November, 2014

My boss lied to me

10 years ago this month, my boss lied to me. He told me that retirement would be "Great!". The truth is that it has been nothing short of spectacular. I get up most mornings and pinch myself, wondering if I will wake up and suddenly discover that it is all just a dream. We have been blessed beyond anything we deserve and we will continue to milk this thing until we are pushing up daisies and the party is over. As the Irish would say "May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead"

To add to the festivities, we had our final (?) mortgage burning party this month. It is the third in 30 years. The grass looks greener, the carpet feels softer under our feet, the birds sing louder, the sky is bluer...you get the idea. There is a sense of freedom and security in knowing that for the first time in your life you owe absolutely nothing to anyone for anything. Amen.

The daughters

Two of our girls had a big month.The big news from Mandy is that she will soon be a married woman. Her guy Markus popped the question on Halloween and after being together for 11 years, she decided he was a keeper.

Next was daughter Kami who got a big write up from a firm that supplies the props for decorating the sets for the film industry, among others. Kami's current project is working on the set of American Horror Story. You can see more pictures and read the whole article about her career HERE

Naturally, we are proud of all our girls.

 

  California or bust (part II)

We left off last month mid way during our drive home from the Island. We did have the opportunity to re-visit the "Crazy Horse" memorial, the world's largest mountain carving, located in the Black Hills of South Dakota. If you are not familiar with the site, it is located minutes away from Mount Rushmore with its gigantic carving of 4 of our presidents figures in a mountain. 'Crazy Horse' is another mountain carving only on a much larger scale.

Here you can see where the horse's head will be carved.
 His outstretched arm will be 263' (80m) long

Foreground shows what the finished carving will look like. The hole you see in the background in the mountain below the face is 90' (30m) tall and is the opening 
under the armpit. The entire carving will be 641' (195m) long and 563' (171m) tall.

To put the size in perspective, all four of the presidents figures on Mount Rushmore easily fit within this Indians face. This privately funded project was begun by one man in 1948, but now has hundreds of workers and is a multi generational project. We last visited 20 years ago and could see little difference in spite of the year round work. I am always encouraged by those who tackle projects bigger than mine.

Next on the travel agenda was Amy's family, north of Seattle Washington near the Canadian border. The visit was the usual circus show with 5 grand kids crawling all over us. A fun time was had by all. 

The final stop before the race home was to be daughter Cassie's family by the Oregon state line. I say was to be, because a funny thing happened to our best laid plans. They went up in smoke.

The first of 5 U haul loads

We arrived at a moment when there was a little family drama and had to move her and the kids into an apartment nearby. The process of coordinating and pulling this little stunt off took the better part of two weeks, but during our visit we were subjected to a little weather event.

 Its OK, we survived the tornado!

We were in her house during a severe storm when we saw the wind blow some insulation over the roof of Cassie's house onto the street. A localized tornado had ripped roofs off buildings, launched large yard toys through windows, uprooted trees and sent shocked residents scrambling just two streets away from us. Yikes!

This is all that's left of a trampoline that was thrown
 through a house on a neighboring street.

Just as we were winding down our time with Cassie, we found out that grandson Alex would soon be released from the hospital (now out of his coma)  and his family was unsure as to where he would go as he is still suffering from a traumatic brain injury and is clearly unable to be on his own.

Visiting Alex

With two kids in need at opposite ends of the state, the solution was to leave Janice with Cassie to help her get settled in and for me to head back north 200 miles to Amy's for a week. This was to help my son in law Vance build a room addition to their modular home and make room for Alex when he arrives. 

This porch area was to be converted into a bedroom

View of the porch facing the house

Removing deck and ceiling to insulate

Let the games begin... Christopher helping by handing me screws

Last day when I left. Only drywall, paint and furniture left to do

Home sweet home 

We arrived home 3 weeks later than planned after covering over 6,000 miles (9700 km). The house was in great kit but it is obvious that no one takes care of your property as well as you do. It was time for us to clean up, fix up and well...what else? Renovate, of course! 

This year we have some small projects planned but one biggie for sure. We are planning to tear out an 11' X 17' wall (4M X 5M)  and replace a fireplace and a whole bank of windows. We plan to begin this part of the project January 1, minutes after the kids who will come to visit for Christmas leave.

We did get our trailer load of furniture we brought back from upstate New York home, and this morning we also took delivery of a 350 pound (160 K) piece you can see below that we had shipped from Montana while we were there. We should have it unwrapped to do a little show and tell next month.

Meanwhile, we will entertain and catch up with friends, enjoy the sunny warm weather, hang out at the beach and do what we Californians do.