On to Greenwood

Sunday morning, we'll be off to Greenwood from Kennesaw, after a planned breakfast with Kirsten and her children, minus Savannah. We plan to stop by the Pendergrass flea market, a stop we try to make if we're in the area. Looking for a doggie bed for Buster, and who knows what else. Got some good family shots, but won't upload them until tomorrow when we get home.

Off to Bill and Pat's

Got up as we planned at 0500 Friday morning, and left before 0600 with Sherry and Fred in caravan and headed up to Atlanta. Ran into some pretty decent rain as we neared the big A, and traffic as well, but we arrived as planned around 1 or so. Sadly, the battery in the Nikon expired on the way up, so no pictures of things we saw, but I have the CoolPix for backup, and will get shots tomorrow of assorted people, as well as Pat and Bill's lovely home. They've done lots of remodeling and it looks very nice.

We all sat down to a yummy dinner last night of curried chicken and rice, and finally got back to the room around 8 or so and crashed. Tomorrow (Saturday), we'll have visits from all of Bill's kids and assorted grandkids, in between naps, I'm sure! Sunday, we're over to Greenwood.

Check out this good looking hunk.....

Tina sent along this shot of Brandon last night, this is his get-up for his big Cotillion dance tonight- Man, what a killer! Lookin good, dude.

sherry and Fred an hour away!

Just got a call from sister Sherry- She and Fred are about an hour away on I-95, just at about Daytona Beach or so. We've got a nice dinner planned, in honor of JB Harris, we've got beef stroganoff!Dan and Kippy are joining us.

We went downtown today to put on new tires on the Toyota, and found a whole new street to shop at, with lots of neat stores, and especially wonderful was the fact that we found a bead store for Bette and a great old book store for me. Super!

Buster Brown's favorite perch

Most afternoons, Buster Brown Gizmo can be found in his favorite resting place, in the river room, dead away asleeep. from time to time, he'll scratch violently at the window, when he sees a bird or gator to speak too. Pretty good life. He's going with us to Atlanta and then on to Greenwood.

Recent Wildlife...

Here's some of the recent visitors to the "river room" in the last few days, they come and go fairly regularly, it's always a show outside.....

Think this one is part of the vulture family, we have lots of them who live in the trees across the water, and come around in bunches of 10 or so in the early morning and late afternoons.

This one is a good fisherman. He always gets his fish, feeding on the little ones close to the shore.

Brave bird, or stupid bird

Nature prov ides us with lots of opportunities here at Coquina, yesterday, the "little gator" of our two who now visit regularly, decided to square off against our ahina bird. It was never really a match to the finish, the gator never really showed any aggressiveness or willingness to attack, and the bird seemed to be posturing more than anything else, but it was a good 15 minute show!

Catching up

Just a quick note to the regular readers who had emailed to see if we were still alive, sorry for the inactivity since Tuesday, but hadn't had much to talk about. Days have been filled with routine trips back and forth to Wal mart, KMart, Target, Ace Hardware, Hobby Lobby, and Michaels, and Bed Bath and Beyond, doing draperies, towel rods, screen repairs, and all sort of other boring things that make up retired life.... Didn't think it was worthy of posting! Today, the Kingstons and Bette and I went to the big flea market down the road, then spent the rest of the afternoon shopping on St George Street, which is one of our favorite pasttimes here in town. Tomorrow, we'll head up to exit 319 for our Sunday visit to Cracker Barrel.

Sherry and Fred have confirmed their planned arrival for next Thursday afternoon, so we are excitied to have special guests next week. Early Friday morning, we'll pile into our cars and head on up to Atlanta for a mini family reunion at Bills house. Sunday, we'll head on over to Greenwood to pack up Bette's glass shop to move it on down here to Florida, and then on April 11th, we'll head on out to Texas.

First gator sighting.

Bette sighted this five footer sunning himself at the edge of the water today. Yikes! No wonder they don't let little dogs out by the water down here. He stayed there for about a half hour, then went swimming, he's about ready to come back onshore now.

Monday chores chores, chores

Today was chore day. Dan came over, and we hung three sets of window blinds,

A new pendant light over the kitchen sink, which turned out to be a chore, since the old fixture was poorly done.....

Rich the painter is still with us, but is finishing up his list of things to paint, and has done a magnificent job.....

And we hung a new motion light on the outside front door to boot. Thanks Dan for your handymanness. We got a lot knocked off the list today. Tomorrow, if it isn't raining, we're going to run down to Flagler and visit the motor homes to make sure they are ok, and ready for the mid April trip. The girls will do various shopping things. Today, Bette bought new bedcovers for all three bedrooms, so that is crossed off the list.

Lion's Club Festival, then to Flagler Beach for lunch

Started off today with breakfast at McDonalds, then went uptown to the 27th annual Lion's Club festival, which was several tents of arts and crafts and food, then we decided to drive down A1A about 35 miles down to Flagler Beach to our favorite restaurant. It was a georgeous sunny day after some morning fog, and the temps were about 77. We stopped at Marineland on the way back for ice cream and drinks. Another lovely Florida day!

Back at Coquina

Left Greenwood at 8, got to Coquina at 3. Nice drive, no accidents, no construction delays, nice sunshiny weather. The house is in fine shape. The painting is still an on-going project. Biggest goal for this visit is to get the garage in order for moving down the shop things. Then we will work on decorating, and fine tuning some things, then we leave for the April/May loop trip on April 13. Still haven't made any reservations for that trip, other than to advise some folks along the way that we are coming in. Sherry has arranged for us to store the Nova at Old Kinderhook, and we are visiting Julie Washka at El Dorado, Ark, along with a visit to Mcclain's in Dallas, other than that, we are not in any concrete agenda.

Back to Coquina tomorrow

The car is packed, the chores around the house are mostly done, and we'll be heading back to Coquina early in the morning. Looking forward to setting up the stained glass shop when we get there, and then moving the gear back down from Greenwood to get it set up. They are getting ready for a weather change here in the next few days, the 80 degree days will turn into 50 degree days. Think its supposed to be in the 70's in Florida.

Deck and hottub pavilion done....

Here's the "final" shot of the backyard repair project. The hottub pavilion is complete, except that we have decided to vinyl clad the posts, for a more finished look. For now, we're leaving it as it is- since it's nice and airy. The new decking is in and new drainage channels have been installed. The pool is in the process of being filled, and then the ladders and drains and such along with the pool systems will be re-installed. The deck is also now complete.

The new deck is totally more stronger than the old one, and the railings are much more secure.

The deck will need to be sealed, but Ricky will tend to that as time permits.

Along with the apartment improvements, a busy little month of projects, but all is completed and we are beyond happy with the results.

If it's spring the pond is filling up....

Seems like every spring, after some early season rains, the pond fills up. This time, it was helped along by the last week's snow storm. While this is not the "high water mark," it's a start. Already had to chase the grandsons and neighbor kids out of it. The nightly chorous of frogs will begin soon. Ahhh, spring!

The Masters is what a month away?

Brandon's first soccer game

Brandon had his first soccer game today, but they lost 3-1.

Here he is, just before going into the game for the first time.
His team plays again on Thursday.

Cooper workin on his game

Cooper is always working on his basketball game, whenever he gets a chance. Notice the cool shades. He works hard on his game, and does so without complaining!

Deck progress- Just 2 guys on labor force today..

Today, the crew built out the deck on the control side, which now has a rise on it to allow the rain water coming off the roof drains of our apartment alongside of the pool to properly drain, a feature that the original design did not have. This feature will help keep the concrete from failiing as it did before, since we have drains in now on three sides.....

The crew also began to frame in the decorative panels and will start putting those up this afternoon, pickets is the actual name. Then, we let the whole thing cure for six weeks, and then Ricky can smother it with weather treatment.

Pool progress

With the exception of one wrinkle in the far corner of the pool, the liner is pretty much all in, and the pool is about 60% full.

Since its about 83 degrees outside, I suspect the grandsons will hit the pool when they get home today, probably against their Mom and Dad's wishes!

The storage building is empty, well almost....

While I was out at the doctor, old mealy mouth showed up, and immediately lowered our agreed to price by $500. I had suspected that they would try something like this, and he did. I told Bette to tell him cash on delivery, before he moved a single piece, so that we could stop any further tricks of this total cheapskate. Then, he tried to add several more pieces to the deal after we had already sweetened the pot by several items. Grrrrr. But I guess its the nature of the business, anyway, but for the rocking horse, and the wheelchair, all of our 27 year collection of a lot of things is now not with us, except for a few things still remaining in the Greenwood house. We will also save $720 a year that we were paying for the storage building..... All in all, we came out ahead, I think. But, its out of sight, out of mind!!!!!

The rocking horse and the wheelchair in this picture will come with us down to Florida, the wheelchair possibly to Bette's brother, the rocking horse to the Coquina House.