We are heading back to Florida!

Well, that is what I feel like doing, based on the lousy weather we have been having this week in Woodstock!

Today was cool, wet, cloudy...get the picture! Judy and I headed over to our new walking track and did 5 miles this morning. Today they allow the real young kids to come onto the indoor soccer field and just run around kicking the balls around. Gwenny's other Gramma, Diane, brought Gwenny and Charlie over to play...they had a ball!

No pics today...never got around to it. Just quite a bit of taking life easy in the cold and rain!

Till tomorrow...

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Time for the Annual "Mailman's Lunch"...

When you up, and roll your house down to Florida for 6 months, you can accumulate a bunch of mail back home! To help out with this problem, we enlisted the help of our Daughter, Kristina to be our Mail-person!

To keep this valued employee happy, we take her out to lunch every spring, and today, she managed to bring a couple of her Assistant Mail-persons with her... Gwenny and Charlie! We made our way over to Dean Michael's Restaurant in Woodstock... probably Kristina's favourite Restaurant in Woodstock. They excell at Breakfast and Lunch, and do not do Dinner at all... they close for Dinner.

 

Gwenny ordered the "Doghouse..." which was her favourite food, French Toast, made up to look like a doghouse. I could not believe how much Gwenny ate! She did a good job. Her job on the mail, is to keep out of Mom's way... lol....

They have a big fish tank inside the restaurant, and Gwenny spent 10 minutes looking at the gold fish! She loved them... so did Charlie.

Anyhow... thanks for all your help on the mail this winter Kristina... your assistance is appreciated!

Earlier this morning, Kristina needed some time out of the house, so Judy and I were the designated baby sitters. We made our way over to Woodstock's Early Years Program, that allows parents to bring their young children in and play with each other, and a bunch of neat toys.

Charlie loved this house, and played hide and seek with Judy by closing the shutters.

Gwenny is inside a fire engine... it is like a tent structure looking on the outside like a fire truck.

Charlie made his way inside as well... he had a ball! This is a good program, and probably around 12 to 15 youngs kids out today.

The rest of the day was spent watching the rain fall... and lots more yet to come!

Till tomorrow...

 

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Big Family news tonight...

Our Son, Shawn, made this announcement tonight on his Facebook Page...

"Signing Day! Officially going to be the next Assistant Professor of Neonatology at James H. Quillan College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University. Exciting opportunity!"

To say the least it will be an exciting opportunity for him and his Family. This means he has finished his Fellowship in Ottawa, and has now accepted a full time position as a Neonatologist in Johnson City, Tennessee. He will start work at the Hospital around July 1st. this year. This has been in the works for a while now, but is now official, as all the iiiiiii's have been dotted and all the ttttttttttt's have been crossed! Shawn and Jenn have made a couple trips down to Johnson City and in fact have already made arrangements to buy a home. Lots in the works for them, that is for sure!

Today was nice and sunny, but not real warm according to my scale of what good temperatures should be... we made a quick visit to see the kids this morning, and Judy sold a stroller on Kijiji in about 10 hours! We bought this stroller in Florida to use when the kids came to visit, and have now sold it at a profit! Bonus!

This afternoon Judy and I joined the Cowan Park Indoor Soccer Facility in Woodstock! No, we are not going to play soccer, but they do have a terrific elevated walking track in a climate controlled enviorment.

This is a great indoor/outdoor soccer facility, and can accomodate lots of kids of all ages, and is all brand new.

These are file pictures of the facility I took off their website, as I forgot to take pictures when I was there... we walked for one hour today, and I completed 36 laps of the track, which is 5 miles worth. I enjoyed walking so much in Florida this past winter, I wanted to continue, and this facility will help. Not too bad price wise, $160.00 for both of us for a 6 month membership.

Our Park Owner Ron, has been busy this spring, as I walked around the park today and checked things out. Lots of digging going on as he replaces some of the services to the upper area of sites in the Park. Will have to get going, as the campers will soon start coming!

Till tomorrow...

 

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Of course there is "sun" on "Sunday"...

Turned out real nice here today, lots of sun, and while not near as hot as Florida was, it got comfortable outside. We continued to do a bit of outside work today, we set up our bistro table for our Patio, I got the Weber 200 set up on it's stand and even cooked some nice sausage for dinner tonight. Judy got ambitious and raked up our lot that we stay on...looking good!

Last night it was pretty cool here... to the point where when I got up this morning I was cold! Over the past years we have lived in our RV, we have simply used our RV Furnace to keep warm, with an electric heater as an assistant to the furnace. When I looked at the temperatures expected here for the next week, with four days of rain, I figured something different had to be done. All you RV'ers out there know that the RV Furnace is far from efficient! They simply suck propane in a big way, and while they do warm up the RV, they are also very noisy when operating. Electric heaters work OK, but the problem with them is the cost of the power to run them, and you can only use about a 1500 watt heater without blowing every fuse there is in the RV Park.

Today all that changed. I have listened to George at "Our Awesome Travels" who rants about his propane heater, almost as much as his Weber Q! I am not sure which he likes the most... I went into Canadian Tire today and came home with our new Buddy "Mr. Heater".

This is the unit I purchased today... the Mr. Heater Model MH9BX. It sells at CTC for $119.00. This unit will pump out 4,000 BTU's in Low mode and a whopping 9,000 BTU's when you turn it to Hi and let it all hang out! It is meant to be portable and you can use the 1 Lb which will burn for up to 6 hours on low heat. You also have the option of adding a hose adapter which will connect to a regular 20 lb propane tank. This tank of course will last for quite a while when full. I purchased a 10 foot extension line which enabled me to install the heater inside the RV and run the line out through our floor, through one of our storage bins, and then hook up to the Propane Tank located outside the RV. Perfect set up!

What a difference this little heater makes! In no time you are toasty warm, even if it is real cold and wet out! This unit will make a difference, and is very easy to use.

Judy brought back some new outfits for the kids from Florida with her, and Kristina had Gwenny and Charlie all dressed up today to head out to Church this morning.

Gwenny looked very daper in her new outfit!

Not to be outdone by his sister, Charlie had his new suit on, which included a matching tie for his lavender shirt. They were the talk of the Town apparently at Church.

Charlie also figured out how to climb up the stairs to come down the toy slide! He is a little wild doing this, and still needs a bit of Mom's help, but he loves doing this!

Till tomorrow..

 

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Set up day,,,

Man, what happened to our nice Florida temperatures....we are down in the low 40's here F. and it does not feel good, as it was raining this morning!

 

We got the beast set up on our lot yesterday afternoon, as you can see above, I set up our Shaw Direct Dish, as Hockey Playoffs are on you know!

 

Chris came out this afternoon and helped us move it to our lot...using some muscles we didn't know we had!

We have a bit of a mess on our site this year, as Ron, Park Owner, had to dig up our site to replace a broken buried drainage tile. He dropped this load of topsoil above to finish the job off.

I spent about an hour on the business end of a shovel and rake, and got it cleaned up above in the pic. Ron came buy with a big ole bag of grass seed, so should be cutting grass on Mondayafternoon.

We got to watch Charlie take 3 big steps today! What a kid! He is kind of like a bull in a china shop...runs through anything, no fear at all!

Shawn and Jenn and the kids were in Dominican this week and I received this pic above! Looks to me like it was pretty warm!

Till tomorrow...

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Back into Canada!

Have to admit, it always feels good to cross The Peace Bridge Between Buffalo and Fort Erie, Ontario and start seeing the red maple leaf again!

That is a file pic of the Bridge above...we crossed this morning in the sun!

We stayed last night on Bradford, PA. I got all excited when we saw the sign above...good old Tim Horton's! We didn't go, but we did stop today in Beamsville and had a coffee!

Check out our camp site from last night. Yup, we staed overnight at Walmart, as all the local campgrounds have not opened for the season! It was a real big Walmart...

We had people park right behind us in a truck and sleep the night. It got real cold last night...low 40's F. and there were 3 truckers sleeping in their rigs as well. We were toasty warm in our rig - it is well insulated.

Got all set up on our site for the summer, but it started to rain as soon as we arrived...

So that meant we had to go and visit Gwenny and Charlie of course!

Gwenny was all excited as Granny brought her a new Dora Sweater!

Charlie the big smuggler, wouldn't leave his Granny alone...just hung on!

Good to be back home!

Till tomorrow...

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Washington, Day 4. Still diffusing...

Today is our last touring day on this trip to Washington... we made it! Final decision for the day was to jump back on the Metro and make our way to the National Zoo!

Now, the nice thing about the National Zoo in Washington, is that it is a Smithsonian Institution, so of course that means they do not charge any entrance fee! Bonus!

This is a terrific Zoo, and has all the animals you probably want to see at a zoo... it is also built on a bit of a ravine, so you get your exercise walking around inside on the hills.

This Chetah looked a little cool first thing this morning, as it was only about 65 deg. F. here...

The Zoo is very well maintained, busy, and the animals are very well cared for, you can tell. The elephants above had a great enclosure to move around in.

There are lots of birds in the Zoo, including a bunch of Flamingos! They were a little jumpy though...

They have a couple Giant Pandas, and they were one of the hits of the Zoo... people were lined up to see them. Lots of students in the Zoo today on school year end trips.

They had quite a few gorillas here as well... they were very active.

A bit of a blur... but above is one of the Orang-utans.....

The sea lions were having a ball in the big tank...

I forget what type of bear this was...but it was very active today.

Lots of weird fish in the aquariums...

Lots of turtles...and great hot dogs!

OK, we did not pet the tarantella...

They had quite a few neat little monkeys.

They have these spoon billed rosettas in the wild down in Florida.

These guys were all lined up for dinner call.

What would a zoo be without the big cats...

Well, that wraps up 4 days of touring in the Washington area... we had a blast! It is sure an amazing City to tour around. There is lots to see, and you will never have enough time on your visit to see it all, so do not expect to. You have to pick and choose, and maybe catch more on a return visit... just don't wait 27 years like we did!

So now, we turn the rig north and head for home. We will take two days to make it back to Woodstock. We are about a 13 hour drive from there.

Till tomorrow...

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