VACATION - Starting to Forget What Day It Is

Yup, vacation mode is really setting in now, 19 days into our time away, and we are forgetting what day of the week it even is!  THAT is true vacation brain and you know you are really relaxing!  We forgot it was only Monday, and Steve was thinking it was Tuesday to watch his one and only tv show he likes to watch (Person of Interest).  Oh well, now he can watch it tonight.

You might not think this is relaxing, but Steve is having a great time with Lowell. They are two peas in a pod, and love to have projects to work on.  If they don't have something to do, they are at odds with themselves and can not just sit and twiddle their thumbs.  Here they are washing a truck that Lowell is fixing up to sell.  When they were done washing it, they started working on the body here and there....

While they worked so hard,

here was MY view, from my lawn chair! 

Yup, the sky was THAT blue... ahhhhhh! 

This bug is another project car that Lowell worked on and repainted.  

He likes it so much, he don't want to sell it now.  LOL 

He has a case of  "too many vehicles" 

I count eight vehicles and a travel trailer in the yard at this time.....

Mom and I have been busy, working on crafts and projects, in between cooking meals for the guys and running errands.  It's been great spending a lot of days in a row with Mom.  Usually we have to cram in our visits to a few short days when they stop by as they head up to Michigan.  This has been a wonderfully long visit.  I know we have not been doing a lot touristy things, or items of travel interest to blog about for my RVing friends.  But my fiber and crafting readers will love some of these----

I set up my sewing machine on a folding table in the livingroom.  Working on some quilts and hot pads... 

While Mom is working on her addiction:  doggie critters made from pipe cleaners! 

and these jungle ones:

I even came in yesterday to catch her googling new patterns and animal shapes to make more!  She is getting better and better at the computerizing and using the internet to find out stuff.  I am proud of her!

I have been working on my quilt--- it's all together into two large panels, and now I have been working on the free-motion machine stitching of vines and leaves around on all the dark sections.  I am stitching it in rich shiny red threads on the dark black/brown portions of the quilt, and am about halfway done.  I hope to be handstitching the binding by the weekend.  Once each side is done, I will join them and butt up the battings to each other and seam the back by hand so it doesn't show through to the front. The dogs both approve when I was laying it out flat to check matching something between the blocks.

The dogs are really enjoying this Florida weather.  We leave the door open so they can go in and out at will, but we do keep Finnegan on a rope tied to the deck to keep him around. Duke is reliable and won't leave us, and Finney is getting better about hanging close too.   

A neighbor's dog came into the yard to visit yesterday, and it sure got these guys all excited to have a visitor.  Sniffs all around before the other dog was grabbed by it's collar from it's owner and hauled back home again.  Auntie Lois has come over to visit, and is also spoiling our dogs rotten, finding the cheese puffs!  She's just as bad as my parents!!!

Steve has been doing the outside cooking on the grill we brought along.... while Mom and I have been making goodies like fresh beans from Trader Joes, and Mom's traditional potato salad.  Steve has been grilling up burgers, steaks, chicken and other goodies.

I decided to bake up some apple pies, and Mom had some frozen apples so I used those for a couple pies.  Boy oh boy the house sure smelled good, and I shared a couple pieces over to Auntie Lois and Uncle Sam's when I went to untangle a little something on her computer.  She is doing good too!

Last night we settled in for an evening of crafts and some tv watching.  Lowell was watching his western show "through his eyelids" while Mom and I were working on our things. So Steve decided to help out Mom with another project of his own.  Mom had bought a cuckoo clock while visiting Germany a number of years ago, and somehow during moving households, the chains had jammed up inside of the clock mechanism.  She was quoted $200 from a clock repair shop to fix it.  Steve took it apart, and within the hour he had it working again!

Now we are kinda anxious to see if the little bird popped out on the hour like it's supposed to!  We wandered out and went to bed before the hour for the bird to do it's cuckoo thing.

In our family, we don't use the label "step" although Lowell is my step dad.  He has children from his first marriage.  This weekend, his only daughter and her husband and youngest son are coming to Florida for a quick visit.  So now I will be able to meet my step sister in person! We have sent emails and photos and are friends on Facebook.  Looking forward to extending our family even wider.

We told Mom that fish and company start to stink after three days, and we should be moving on soon... she won't hear of it and wants us to stay even longer.  I admit that I do enjoy the sunshine, warmth and ability to wear shorts and tshirts each day.  Kicking off the sandals as I walk into the house is nice too.  Far cry from bundling up in snow boots, heavy wool socks, sweaters and parkas.  Ahhhhhhh  Record cold temps up in Wisconsin make it hard to imagine leaving here.

But------ I think we will start to head north early next week.  Hope the ice and snow are held at bay, so we can have dry roads to travel on.