Life Adventures

We finally decided to improve the kitchen.  We had golden oak hardwood cabinets and a green/blue laminate countertop.  The cabinets did not have any decorative moulding and they were all uniform - no dimensionality.  The island had a raised bar portion that was raised 10 inches high.  I don't have a picture of that, but below is the picture with the bar raise cut down to only4 inches. Step 1 was to have some dimensionality in the cabinet above the microwave and over the fridge.  In addition, we added a light rail moulding at the bottom of the cabinets and decorative crown moulding on the top. Cabinet over fridge has been pushed out Cabinet over microwave has been pushed out Some other things needing to change were the fluorescent light above the island, the chandelier above the table (the light shades were relocated to the den fan), the old white appliances,  and the stainless steel sink faucet. The cabinets were in great con...

The trip home from the Invitational was fraught with challenges.  About 3 hours from home the back tire on the RV blew.  Fortunately we were right at an exit that had a gas station.  We were parked there for about 3 hours waiting on service, but we were able to get the dogs out and get refueled.  But it took us 12 hours in total to get back from Yemessee, SC. To make matters worse, we couldn't go to the house.  We were having work done on the kitchen and floors while we were away, and things were behind schedule.  The floors had just been stained and we couldn't get into the house or we'd mess them up.  So we stayed at Americamps.  The next day, Friday, it rained all day.  We met Russell's parents for lunch at Brio Tuscan Grille to celebrate his birthday.  Neither of us were as impressed as we had been in the past.  Finally, the next evening we were able to get into the house.  We had hoped to wash clothes, but to...

Tuesday (Christmas Day) we had breakfast with mom and dad in their RV, and then headed out to Hunting Island State park for our first return in 3 years, since Hurricane Mathew wreaked havoc in the fall of 2016.   We drove to the lagoon trail parking lot – parking lot J.   The trail was different on the lagoon side – no greenery to block the view of the lagoon.   The landscape also had changed such that the lagoon now feeds right into the ocean.   There used to be a dune or natural barricade, now you can clearly see the ocean in the distance.   While the trail looked very different, there was still a beauty to it and the walk was enjoyable.   We walked over the bridge to the beach area, meandered through the fallen trees to a clean portion of the beach near Fripp Island.   We decided to return via the lagoon side of the trail, but came upon an injured and likely rabid raccoon, so we had to take the inner trail (maritime forest) back to the truck...

We arrived at about 3pm.   I was on a work call and somehow multitasked to get Russ backed in to site 66.   We have this site for most of the trip, but have to switch to site 98 (the first site we ever had) for the last 2 days.   Sadly, due to the work call, I didn’t get to take in the beach walk – we did keep the dogs on leash, and actually saw fellow agility friends – Felicia and Mike. The trails are flooded from all the rain, so that is disappointing.   It informed, however, that Hunting Island cancellation was probably smart as that campground floods even worse there. We watched the AKC finals and then turned in early, 7:50pm.   I didn’t wake up until 7am the next morning! Wednesday When we arrived from Florida, we noticed the freezer wasn’t cooling and thought it was because we ran out of propane on the drive up.   We thought things would freeze up overnight with the AC power, but in the morning it was worse.   With no one open y...