Sunday, October 5
What a nice day! Since Kelly had to get ready for a flight to Nashville this afternoon, we decided that we’d just stay in our neighborhood rather than driving all the way in to Richmond to see the kids for just a few minutes.
When we first arrived here, we drove past a pretty little Presbyterian church and commented that it might be nice to attend there some day. Well, today was that day, so shortly after 10:30 we left the RV park and drove a couple of miles down Ridge Road to the Providence Presbyterian Church, where we were immediately greeted and welcomed by members of the congregation.
Providence is a small church with a relatively small congregation, but they were certainly large on heart and love. Pastor Franklin Reding delivered what amounted to four different sermons during the course of the morning, one of which, a great lesson on love, came during the observance of Communion.
We were greeted warmly by Pastor Reding and other members of the congregation following the service and were encouraged to return any Sunday during our stay at Cozy Acres. Of course, we couldn’t resist the urge to take some pictures while we were on the grounds.
Providence Presbyterian Church was organized in 1825 as “Powhatan Church,” a result of the work of ministers from Cumberland County. In 1831 the church moved into a new building, “Mount Carmel,” and in 1890 the church moved into its present sanctuary with the name “Providence Church.”We were going to run to town for a few things right after church and then go back to Big V for the afternoon, but since the service wasn’t over until 12:30 (and we hadn’t taken time to eat breakfast this morning), we quickly voted to go to Big V first to have a plate of spaghetti to stave off the hunger pangs.
While we were eating, we watched an episode of M*A*S*H, the first that we’d seen in a long time. As we told in the first journal, the staff of Liberal High School gave me the first nine seasons of the show as a retirement gift. They wanted to give me the complete set, but were unable to get the final two seasons. We’ve looked for those shows since, but haven’t been able t locate them except through Amazon. While we were in Wal-Mart yesterday I noticed a rack of old TV series DVD’s, and to my surprise, there were seasons 10 and 11 of the M*A*SH series! Not only that, but they were priced at less than half of what Amazon wanted. It won’t take a whole lot of psychic energy to figure out that I immediately grabbed the boxes and set them in our basket. Now the series is complete and we can again parcel out the viewings during special meal times.
With lunch and the show over, we got in the Vibe and drove to Dollar Tree to pick up some items for a couple of projects that we are working on and then to Wal-Mart to buy some meat for the meal that we will prepare for the kids on Tuesday night. We’ve found that both Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart are great currency conversion spots…we give them our currency and they convert it into a couple of plastic bags full of “stuff.”
Back at Big V we just set the evening on cruise…took a short walk just before dark and then came back to roast some fresh Virginia peanuts, have a dish of nachos, check our email, watch some television, and rest.Monday, October 6
Today we turned Big V into a giant kitchen to prepare food for the kids tomorrow night. We’ve been in pretty much constant contact with Margarita and Maria in Puerto Rico the last few days to make sure our recipes are right. We wrote them down in cryptic notes on little pieces of paper when we were there last March and have struggled to remember everything each time we try to make a dish.
While Barbara alternated between working on the slideshow project and making the Puerto Rican potato salad (we have that one down pretty well now), I gathered up all our recipe notes and started plugging them into the computer…ended up with seven pages and several recipes that are now legible, if not 100 per cent correct. After getting everything committed to a file, I sent a copy to Margarita so she and Maria could proofread it and make any corrections.
Meanwhile, we went ahead with several recipes and ended the day with a chicken dish, a cream-cheese pie, and a batch of black beans. As I started on a marinade for the cube steaks tonight I discovered that we didn’t have any white vinegar, so I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow and another visit to the store before I can get that one underway.
We did make a run to the café where the rehearsal dinner will be held to discuss a few details with Wanda, the manager, and then to the store to pick up a couple of items we needed (just wish we had known that we needed the vinegar). As we were walking to the front door of the Food Lion store, one of the employees came out and said that the store was closed because all of the cash registers had crashed. We went across the lot to a Dollar Store, hoping against hope that they would have everything we needed, but no such luck. We did buy a couple of items, but had to drive several miles down Highway 60 to another Food Lion to get the rest of the things on our list.
We stopped at the post office on the way home to buy some stamps and drop off a couple of pieces of mail…our Presidential ballots since we won’t be in TX on Election Day. Then we returned to Big V to spend what was left of the afternoon and evening. Barbara spent her time relearning how to burn a DVD of the slide show she has created. I did nothing of importance and am reporting the same.
Tuesday, October 7
It was another busy day around our place today. Barbara spent a great deal of the morning reviewing and editing the slideshow presentation so the kids could view it tonight and make their suggestions. She had some problems burning the show to the disc last night and was up until 4:30 a.m. getting it done.
I had a note from Maria with her comments and corrections on the Puerto Rican recipes, so I spent some time making corrections to my copy and getting everything in order. Luckily, I got the notes from Maria in time to stop me from making a couple of mistakes with the dishes we would fix today.
Since what Barbara was doing was a one-person job, I decided I’d go out for a walk. Mike has set it up for all the guys to take a day hike up in the Blue Ridge Mountains the day before the wedding, and I thought that maybe I’d better get some practice. I walked from the campsite down Ridge Road to the little church that we had attended on Sunday, about a 3-mile roundtrip. It was nice to be out and walking again, even if it was a little cool. Barbara: I did take time to go on my own walk with my Sony companion. The beauty of the trees during this time is just breathtaking and even though the camera doesn’t do them justice, I still like to share my camera view.
Jim: After the hike, we had some lunch and then just rested since neither of us had slept well last night. Around 4:00 p.m. we got started preparing the last
of the dishes for our Puerto Rican buffet. While I got the marinated cubed steaks out of the refrigerator, Barbara poured the black beans into the crock pot and put the pan of chicken into the convection to slowly warm.The next two hours were spent cooking the cubed steaks, cooking a pot of rice, preparing toasted flat bread made from slices of garlic bread that I had baked the other day, and preparing the fried plantains (our plantains weren’t working out the way we thought they should, so Barbara made a quick call to Margarita to get clarification on how we should do it. We’re not sure, but we think Margarita was standing by so she could coach us through this project if necessary).
Everything was done just shortly after the kids arrived. We all sat down and enjoyed a real feast,
much more than we would have had for a typical meal, but we figured we wouldn’t have enough time this trip to fix several Puerto Rican meals for them, so we just went the buffet route. Anyway, it was fun to watch them experience new dishes and taste treats.We spent the next two hours watching the 25 minute DVD that Barbara had created for the kids and listening to their suggestions for what should be kept and what could be cut. I kept the remote in my hand to pause the show whenever the kids had a question or comment, and Barbara was sitting at her laptop to immediately delete any of the slides they didn’t want.
All in all, it was a very pleasant and productive evening…good food, good company, and a good time for all…Thank you Margarita and Maria for helping to make it all possible!
Wednesday, October 8
This was just a lazy day around Big V. I scanned and cropped old photographs that the kids had given us last night while Barbara worked on inserting pictures in the slideshow and getting them in the right order (all this, of course, when we weren’t napping or reading).
This evening we got around to playing Washers again…haven’t had many opportunities lately, and we really regret that we weren’t able to teach Mike and Kelly, but they can’t get here before dark, and, while that greatly adds to the challenge, it takes away quite a bit of the fun.
Anyway, Barbara once again showed her mastery of hitting the hole with the washers…had four again this evening, but “slow and steady” won against that skill as I eked out four wins in a four out of seven contest. (Barbara: Makes me want to puke! I fold under pressure!)
Thursday, October 9
Happy Birthday to Jan in Gilbert, AZ, Kelly’s mother!
This morning was more of the same for Barbara…working on the slide show; it’s a new program and we are still learning…just don’t understand some of the glitches that appear from time to time and make it a frustrating job.
We were going to take a little break during the afternoon so Barbara could rest and I could go on another hike, but she decided to continue working on a problem that was plaguing her. I went on out for a walk down Ridge Road to the intersection with Highway 13. On the way back, I discovered a hikers’ entrance to a large plot of Forest Service land. Several trails were clearly indicated on a map at the entrance, so I decided to try a couple of them.
It was an interesting experience…no cars to dodge, and the trails I followed were pretty well marked. I found a large pond along the way and indications that there were some more ponds in the area. Since I had been out longer than I had intended, I went ahead along the trail I was following and ended up across the road from the entrance to the RV park…how lucky for me!
When I got back to Big V, I found that Barbara had temporarily given up working on the slide show and was walking around the park taking pictures. Fall is upon us, and we are surrounded by some beautiful colors developing in the trees, not to mention quite a few leaves that are making their way down to the ground.
This evening we drove to Richmond to visit the kids at their new apartment. While they are still living with their respective roommates, they are spending their “spare” time getting the new apartment set up so it will be ready when they return from their honeymoon. It was obvious at first glance that they have been working hard to get everything just right.
Mike and Kelly gave us the grand tour of the two-bedroom, two-bath apartment (it’s on the third floor, has a vaulted ceiling in the living room and a great balcony/deck that opens off the living room and the guest bedroom). After the tour, we sat down to a dinner of Thai food that they had picked up at one of the outstanding Thai restaurants here in Richmond. Mike has been expanding his culinary horizons to include Thai hot sauce. He usually goes with the medium heat, but tonight he went all out, and I’ll have to admit that I finally met my match in hot sauce…Mike and I both were hitting the water glasses pretty hard as we put away the food!After eating (and cooling down our mouths a bit), we settled down to the business of the night, previewing a draft of the DVD that will be shown at the wedding reception. Before we started the DVD, we told Kelly that it was a really rough draft and that she would just have to imagine how the music would go with the picture selection. What she didn’t know was that Mike, romantic that he is, had emailed Barbara the music selections shortly after noon today and she had been working like crazy to get the slides set to music. Needless to say, the production, while still a rough draft, was well accepted by both of them. The only problem left was how to pare down a 25-minute series to 20 – 22 minutes. For an hour or so, both of the kids went through the show slide by slide (as well as side by side) to choose what they could give up and what had to stay in the show.
After that bit of work was done, we took some more pictures of them in the new place, some to use in the slide show and some just because, and then said goodbye…it was late for us old folks, and we had a one-hour drive back to the RV park, all in the dark.
Friday, October 10
Happy Birthday to Carol Crenshaw (Barbara’s older sister) in Roswell, NM!
After checking email and taking care of business around Big V, Barbara settled in to do some more work on the slide show. Her goal was to get everything she had so far transferred to a DVD so we could see how it looked and sounded. Unfortunately, she was still having trouble with a few of the slides not doing what we thought they should do. She is trying to pan and zoom through the slides to give them a little more interest, but it seems that some of them won’t transition to the next slide after she’s worked with them…no matter what we try (by “we” I mean me commiserating with her and offering suggestions that so far haven’t panned out).
I took a break and fixed a late breakfast…bacon, scrambled eggs, and French toast and we took time out to eat and watch another episode of M*A*S*H.
After taking a break, Barbara returned to the slide show and worked on it into the evening. I spent some time this evening watching the Dodgers/Phillies baseball game, but didn’t get too excited since I didn’t really care which team won. Artesia’s football team had an open date this week, so there wasn’t a game to watch or listen to. I did track the progress of the Red Sox and Rays on the computer, but that is no way to watch a baseball game!
Saturday, October 11
While Barbara slept in a little, I got an early start on the computer to catch up on news and sports…found out that Liberal had lost their homecoming game against Great Bend last night.
We spent the morning pretty much the way we have been spending most of our days lately…checking our lists to see what needs to be one before everyone begins arriving for the pre-wedding activities and working on the slide show. With only a couple of glitches and a couple of things she wanted to edit for clarity, Barbara had the show in good shape…all that was left was to burn it to a DVD so we could see how it was really going.
By noon I had the TV turned on to watch the Texas/Oklahoma football game. Barbara doesn’t like to be in the same room with me when Texas is playing because, evidently, I get pretty vocal whenever the Longhorns make really stupid mistakes. It didn’t take long for me to get heated up, and there were enough mistakes along the way to warrant a few loud exclamations, but in the end, Texas overcame a great Oklahoma team to win the annual Red River Shootout (oops, that’s now the Red River Rivalry to those who are politically correct, but then, almost everyone who reads this knows how I feel about political correctness).
When the game was finally over, we decided we’d been stuck in Big V long enough, so we hopped in the Vibe and drove to town (not that there is really a town close by) to do some more shopping. Barbara wanted to look for another blouse and some accessories for the outfits she will be wearing next week, and we needed to buy a few groceries.
As we finished the last of the shopping, we decided that we’d let someone else do the cooking tonight, so we both started looking for somewhere to get some takeout food. We passed several burger and sandwich shops, but weren’t interested in them. Finally, we spotted a Pizza Hut and decided a large pan Supreme Pizza would fill the bill.
I hesitated on the order when we were told it would take about 25 minutes, but we decided to go ahead with the wait, even though we hadn’t eaten all day. While we were waiting, we walked around the neighborhood, found a genuine 7-11 store and went inside to look around. We were so hungry that we decided we’d buy one taquito and split it to tide us over until we could get the pizza home…maybe not the greatest culinary decision we ever made, but it worked.
After getting the pizza and purchases home, we threw together a salad, piled the pizza on a plate, and settled back to watch M*A*S*H, since nothing else was on. As soon as we finished the show and dinner, we started preparing a meal that we wanted to give the kids tomorrow. Barbara has a delicious crock pot recipe for chicken, potatoes, onions, and carrots, all cooked in a couple of cans of Cream of Mushroom soup, and we thought it would be easy to fix and make a great evening meal for Mike and Kelly.
While we were putting all that together, Barbara also prepared an Apple Betty dessert (she even let me stir the batter for a while), that we would take to church with us tomorrow for a covered dish lunch with the kids’ Sunday school class.
By the time we had done all that, we were tired enough to shut things down for the night. I decided that it was just too frustrating to try to keep up with the baseball game by tracking it on the computer, so I voted to let the Red Sox and Rays slug it out without me.
“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” – Dan Zadra
From our cozy home in Cozy Acres…Jim & Barbara
Powatan also figured prominently during the Civil War, but that will be a story for another day.
After taking Mike back to his office, we visited a couple of shops in the little center where he works…one was a printing shop where we got some information about having Journal 4 published; the other was a nice little craft shop where we found a couple of things for a project we wanted to do.
While Barbara was trying on the blouse at Cato’s and looking at some accessories (whatever those are), I went to Dollar Tree to find some items we needed to decorate the tables for the rehearsal dinner. Then, it was off to Wal-Mart to buy a few groceries and to a couple of other shops to just look around. I feel that I have used up about two years of shopping time just in this one trip to Virginia!
“The great difference in voyages rests not with the ships, but with the people you meet on them.” - Amelia Barr
After we finished with the meal and said goodbye to new friends, we went back to the church, took some pictures, said goodbye to Bob and Nell, and got back into Big V to start the day’s journey. Bob had showed us an easy way to catch a bypass to I-285, and it wasn’t long before we were mixed in with the regular Sunday traffic (which is only slightly less than the regular daily traffic) and finding our way out of town.
We decided to stop at a Love’s along the way, but found when we got there that the lines of cars were backed up from the pumps to the back of the truck parking lot. We could tell right away that there was no way to get Big V and the trailer to the pump islands, but had no choice but to join in the line and wait until we could break away and get back to the main road. About 20 miles down I-20 we finally found a good spot to pull in and have lunch and give Big V a short drink (at a “reasonable” price).
Wednesday, September 24
After getting the place all set up, we drove to Powhatan to look in a couple of stores at the small shopping center and do some grocery shopping at Food Lion. Mike had said he would come out to welcome us tomorrow evening; when we asked what he wanted for supper, he said that Mexican food would be great, so we had to buy a few items to fill out the menu.
Jim: Ernie, Billee, Barbara, and I were waiting at the Wal-Mart parking lot when Ladd came by after work and delivered our big trailer. Ladd had to be someplace else as quickly as he could get there, so as soon as he dropped the trailer, he took off. With instructions from Ernie, I backed Big V up to the trailer and we got it hooked on to the hitch ball. All that was left was to hook up the chains and the power to the lights and electric brakes and we’d be ready to roll.
Once we found the problem, it didn’t take long to install new couplers and re-wrap the wiring bundle. With that accomplished, I hit the light switches and bingo, we had running lights, turn signals, and brake lights.
We left the Welcome Center and drove another 85 miles to a rest area where we decided to stop for the evening. The Alabama rest areas along I-20 are beautiful; they are set well back from the highway so there is minimal noise, and they are surrounded by beautiful tall trees…a perfect setting for camping out along the highway. We even found a spot where we could open the kitchen and bedroom slide-outs for more comfort..jpg)
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Needless to say, we spent about three delightful hours talking, cooking, and eating. The food was beyond wonderful…barbecued ribs, baked beans, hot bread, homemade cole slaw, Puerto Rican potato salad, and plenty of sweet tea, all topped off with slabs of butter pecan cake. It was difficult to get up from the table; not because we wanted to eat more, but because we were too stuffed to move!
We even had the idea that we could go outside and wash the car and Big V and then have a rainwater rinse, but when Barbara tested the waters (literally), she declared that it was just too cold and not worth the effort. We formulated a new plan…when the rain stops, we’ll get all the washing materials and equipment out of the bin and set them in a handy place; then, we’ll get our cycle rain suits out and put them on to go out and do the wash the next time it rains. Okay…so it’s a plan!
While we were down at the beach, we noticed a loud roaring noise and saw what we thought was smoke coming up intermittently over in the far corner of the earthen dam. I said I thought it was probably a diesel engine running a pump to help drain the lake. Later, we found out from John, the RV park manager, that what we really heard was the roar of the water as it drained into an underground spillway; what we thought was smoke was the spray flying back up because of the air and water mix that couldn’t move smoothly into the spillway. We later learned from John that the spillway wasn’t designed to drain that much water at one time; it normally just moved excess water created by the slow-feeding underground springs.
The top photos show the beach area from the side of the lake across from the RV park, and the other shots are of the spill way and the head of Little Sandy Creek.
Set apart from the memorial wall is a small lake with an AH-1 armed attack helicopter mounted so it appears to be hovering above it. This particular helicopter was from the line of the world’s first armor and close support/attack helicopter group. The tours of duty for this helicopter included Vietnam (1970 – 1973) as a Cobra Gunship for both the 7th and 8th Armored Air Cavalries, in Alaska (1974 – 1978 for USAF Cold Weather Operations, in Germany (1979 – 1989) as a U.S. Army missile launcher, and in the U.S. (1995 – 1996) for the New Jersey Air National Guard. It was retired from active duty in 2002. In 2004, it was donated from the retired inventory at Fort Drum, New York, and donated to the Greater Hawkins Area Veterans Memorial Park.
After walking around the park and taking the pictures we wanted, we made a brief stop at Sonic for breakfast and then went back to the laundromat to gather up the clothes. From there we traveled back to the lake to put everything away so we could get down to Lindale to get our hair cut (extremely important), and then go back to Mineola to visit with the family before heading back to the lake.
It started raining harder just a few minutes after 1:00; hard enough that we finally closed up the house and turned on the air conditioner. I decided that I would go to bed to read a while until the brunt of the storm hit. Just minutes after that grand decision, the power faltered several times and then went off. Since it wasn’t too bad outside, we decided to just let everything sit until we needed to fire up the generator.
When we were looking for a site to be in this week, we looked first for a relatively clear area so we could have the best possible cell phone and broadband card. Another consideration was that we wanted to be where we would have the least chance of a tree falling on us. We do have trees beside the pad, but feel that they are well rooted in a good run-off zone, and we are away from where the wind whips up from the lake. Today we were very glad that we made the choice we did!
After our meal, we went for a walk through the mall, stopped at a shoe store to by Little Jimmy a new pair of running shoes (and trust us on this, he CAN run) before saying goodbye to the kids so they could go visit Jim’s folks for the afternoon.
At 7:00 we went back over to the house to visit, watch a movie (Little Jimmy loves The Incredibles), and have some dessert before calling it a day and returning to the motel. Jimmy may love the movie, but Barbara and I enjoyed watching Jimmy more than the movie as we captured his various “watching” positions.
Monday, September 1
Since a large number of people seemed to have had the same plans that we did for breakfast, we got to spend quite a bit of time visiting with Abby, Dan, Whitney, Jim, and Little
After eating, we returned to the house and whiled away the rest of the evening. I started playing a card game with Barbara, Randi, and Sarah, but later turned my hand over to Carol while I went back to the living room to alternately watch a movie with John, help entertain Rhett, and keep an eye on the Artesia vs Hobbs football game that was being carried over the internet. Since it was an away game for the Bulldogs, they only had an audio feed, so I guess I really kept an ear to the game instead of having an eye on it. In any case, 4-A Artesia defeated the 5-A Hobbs Eagles 27-15 and remained undefeated in the young season.
After taking our time getting around on a lazy Saturday morning, we all had a great breakfast that Carol prepared and then got cleaned up and ready to wander out to one of the local shopping centers for some looking (John and me) and shopping (Barbara, Carol, and Randi). Rhett did a little of both and managed to break in a new pair of shoes by running all over the place, exploring and playing hide-and-seek.
Carol and Randi needed to do a few more things so they sent John, Rhett, Barbara and I to have lunch at Whataburger. It was just after we placed our order that John realized he no longer had a wallet! Leaving Rhett with us, he hot-footed it back to the mall area just praying that his wallet would be at the last store we visited, where Randi had bought a purse. Sure enough it had been found beside the chairs that Jim and John had spent time sitting in during that shopping adventure.
Below: Pictures of Rhett as he enjoyed a beautiful Saturday morning in Poppie and Mima’s backyard.
“The trouble with being a parent is that by the time you are experienced, you are unemployed.” - Unknown
