December 2017 – Page 4 – RVing With a Purpose

An Early Christmas Splurge

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Yesterday was a foggy, cloudy day with nothing blog-worthy to talk about – so we didn’t. We just worked around the house and handled some business for the LOLs.

Today was a rainy, cloudy, foggy, yucky day. As is usual for Alabama winters, the temperature goes up and we get rain. Stops raining and the temperature drops. The high was in the 60s today. We had a doctor’s appointment in Cullman today and unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the office is one block from The Duchess Bakery. And we can never go there and not get their Bizmarks because rather than squeeze some filling into the pastry, they slice it open and fill it with both a layer of white cream and and a layer of custard filling and then ice with chocolate. So, we didn’t have a choice. Duchess is one of the best, if not the best bakery in the state of Alabama. Of course, we had to have a Christmas cookie. They are so good. Today was a real Christmas splurge. The scale will not be happy in the morning. We really need to behave the next two days because Friday is the Armstrong Christmas get together.

We know this is a RVing blog and we will be getting back to RVing soon, but for the next week we will be enjoying family time and completing our doctors visits and family business.

Plans – HA!

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Today was a gray, rainy day. The weather forecast is for more of the same. And also trending colder and wetter for the next 7 days. The weather man said we would have a couple for dry days, but they would be cold and that sunshine was not going to be very common. Oh, well. It’s winter. We were hoping to un-winterize FRED for Christmas and not have to re-winterize before heading south January 1^st, but it’s looking like we may not be un-winterizing at all until we head south. Yuk!!

We had lunch all ready and left for church at 8:00 this morning and just happened to notice as we were driving by Aunt Helen’s that there was no Visiting Angel car there. We swung around and pulled into the driveway and garage door was still down. Not a good sign. We let ourselves in and all the lights were still out and everyone was still in bed. No Angel anywhere in sight. Aunt Helen was awake but totally oblivious to the day or time. Juno was still sound asleep. We called the supervisor and of course got voice mail. So much for our plans to attend the Christmas music service this morning. We began getting the ladies up and dressed and fed. We did get a call back from the supervisor who didn’t know why there was no one on the job. She called back later and said someone was on the way, but by then Helen was dressed, fed and chilling in her recliner and Juno was up doing her morning devotion. We couldn’t get to church anyway by then so we just told her to forget it, we would handle everything. We got Juno’s toast and Boost when she was ready and got the ladies on the way to church right on time. We then went back home, watched the video stream of our 11:00 service (where the Christmas music was done last week), and finished up lunch. Oh well, we turned on Christmas music and got to hear Barry’s sermon anyway.

It was such a damp, gray day, after cleaning up after lunch at Helen’s, we came home a took a nap and watched another Christmas movie. Hope you all had a wonderful Sunday.

Ice and Family

Saturday, December 16, 2017

There was ice on the pond this morning for the first time this year. The predicted low was 23 but by our thermometer we only got down to about 27-28. It may have been that low in the valley. But after the cold day yesterday and the dip last night we certainly had ice and cold this morning. However, the sun returned and it warmed up fairly quickly and was a nice day, for which we are thankful.

Today was Aunt Helen’s annual Christmas luncheon at the Pine Mountain Community Center and we were certainly thankful for nice weather to get Juno and Helen to the event. It was a small group this year, only 22 because most people will not be able to be on the mountain until next weekend. When Christmas falls on Sunday or Monday we generally don’t have as good attendance. In the years past the event was at Aunt Helen’s house and we have had as many as 75. That made for a crowded house. However, all that were able to attend had a very good time visiting. And of course the food was wonderful as there are many excellent cooks in the family.

Cousin Steve carving a ham that was smoked this week at the Pine Mountain Community Center

Hope you are remembering what Christmas and the Advent season is all about amid the hustle and bustle of everything. And please be in prayer for all our pastors and services tomorrow. Have a great rest of the weekend.

Cold, Gray (un-blogworthy) Day.

Friday, December 15, 2017

We lost our wonderful weather. Today was gray, cloudy and cold. It was too cold to do anything outside. We did walk to Helen’s once, a mile round trip but that was it for anything outside today. The remainder of our exercise was inside. Otherwise we went to Oneonta to do LOL errands, get Max a hair cut and make arrangements to get our tags next month when we are in Florida. We came back home and Anne packaged Helen’s medications for another month. After that we did some more accounting and year end contribution stuff. And that was our day. Not very exciting but didn’t want to skip today. The weather is suppose to be improving shortly and maybe we will be doing some more interesting things soon.