Granddaughter GO and Granny T.

Ok, she looks scared to death for her Granny T. to be holding her. But she warms up in a little while!

See what I mean! What a sweet smile!

I'll answer that question. Yes, I'm precious!!

Mommy with GO who looks like she's already doing Patty Cakes!

Daddy with GO.

See you later!!

This evening I got to visit with my oldest son and his family. I was introduced to two lizards and got to hold one named Joshua. I believe the other one named Moses likes to bite. Joshua is a most unusual looking thing...his tail looks exactly like his head which according to B-10 offers him some sort of protection should something try to grab him by the head...hopefully they will grab his tail by mistake and it will fall off and he'll escape.

I realized when I was looking at all of the pictures we made that the boys were showering and cleaning their room during the photo shoot and basically their baby sister was the main attraction. The baby always gets all the attention. I'll have to come back and get some pictures of B-10 with his lizard and CW too. Good excuse for another visit.

A Morning with a Granddaughter-Priceless!

This morning I was able to spend some time with MoRo, our 3rd granddaughter. She will be 5 in July and attends a Pre-K program at her Mom's school. The Pre-K kids met with their 4th grade buddies in the cafeteria to make their Bunny Baskets.

Because of the storms and rain today, the egg hunt couldn't be outside. The older kids hid the eggs in the gym and the Pre-K kids had a blast looking for them.

MoRo was so excited that at first she just ran around the gym. But it didn't take long until she figured out what to do.

She started getting her Bunny Basket full of eggs.And ended up with a full basket!

Here I am with the MoRo and some of her classmates during center time. Molly picked the Beauty Shop and I was the victim....I mean customer.

How do I look?? Be kind please!

Dreaming again!

Trainman might give up being an engineer to drive a tractor!

The sun finally gave us a chance to do some of what we'd planned to work on all week.

Dumping a load of logs from a dead tree they cut down.

Dabby Do spent the night with us (Sister was in school.) and came over to the property to explore with us. She made up her own fun...playing with the gallon jugs of water from the hometown spring. Her aim isn't great and she ended up pouring it down her shirt....but the day ended up warm so we hung it up to dry. She was a little shy at first to go without it!

Son #3, his daughter, Dabby Do and I did some exploring during the afternoon. We managed to find our way back to the old homesite we found on our last visit.

There is a pretty little stream running through part of the property. This part is next to the old homeplace we found. Their house was no more than 30 feet from the bank. There isn't much left of the house but some old bricks, a few bottles, old metal cans, rusted sections of fence, the well and another hole we suspect was where the outhouse was. This was our second visit and the daffodils which helped us find it the first time had quit blooming. I hope to be able to move some of them up to our house after we build.

Looking down into the hole that we think might have once been their outhouse. It was close to where the house stood and downhill from the well.

That round thing is the well at the homeplace. It stands about waist high. The brick square in the front must have been part of the chimney. The well is open. I wonder if it originally had a wooden cover over the top. There is water down in it...I can't imagine getting my drinking water or any water from it....check out the next picture.

Maybe the water looked better back then??? I'm SO thankful mine comes out the faucet!!

Dabby Do resting in the wagon after a busy day playing. Isn't she adorable??

And she's really faking! Her Daddy carried her all the way back to our cars but when we put her down she was wide awake again!

To end up the evening....we all ate together. Believe it or not, the complete bottom of Chucky's glass fell off when he picked it up.....and a whole glass of tea ended up in his lap and his plate of spaghetti! No, I had NOTHING to do with it.

Camping on our Property.....Big Mistake!

All the recent rain we've had made a mess of the front part of our driveway. Unfortunately, we couldn't tell before Buddy turned in with our heavy RV. Here are pictures of "the next morning". Trust me, they look great compared to what the coach looked like BEFORE the wrecker got there. I was afraid to go in to get my camera while it was tilted so far to the right. I borrowed this one from our friends next door who put us up for the night....even Tug! That is true friendship for you!

When Buddy got to our property on Friday evening about 9:30pm it was dark and I pulled into the drive in front of him. He made the turn as I watched him in the rear view mirror. I was so shocked to see him begin to tilt over....I thought any second that it would straighten up as he pulled on further up the drive. I finally realized that he wasn't moving anymore. There wasn't going to be any "straightening up". Then I began to be afraid that it was actually going to fall all the way over with Buddy, Trainman and Tug inside.

All of these pictures were made the next morning. I wish we could have gotten some pictures of it before the wrecker was able to pull it over and back onto the driveway. But, it was too dark when it happened that night and I didn't get a camera until after the wrecker had already started working.

You can see my truck which ended up being blocked by the RV. I drove on up to the clearing (where we had planned to camp) and turned around. But there was no getting out that night.

The wrecker here has the cables hooked to the hitch ball from our truck which Buddy put in the hitch receiver in the RV. They put the ball in upside down to help it hold better. Believe it or not, that tow bar was the only casulty of the whole thing....it bent from all the weight.


This is the tow truck that pulled us out. He used two tow lines that pulled 12,000 lbs. each to ease the weight off the back wheels and then slide the coach to the left and back onto the driveway.

Next with Buddy backing up the coach, he pulled him out!

And then we went to the RV park where we've stayed before!

The excitement never ends!

Trainman's Graduation

We think he had a good experience here and he certainly enjoyed himself. I don't think he really was ready to come home.
I forget how much taller he is than us until I see it in pictures.

Trainman with his two bio-sisters and his niece.

Here he is with one of his best friends. Saying good bye was hard for both of them. She'll be there for another three months or so.

Trainman with some of his friends.

Our youngest son, Trainman, is Autistic and has been away at a Vocational Training facility in our home state for the past year. He recently graduated and I thought you'd like to see a few pictures from his special day. He's adjusting to being home again but he really misses his friends and the independence he had there.

He had several good job experiences and training spots while he was there. He also had driver's ed and was able to get his driver's license while he was there. We hoping that he will soon be able to get a job and be able to drive himself to work each day.

FMCA RV Rally

This is the FMCA 81st International Convention sign..the Great GA Getaway in Perry, GA

The official FMCA seal.

Yep, here we are....some of the YOUNGEST attendees!! People using things from "The Scooter Store" were everywhere, along with Segways, electric 2 wheel scooters, golf carts and bikes. Buddy and I relied on our feet....or we caught the tram.

Note that we're wearing our official nametags. The brown ribbon on the bottom let everyone know that we were first timers and was their clue to welcome us and offer any help or directions that we might need. The yellow ribbon below it said that we were volunteers.

The rally was held at the agricultural center and fair grounds in Perry....that's why the statue of the mule was there. Although mules probably did pull some of the first "RVs" or was that a covered wagon?

This is one of the trams.....and what I volunteered to ride in as a guide or aide. My first tour of duty was Sunday afternoon. It was very cold and rained the entire time. Water would pool up on the top until it became too heavy or we hit a bump and then it would pour off and the wind would blow it in all over you. I called our friends to bring me another poncho which was big and really helped. Buddy's phone was in his pocket and never worked again...it got too wet. The trams were really necessary to get people that were parked in the very back up to the convention areas.

I know this picture isn't very good but it shows some of the rows and rows of RVs.

Here is another row of RVs....somehow I never got a picture made of where we parked but it looked just like this one. The tow cars went up and down the aisles ....mud was everywere.

These three pictures were emailed to us by our friends that attended too. This is a view of our row of RVs. Ours is the tan and white one that is second from the left. I always thought it was huge but looking at it parked next to the others I realized it was actually much smaller. Our friends were parked to our right.

It rained the first 4 days that we were there. This is a large puddle of water we had to wade though near our coach. We were so thankful when the sun came out on Tuesday and things began to dry out.

Being a kindergarten teacher I've really learned how to tie shoes well.


I wish you could see these fans....they were in the cattle barns where some of the seminars were held. They had 10 blades and were called "BIG ASS" fans.

Buddy and I recently went on a trip in our RV to an International FMCA RV rally. It's something that he's always wanted to do and I was happy to travel along with him. FMCA means Family Motor Coach Association and to be a member you have to have to have a vehicle that is "self-contained" to camp in. In other words, you have to be able to drive the thing. So, no pop-ups, trailers or fifth wheels. Buddy's parents owned several RVs over the years and attended quite a few of these rallys. Actually, this one ended up with a somewhat smaller attendance...there were only around 3000 RVs there...down from the 5000 or so that they usually have in attendance. But, since this was my first exerience, I was pretty impressed at the number of coaches there. We belong to FMCA National but we don't belong or camp with a local club in our home state.

We caravaned down with friends who had been before. They had talked us in to being volunteers....assured us that we'd have more fun being involved! And they were right. The four of us were assigned to "Tram duty". We had 2 assigned 4 hour shifts of riding on the trams.

Ok, I guess you're wondering why anyone would want to go to one of these rallys. Well, lots of the folks travel with their local FMCA chapters so there were groups of RVs that entered together and camped near each other and were friends. There were seminars you could attend teaching you everything you might want to know about RVing...from being full timers to caring for your electrical systems. There were craft activities too....bead making, painting, basket making, quilting to name a few. Then there were several buildings full of venders selling just about anything you might need...and a few you probably never thought of. Have you ever seen "sticky feet" shoes?? It's sort of like Post-it note glue on a shoe sole that you just step on and it sticks to the bottom of your feet...over and over again. No, I didn't buy any but I know where you can get some if you're interested! There were also RV dealers that brought in lots of the newest RV coach models from the very small to some that were worth over 2 million dollars.

We had a lot of fun...and I'd probably do it again. But I enjoy camping with our regular camping club the best. We typically camp with a group of people that are from another camping club about once a month during the nice months. They are called FCRVers....which means Family Campers and RVers. They are more family friendly and kids and grandkids are welcomed. And you can camp in anything from a tent, a trailer, fifth wheel, pop-up or RV. We've made a lot of good friends there.