

Visiting our old house today

Mom, Linda and Jacob came by the RV park today - Linda brought us our mail (she's our mailperson now!) since we are having our mail forwarded to her house.  Then we all got in our cars and drove out to Castroville.  Actually, we drove 7 miles PAST Castroville, which is where the Creekwood subdivision is, which is where are old house now is!!

This is the scene that greeted us when we got there.  The building on the right is an old barn, that Decker is converting to a guest house.

Decker, the new owner of our house, wasn't there when we got there, so we just walked around the house a little while looking at all the changes that have been made.

Almost right when we got there, we realized a train was going by!  We didn't get to see that on the day the house was actually moved here, and so it was nice to be able to see it today!

We were standing on the side of the house as we watched the train go by and this picture shows more of the view from the house, with the train behind the trees.

The front of the house now.  They put in a circular porch slab and replaced the 3 windows in the red room with what looks like one window.  That room will be a kind of study, and it will also have a big pantry.  To the left of the red room, where the garage was, is the new addition of a master bedroom.

Looking through our old garage, which is being made into the master bedroom, complete with master bath and a deck.  Can you still see the train waaaaay in the background?  

Then we walked around to the other side of the house, the side that faces the nice view.  The farthest two windows to the left are where our bedroom was, the next two windows were Rebeca's room, the next window was Fernando's room, the next two windows were the dining room and the last window on the right is where the kitchen was.  On the far right is the new master bedroom framework.

A little closer view.

Mom checking it all out.

So, we all just walked around a while, taking it all in.  In a way it was weird to see the house here, but in a way it was a happy thing, to see the house get to continue on.

Jacob saw tons of neat rocks that he wanted to take with him.  He went home with a few....

Guillermo, Jacob and I took a walk around the perimeter of the property.  The house now sits on 5 acres.  Decker had started to clear the property of trees, but stopped because he saw deer.  So towards the bottom of the property there are still trees, and where the property ends, on the other side of the fence is where the railroad track is.  We walked along the bottom of the property, between the trees and the track, and then back up to the house.  This is what it looked like as were were walking back to the house.

When we got back up to the house, Decker showed up so we got a bonus!  He invited us to come in and see what had been done so far to the inside.  He has taken the wall down between the kitchen and dining room and it was amazing how that opened up the two rooms.  Sure would have been nice to have had all that space when we had our parties and gatherings!

Looking from the living room towards the dining room through the kitchen to where the red room was.

It was a good day to go out to Castroville.  We thanked Decker for letting us see the inside of the house.  He has many good plans for it!  After visiting the house, we drove into Castroville and had lunch at the old Alsatian Inn.   The restaurant of this hotel is high on a hill and the dining room was lovely, because it had a wonderful view looking out over the countryside.  After the restaurant, we thought we'd stop at a nearby bakery to have some pastry and coffee, but there was no place to eat in there.  So we just bought a few things and headed home.  On the way home, Linda called and said they'd like to stop by our old place on El Verde Rd. so we all headed over there.  We walked around the yard a little and then out to the field.  Linda stepped on a NAIL when she was rummaging around a debris pile out back and so we kind of wrapped things up at that point.  But not before she found a few pipes that she wanted to use for drainage in her yard - she threw them in her trunk and then we were on our way.