RVing With a Purpose

Monday, June 8, 2020

So it’s been about a month since we have posted to the blog. Probably not the best way to keep readership up on the blog. Maybe we need a grand reopening or something like all the stores. We might make some plans just to do just that but let us first catch you up on the past month.

Maybe the best news in the past month is that we both were able to get hair cuts. Okay, so after the days of “stay at home” we are easily pleased. Neither of us have had such long hair since about 1975. It felt weird the first few days after it was cut but we are now again enjoying quick and easy hair care.

It took a while in the pandemic days of Amazon Prime, but all the parts finally arrived for setting up the new truck for towing. We talked to Randy and Debra (Max’s brother and sister-in-law) and we all decided we felt we were all okay with a visit with social distancing. We visited with them right before we left for Florida after Thanksgiving and had not seen them since – too long! Anne drove the truck and Max drove Fred over to South Carolina for our visit. This allowed Max and Randy time to visit while they totally tore off the front end of our beautiful new truck. It looked like it was the one in the wreck. However, Randy and Max did a great job and with about a day of work the base plate was in place for towing and the truck was beautiful again. It required several more hours to do the wiring required for the lights and the braking system. All of that is now installed and works and looks great! The installation looks better than the previous truck and is easier to set up as well and we towed the truck back to Alabama. Thanks, Randy for all your hard work.

So glad Debra and Randy have a beautiful open floor plan home. We could easily keep our distance and eat at opposite ends of their long dining room table. Anne really enjoyed her time with Debra while the guys worked on the truck. Been missing our family!

Since coming back from SC we have continued to work on the houses and are making progress. The new lumber rack we built in the basement allowed us to do some clean up some there. There is more to do but we will get it done in due time. Our weather has remained nice although it’s now hot summertime in Alabama with highs in the 90’s. We may have to take another trip and head north this time. Only time and Covid will tell. Summer plans are definitely jello right now.

Today we were in Oneonta to help our church hand out cold water to the people in a peaceful march. Our church still has one more week before we can resume in person worship so it was great to finally see our pastor and his wife and a few other dear friends – of course with masks and social distancing. It has been 6 ½ months since we have worshiped at our church. So very thankful for streaming our worship services but will be even more thankful to finally be able to worship together again.

We miss everyone but please remember that COVID is still here and will still make you very sick. Please be very careful and stay safe and healthy.

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there. This is our second Mother’s Day without our Moms so it’s been a little hard but we are thankful for a beautiful day and great memories!

Guess we aren’t doing very well with the blog during the COVID crisis. Can we blame it on that? Sure, why not? How have we been spending our time while staying at home? We have been working on the house and getting it ready to hopefully sell. Some days it’s almost like working a project. Repairs, painting, caulking, etc. Some days it’s fun, others not so much. We have done a little work in the community, of course keeping our social distance. We have adjusted to wearing masks and gloves when we go to the grocery store, wiping things down, etc. We were already pretty diligent with hand washing and hand sanitizer.

We unfortunately also had the experience of purchasing a new truck during this time of social distancing. Buying a truck with online shopping works pretty well and since we bought another Colorado it was pretty easy. We only drove the one we bought and since it only had 2 miles on it when we drove it we knew it hadn’t been driven by anyone else. On our trip to Cullman for a follow up doctor’s appointment for Max we were hit in the passenger side in the area of the rear tire and the truck was rolled onto the driver’s side. It was scary but no one in either vehicle was injured and for that we are very thankful. Of course, USAA were a pleasure to deal with and we will enjoy having a new truck after we get it all set up for towing. We are waiting on the new baseplate and wiring harness to arrive and shipping seems so much slower these days. Otherwise, we have been very faithful with getting our walking and for the most part we have had great weather as encouragement.

Hope you all are staying safe and healthy. We miss seeing you and are looking forward to more normal times.

Sunday, April 19, 2020

So it’s been eleven days since our last post. What have we done that might be interesting to you? We have been enjoying spring in Alabama. Spring and fall are great times to be home in Alabama. We have beautiful springs with the dogwoods, red buds, and all the flowers blooming. Maybe due to the wet winter, the trees have been such beautiful shades of green and the iris colors have been so vibrant. The blueberry bushes have already bloomed and now have lots of little blueberries. Of course this blooming all comes at a cost of yellow vehicles and daily antihistamines. But the beauty makes it all worthwhile. Unfortunately spring in Alabama also brings storms and tornadoes.

We always love Easter sunrise service but this year was very different. We set the clock to get up in time to stream Hinton Rural Life Center’s service (eastern time zone). Hinton is one of our NOMADS agencies that we love to support. Our church (central time zone) then streamed our sunrise service and we watched sunrise here on our mountain sitting in our truck next to our best friends in their Jeep. It was good but we sure missed the great fellowship and breakfast at church afterwards.

Easter Sunday also brought tornadoes. We had a total of 24 tornadoes in our state, most in north Alabama where we are sheltering in place. We had four tornadoes in our county. We lost power for 24 hours which is very unusual for us. We put Fred into the barn to protect from the predicted golf ball size hail (fortunately did not happen) but could still run Fred’s generator and power Aunt Helen’s refrigerator and freezer. We moved everything in our house refrigerator to Helen’s and we had the boxes and bags ready and were about to begin moving everything out of our freezer to Helen’s when the power was restored. It was a hard three days because we began on Saturday preparing for the predicted long track tornadoes, then watching the weather and going to the basement during the two that come near us, and then debris cleanup on Monday. Fortunately, we had no damage to any of the houses, the barn or Fred, so although very tired by Monday night, we also were counting our blessings.

This past week was more staying home and working on various projects around the house and Fred. We know that a lot of people are really struggling with the stay at home orders but we are blessed to be able to get out and walk and enjoy spring most days and we are slowly marking some things off our to do lists. Today is another storm day. Today it’s only rain and flash flooding in north Alabama for which we are very thankful. There have been severe storms to our south in the central part of the state and our hearts go our to those impacted. So far, no injuries reports.

Hope you are are surviving and thriving, with God’s help, while you shelter in place. We are praying for your health and safety. May God Bless and Keep you!

Wednesday, April 8, 2020

We know it has been a while since we posted but we really haven’t been doing anything exciting. We are okay. Really we are much better than okay. We are GREAT! As some of you know, Max has had a mass on the right side of his neck since January. Really it began about a year ago but went away, returned and he had a cat scan that showed nothing, it went way again and then returned in January and stayed. We scheduled an appointment with the specialist here while still in Florida and he was seen as soon as we returned home. After several trips to the doctor and different things being done, he had a needle aspiration and biopsy last Thursday. Finally today, he got a call from the doctor and ….

If you look back at our last post, we referred to Joshua 1:9. Yes, that was for us as well as our readers. We thank God for his love and care through this stressful time. Otherwise, we are still safely sheltering in place according to the state of Alabama’s stay at home order, and watching Spring spring.