Yule Log

I sure hope everyone had a great Christmas! We sure did! There was about 22 of us over at my Aunt and Uncle's home for Christmas dinner. Bill and I provided scalloped potatoes, mac-n-cheese, cookies, and a yule log. I made two batches of the mac-n-cheese....one of which I added a little pepper jack to and it was a big hit. I guess you could say my family is a little on the 'hot-n-spicy' side..LOL!

After dinner the kids started opening their gifts. As adults, we don't as a general rule exchange gifts. So, imagine my surprise when I got not one but two presents. My Grandmother gave us one of those Febreze flame less candles. Those things are great, lots of fresh clean scent and it really fills the rv. It automatically shuts off after 4 hours and it looks really nice too! Thanks Grandma!

As many of you know, I painted my Aunt and Uncle's two German Shepperd's a couple of years ago. "Bear" has been gone for several years, but they just recently lost "Shadow".....just after Thanksgiving. So, sad. My second presents gift tag stated that it was to "Perfectlygoode" from Shadow and Bear from doggie heaven. Perfectlygoode was the name of my home dec and decorative painting business. I opened this little white box and what do you imagine I found........it was a beautiful gold and silver flamingo, accented with little diamonds. I just about fell off my chair.....and the emotions....well, I gave my Aunt and Uncle big hugs and thanks. They made me feel so very special. This has been such a grand December....our 30th wedding anniversary.....family and friends.....and so much love...it just doesn't get any better than this!

Here are some photos of our Anniversary Celebration. On the left is my Grandmother, then my Auntie and Uncle

Here is the rest of the crew, again from left to right, my Dad, Step Mom, Brother, Me, and Billy

And here is my Uncle again......"I'm ready for my close up, Mr DeMill!
We had a fabulous evening full of love and laughter! Our chef was great and entertaining....right down to the fake bottle of ketchup he pretended to dump into my lap. I almost had a heart attack!

From Celebrations to Toilet Repair......Yup! Bill and I had a day of toilet repair which is why the Anniversary post was a day late in getting up. We have both been noticing a little water on the floor around the toilet base. Not a lot and we are pretty sure it is fresh water not black water. At any rate, Bill got out the manual and then made a trip to Camping World to make sure we had any parts we might need for repair. Pulling the potty was not as big a deal as I thought it would be.....Billy did a great job. We both looked and really could not see any problems anywhere. Bill just tightened everything up, installed a new foam ring at the base and set the potty back in place. We ran some water through and still had water leaking. Upon closer inspection, (yeah! me and the flashlight on the floor looking deep into the potty's darkest recesses!) I found that the foam ring was not seated properly. Here we go again......but our second attempt was perfect and best of all no more leaks!! At least...so far so good!

Our chef from our Anniversary dinner asked us what our secret to 30 years of marriage is.....yesterday was a perfect example....it is all about 'teamwork' not I not me, but US working day by day together on all life's little challenges.....Merry Christmas everyone and may all of life's blessing come your way!

First of all, let me say "Thank you" to everyone that commented on the satellite set up and sent helpful information......we have not had a chance to re-try for our neighbors as of yet. They were gone most of the day yesterday and we have not had a chance to get back with them. Thanks for the comment on my flamingo painting.....I will have more on that in another post.

Today is a very special day for DH and I.......it is our 30th Wedding Anniversary! We made plans to celebrate with our family tonight at a nice restaurant. Bill is my very best friend and truly the love of my life. I just can't imagine what my life would have been like without him in it. The past 30 years have had there ups and downs, but they were always full of love and laughter. Now, we have embarked on this whole 'rving thing' and we LOVE IT! I know a lot of you out there, thinking of this lifestyle, wonder about the prospects of being together in a small space 24/7. Well, let me tell you.....we LOVE IT! We have such fun together, and if anything, it has brought us even closer together.....Although we love being with family and friends, we have also found that we are just as happy when it is just us two (plus a couple of furballs)!

So, Honey, let me say now and forever......"I love you!"......my heart still skips a beat when you walk into the room.......

Here it is.....the beginning of my flamingo painting. Not much to look at right now and you can click on it for a little larger photo. I have been finding it hard to find the time to get much painting in with all the 'satellite' set up problems we have been having......but we are up and running so now I can focus more on my painting.

As to the internet satellite....WOW! We had more problems finding a signal then we have ever had....and there is nothing that we could "see" that is causing interference. It took us the better part of two days to finally latch on to a signal...just barely strong enough to lock on too! We are wondering if there is some kind of interference we can't "see" that is causing some issues.

So far we have NOT been able to get our neighbor set up with his tv satellite. They are from Canada and have the 'Star Choice' for their television. It is their first time using this system....so....DH spent the better part of a day helping just to put the equipment together and in position. Unfortunately, we just could not seem to find a strong enough signal to 'latch' on too! To make matters worse for these first time rvers, the husband took a fall here at the rv park and fractured his right hand. We feel so bad for them. We have told them to please call upon us for any help they might need. I know the wife is worried about how they are going to travel with her DH's right hand in a cast. Things may go from bad to worse for these two......he is to see a specialist next week to determine if surgery might be needed on his fractured hand. I sure hope that is not the case!

Yesterday my brother arrived from Indiana and brought with him our missing satellite internet part. My Dad was kind enough to bring it by our fiver. It seems my brother has already headed down to Fort Myers for the weekend.

We headed over to a new Japanese steak house in Brandon. We are thinking of having our 30th wedding anniversary celebration there next week. We had a look at the menu and then decided to stay for lunch. The food was excellent and we made our reservations for next Tuesday.

Back at the fiver, DH and I began the set up procedure for the internet satellite. Unfortunately, it was late in the day and we were quickly running out of daylight. We did get the system set up, but we were unable to find a good signal. There was a front moving through the area so we are hoping that is the problem. Today we have fairly sunny skies, so hopefully we will be able to get it up and running. We have found that once we lock onto the satellite....the weather is not as critical. It takes a pretty bad storm to degrade our signal. While DH was out fiddling with the satellite our neighbors came by and inquired.......they are new to rving and are setting up their satellite television for the first time. They are having problems so I imagine that later today we will be giving them a hand and hopefully getting them up and running too!

I’m still working on my flamingo painting and I will post some photos. I’m just waiting till we have our satellite internet so as not to use up our gigs on the aircard.

Finally got my paints out today. It has been a long time since I sat down in front of my easel. What am I painting? Think about it a minute and I bet you can guess.......Flamingos of course! I ran across this copy write free image of two flamingos that are in somewhat of an embrace. That is my inspiration. When I get a little further along I will share a photo with you.

The easel I’m using is brand new.....I wanted something a little more light weight and portable then my old standby. I got it out of it’s carrying case and set it up for the first time yesterday. I was looking at the instructions on how to put it together and it seemed to me I was missing a part. I woefully explained this all to DH and handed him the instructions. It didn’t take long for him to discover that several instructions for different easels were listed......I was looking at the wrong one.....once set to the right path everything went easily together. DH response to all this, “Be sure and let your blog readers know that your ‘Bodacious Husband’ saved the day”! LOL! Of course, he had read my blog entry on the whole tv satellite set up.....including my reference to myself as the fabulous, ‘bodacious wife’!.....Can’t a girl have any fun! LOL!

We decided to put up our internet satellite from Hughsnet. We are currently using our Verizon aircard, but we are getting close to our 5 gig limit. We had put our Hughsnet system ‘on vacation’ while we were at the river site in Indiana because we had no place to set the dish where we could get a signal (too many trees)! So, it has been awhile since we have gone through the set up procedure. We had a few technical glitches, but I finally got through that and gave DH the numbers he needed to set the dish. DH pulled the tripod from the basement and was positioning it. I was getting the dish and the LMB out when I realized we were missing a very important part. I don’t know what to call it, but basically you attach the dish and the LMB to it and then to the tripod. I could not find it anywhere. DH and I searched the entire basement and no luck. We finally decided that we must have left it behind in Indiana. As I’m sure you all know, the longer you stay in one place....the more you s-p-r-e-a-d out! We were at the river for about 6 mons. There is a small cabin on the property and we tend to store some of our bulky items there. More than likely, that is where the missing satellite part is now residing. Luckily, my brother (who resides in Indiana) is coming to Florida next week for the holidays. We gave him a call and he is going to see if he can locate the missing part and bring it down to us. Till the missing part arrives, we will have to be a little careful with our internet usage.

The day was not a total loss.....my Aunt called and invited us over for a late lunch. We went and my Uncle even took us out on his boat. It was beautiful.....we even saw two cruise ships leaving port. The skies were bright blue with those big puffy clouds close to the horizon and the seas were calm. By the time we arrived back at the marina, the sun was melting away into the horizon.....another beautiful sight! DH and I stood arm and arm watching the sun disappear. It was the perfect ending to a not so perfect day........