The Last Day of the Year

Here it is, the 31st of December, the last day of 2008. As I look back, it doesn't seem that long ago that it was 2007. It is the first year that I could really feel that we were retired -- the first year was just too busy getting the house emptied and sold and moving into the RV.

It was very windy during the night last night with intermittent rain squalls. Today is overcast and we continue to have episodes of rain. It continues to amaze me how quickly the ground absorbs water here -- what would be a mass of mud back home in eastern Washington is barely wet looking here. It is very similar to what we observed in Louisiana where it would rain two inches in an hour or two, then just disappear. Except for the humidity of course! Oregon has lots of ponds and streams, they act like the every 1/4 mile drainage dishes we saw in Port Sulphur.

Since we are still planning to leave on the 2nd, today has got to be a cleaning, putting stuff away, organizing day. I can clean the whole RV thoroughly in just a couple of hours (compared to a couple of days for the house), but I don't like it any better! I've started putting Christmas decorations away back in their storage box that goes in Auntie Violet's basement (the bins in the lower part of the coach). We've also got to find a space for all the gifts that were in our stockings.

I think we'll probably watch the New Year in quietly tonight. Dawn and Todd and the grandkids will be back from the oceanside sometime tomorrow. Dawn and I planned barbecued ribs for dinner, but that is as far as we've gotten.

In the meantime, here's wishing everyone a VERY BLESSED NEW YEAR!

I Planted My Garden...

Yesterday I planted my Christmas present garden. It's an AeroGarden3 that our daughters got for me. It's a hydroponic garden that sits on the kitchen counter. It has lights that are on 17 hours per day and a water reservoir with nutrients in the bottom. I've inserted three "plants" in their containers -- thyme, basil and chives. They are supposed to sprout in five days -- we shall see.

We got a VERY excited call from Son Sean in Spokane yesterday. Daughter Mary Mae had given up on getting over to the east side to visit Scott's family and ski, and mailed his Christmas package from us. We had found the COMPLETE series of "I Love Lucy" shows on DVD for him. He's an avid fan and had already watched 3 of the 100+ shows.

Finally...

After talking about it ever since we started as full-time RVers a year and one-half ago, I have finally gotten organized enough to start this blog (part of it was just coming up with a title...!)

We are currently parked in the driveway of Daughter Dawn and Todd's home in Hubbard, Oregon. We arrived here just ahead of the BIG snowstorm that hit the NW just before Christmas. We will probably be here a few more days as Forry has an appointment for an oil change and to have a front-end stabilizer put on in Wilsonville on January 2nd.

Dawn and her family headed for a few days at the coast right after church services on Sunday and will be gone until the afternoon of the 1st. We are feeding the cats for them and using a few quiet days to catch up on all we've neglected doing (like this blog!) while we were enjoying playing with the grand-kids.

I am going to try to update this every couple of days so that you can keep up with where we are on the road. We'll see how it goes!

Much love from the Hardts!