Got the Go Ahead to take our RV Vacation

Ahhh  yes, after waking up from the anesthesia, in a fog, I asked if the vacation was still on?   The doc smilingly said YES we can take our seven week RV trip!   He is such a cool doc, reminds me of a little leprechaun -- red hair, small stature, reassuring smile and always happy.  He don't pull the fancy lingo stuff, and lays it out in plain layman's terms. 

He didn't find any honking big tumors or weeping lesions or sores inside of me, which is wonderful.  Of course I still have a "Disrupted Fundoplication" (after my two stomach surgeries, which later has twisted loose, halfway hanging up) and the Barrett's Disease in the esophagus is still present, but not nearly as angry or red as years before.  He is suspecting some seepages at some capillaries in the distended stomach as being the source of the blood in my system and cause of my anemia.  He took biopsy nips at many locations and will get the results of those in 7-10 days.

We came home and I hit the couch for a long long snooze of over 3 hours without hearing a thing.  It was a good deep refreshing sleep and I think the ease of knowing I didn't have any more huge tumors growing in was a reason to sleep well.   (two years ago I had a baseball sized one, and last year was a softball sized one, among others)

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Sooooo on to planning our RV vacation!

I have two more doc appts next week, and I have to co-hostess a HCE dinner on the 21, and Steve has a big union meeting on the 22nd.  THEN we can leave!

Steveio and I are pouring over maps, checking weather conditions for certain areas and going over my file of "Interesting Places to See".  Over the years, any time I read about something or someplace interesting to see, either on someone's blog, in a magazine or on tv, I would make a note of it in a file on my laptop.  State by state, I have paragraphs, notes or websites of neato things in case we are ever in that area.

We are marking down where it might be WARM in 2 weeks when we leave.   That is getting tough to do, with all the recent strange weather down south and out west.  They are having snow in areas that haven't seen snow in many years.  Hope it all melts by the time we get there?  Their averages don't match their current conditions.  LOL

A lot of the ground we want to cover will be in Arizona and southern California, so I started marking places on my "Camping Map" file that I keep on Streets and Trips program in the computer.

Our Microsoft Streets and Trips has the GPS dongle that hooks up to the USB port, so that big map is also our GPS screen as we travel on our laptop.  What is really cool is that it makes blue marks called "mouse trails" wherever we travel.... so at a glance we can see where we have been for later reference!  

I also have notations on the maps of all the campgrounds we attended, how much we paid, how many sites, if there is a dump station or water, etc.  Even Walmarts and gas stations with diesel fuel.  I removed all those markers for this picture or else it's all cluttered with when zoomed out like this.  When zoomed in, it gives a lot of information in any area we might be looking at.  You can do searches for specific things like hospitals, museums, grocery stores, restaurants (right down to choice of foods like Italian, Chinese, pizza etc)  and brands of gas stations.   It sure makes travelling easy!

Here is an example of the State of Wisconsin and our blue tracks are all routes we have driven since getting this Streets and Trips program.   Cute, huh?

I like having the GPS on a big laptop screen, and a full keyboard to type on to make changes to the route at any time, check distances to something we might see a sign for along the way, or just see where the heck we are!

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We also have an appointment tonight with a security company that our neighbor uses.  They have a wireless system that will call up to five phone numbers upon a disturbance at any of the access points on the house or garage...   so we can set it to call the county sheriff, the local police, two of our neighbors and us in the event of a situation.  It uses cell phone signals instead of a wired phone line. Will have to train the kids on using it when they are coming and going to do snow, water plants and check on things.

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Our little beebopper Chelsea granddaughter is happily attending her full time daycare this week, and is adjusting well.  She runs in the daycare room to play with her little friends, and she sure don't care if you are leaving or not.  When we picked her up last week, she cried when we put her jacket on.  She wanted to STAY and PLAY!

Here is a photo of her last week at our house, watching her Granfaddah shovel the snow on the deck, and the dogs were helping him... heh heh... more like barking and playing and getting in his way!

(That little red camp chair was her mother's camping chair 27 years ago)

Little Allegra the swimmer granddaughter is going to graduation again for her swimming class at the YMCA, she is graduating now from the "Perch Class"  so we grandparents need to be there to cheer her on.  She used to be a "Shrimp" in this photo, and will keep going up up up the chain till she is a "Shark"!

Our grandson Jameson was a lucky boy and went to the Welcome Home celebration for the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl Champs!   They had a huge welcoming ceremony at the sacred Lambeau Field.   Heather and Jesse took him to be part of Packer History.  They only live about a mile from the stadium.

Living in Green Bay during the last Super Bowl celebration, I remember standing for hours in the cold in 1996 with my kids for the welcome celebration bus route in Green Bay...The buses passed within 2 houses of our home, so we could go back and forth with hot cocoa, bathroom breaks and changing the kids mittens and socks as they got wet and soggy playing in the snow... waiting for those buses to come through town.  I got to slap palms with MVP Desmond Howard as the bus passed and my kids saved confetti and silly string being sprayed on them by the players.  

Well, time to get a move on here this morning, with this new Lease on Life, I have a lot of things to get done today!