Flamingo on a Stick

Well, it is a day with some downtime. Just sitting here outside under the awning on a beautiful day in Decorah. We really do love this campground and this town. Walked downtown to T-Bocks for breakfast, they have the best pancakes we've come across. Walked home the long way to check out where the laundromat was since that is a task we need to take care of today. But I digress, so back to the main discussion. Austin is my youngest brother's youngest son (of 3-Aaron and Alex are older). He still has one more HS graduation to go with his daughter Audra who is only 8 right now. I love visiting with this group and we have such fun together. Friday and Saturday we helped get ready for the party and took turns going to Audra's softball games - she had 3 on Saturday. If you havent been to a little girls softball game you should check it out when they are not out on the field they are doubling as cheerleaders, chanting cheers from the bench. It is truly a delight. Now my nephews en...

We are out on our first real trip with the 5th Wheel. We started last Friday, heading to Grand Island NE for my nephews graduation. It was about 350 miles of driving - not the way we like to travel but the weather held us back a day and we had commitments so off on the long drive. We had reservations at Mormon Island State Recreation Area just off I80 at the exit for GI. We tent camped here and that area is great except for the noise however the RV area is another story. The sites are really packed in. The pull throughs are like pull overs that make the road so tight they give you orage cones to put at the back of your rig so it won't get hit. It took us forever to get backed in to our site. It was long enough for the 5th wheel but we had to park the truck elsewhere. The only sites that would be ok are the ones along the lake, they are still small but manoeuvring is easier and the parking lot for the truck would be right in front of it. I don't think we will ever stay here agai...

Tourists vs Travlers A lot has been going on and I had planned on blogging about our trip so far but there are photos I want to put with it and I can’t get the computer to read the card from the card reader or directly from the camera. I can see them from the cameras viewer but nothing I’ve tried will read and send them to the computer. I just get a “no valid files found” message. Not sure if it is a computer or card issue – man I hate to loose photos. So instead, you get to read about a quote I found on a fellow blogger’s site (Bayfield Bunch – though he doesn’t know its origin either because I wanted to make sure and give him credit). The quote is. “Tourists see the world, travelers experience the world.” I really like that because I think it explains why we have chosen this vagabond retirement plan. When time is short it feels as if all we do is run around trying to see as much as we can before we leave. This lifestyle will allow us to stay until we have explored and experienced as...

This last week had been an incredible amount of work. Moving furniture to Gabe's(our oldest son) house. Cleaning everything in the apartment and finding places for all the things that need to go into the trailer, and making multiple trips to Good Will with all the things we don't know what to do with. Gabe has been great and he and his new roommate Frankie have taken in most of the furniture, they have a great looking house for two young guys. Our other son has been studying in Norway this semester and will return in just another week. I am really ready to have him back and spend some time with him before we take off this fall. We talked with him on Skype yesterday - what a great invention!! He just came back from a fishing trip to Northern Norway and caught a cod that was about 2.5 feet long. So Kevin, if your reading this Mitch has found a new fishing spot for you. He said he has photos so maybe once he is back he will let me share that with everyone. Yesterday was a moving...

We’re weeks away from being full timers. Our last rent check has been paid. We have one month to vacate the apartment, but it shouldn’t take that long. We have already moved almost everything we’ll take with us into our new home, so this is the last chance to rescue anything that’s left, but not much will make the cut now. Some of what’s left will find a home with our sons, but I imagine a lot of it will go to Goodwill or the land fill. Our poor shredder was busy shredding years of files with paper so important that at one point we felt we needed to save it. Like every social security summary, even though it would be duplicated the next year. And this was the stuff that wasn’t shredded when we moved from the house to the apartment last year. It was too important, I guess. Why is it so hard to throw away stuff you haven’t worn or touched or even remembered you owned until it’s time to get rid of it? I finally had Janie come in to throw my clothes in the Goodwill pile. My only Missouri S...