Making the best of this time and celebrating another year

Staying home in Wheatley/Leamington, Ontario

Who would have thought what we are all experiencing this year? Every day is marked with more drastic measures or bad news to halt the spread of the covid-19 epidemic. As we are all scrambling to adjust to the new guidelines and prepare to stay in isolation, I personally found a bit of highlight in all this. You see my brother-in-law had to fly to London England for a business trip three weeks ago. When he was due to come back to Canada we knew he had to stay home for self- isolation, so my sister shopped for groceries, prepared their home for the event of a couple of weeks quarantine time and came to stay with Benno and I before he arrived back at their house. 

Reggy and Elsa love going out with Christina

Although I am sorry for my brother-in-law’s isolation, who said that he is healthy and feels ok, I am not sorry to have my sister Christina here with us. Actually I am really happy about that! Today is my birthday and I get to spend it with my hubby and sis, but it is also my brother-in-law’s birthday too and he, unfortunately, is spending this special day all by himself. Happy Birthday Paul and I hope we all can get-together soon.

Porcelan Clay in the works

In the meantime besides shopping for more groceries and essentials to hold us over for some time, we thought of fun things to do. Christina brought some clay that we used to create a few items. It is air-drying after sculpting and a few days later we painted them with the acrylic paints that I had. 

Painting the clay and rocks

Christina's creations

One day we had reasonable weather to have a stroll at the deserted beach here in Wheatley and we took the dogs with us for an outing. Several rocks and driftwood looked interesting enough that we brought them home for some more crafting. It would have been nice to spray them with clear gloss after painting, but my can is empty and the hardware store is closed.

Puzzle time

The hardest puzzle I ever worked on

But we have also three 1000-piece puzzles that we wanted to do. The first one that we attacked went reasonably fast. After that we amused ourselves with the painting and a bit out outdoor activity. The next puzzle we took out of the box we thought would go just as well.  Ha, we had no idea. We’ve been at it for several days now and not even half is done. I don’t think I ever worked on a puzzle that difficult. Not only are the colors blending into each other, the paint strokes are also in different directions so that you don’t know which way the pieces will go and the third difficulty is that all the pieces have different shapes and not one is the same. It is testing our patience for sure.

Scarf in the works

Benno entertained himself with his drone

and sometimes the drone snug up on us

While I was in the Kitchen preparing meals, Christina crocheted with a new yarn that she bought recently and I really liked the colors. I thought it would be a scarf for herself and to my delight it was a birthday gift to me! Thank you Christina so much! But wait, this scarf was still in progress yesterday and somehow the crochet hook broke in half and we had no spare. To fix this emergency, Benno tried to glue it together with crazy glue, but it didn’t hold. He ended up in his shop using the lathe to fabricate a threaded stud, bore out the two pieces of the crochet hook and thread the holes, to be able to screw them together using the stud. Now it’s better than new, but my poor sister worked on this scarf until midnight unbeknown to me. 

Turns out the lathe is good for all kinds of repairs

I had to model the new scarf

Kudos and admiration to Paul, who baked himself a cake yesterday and he showed us the wonderful results on Face-Time, where we toasted each other with a cup of coffee. I baked a cake also this morning. It is a walnut marzipan torte. The topping of the marzipan I brought back with me from my recent Germany trip, as it is difficult to find here in the stores. We sure devoured a slice of cake in no time at all. Now we are looking forward to the BBQ dinner later on.

Marzipan torte

That was a nice birthday celebration!

Hoping that everyone is healthy and endures the “distance yourself time” without problems. Lets all do what we have to do. I will keep you in the loop.

Change of Plans

At Home in Canada

Here we go again. We’ve been known to change our plans often and so we did it last week once more. As our time in the Blue Jay RV Park came to a close and we were getting ready for our move to the Alabama Gulf Coast, we discovered that the weather prognosis for the first week in the new campground would be a wet one and a bit on the cooler side. Checking on the temps back home it showed well above freezing for the next 14 days with sunshine and hardly any snow left on the ground. Then a quick look at the road and weather conditions on the route home displayed temperatures of 15C/59F for the weekend, so we left ahead of time on Friday morning for our return trip.

For sure we were not the only RV on the northbound I-75. My guess is there were about a hundred or so RVs that passed our truck, and who knows how many drove behind us, all using the wonderful weather window to head north. Not sure if the scare with the Corona virus had anything to do with the exodus or if it is the time of year where many RVs are already on the move.  Our first night we stopped in Byron, Georgia at the large Lowes parking lot. We found a good spot and there were several semis parked also around us for the night. In addition the wifi from Lowes is strong enough to reach the parking area so no need to use your own data.  Actually our first choice for the night was the parking lot at Camping World, but they do not allow overnight parking there anymore and the same goes for the Wal-Mart parking lot in Byron.

Saturday turned out to be another gorgeous driving day with sunshine throughout the day. When it came time to look for an overnight parking spot we went straight for the next Lowes store in Georgetown, Kentucky. Again it was peaceful there and free wifi to boot. However, that night it cooled down quite a bit and on Sunday morning we had a little bit of frost on the ground, which burned off quickly in the rising sun. Maybe if we had gotten up later we wouldn’t have noticed, but by 7 a.m. we were done with breakfast and cleanup and ready to roll heading for Cincinnati. 

At 9:30 a.m. past Cincinnati we took the exit 19 on the I-75 north to the IKEA parking lot. The store opens at 10:00 a.m. on Sundays, but the Restaurant is already open at 9:30 a.m. While we waited for the store to open Benno and I enjoyed our second breakfast of the morning with scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes with jam and a mug of coffee. There were a couple of items on my shopping list that got filled but while browsing the store we took a liking to a big picture on display and we thought we would purchase it for our living room. Big disappointment when we came to the Market Place to pick it up as it was temporarily out of stock. 

Benno mentioned later to me that it would be a logistic nightmare how to get the picture into the travel trailer, as the truck was already full. Well, when we got home and looked at the wall where the picture would have hung, I was relieved that we didn’t buy it because I think at 6-1/2ft x 4-1/2ft, it would have been far too big for our wall, Oops!

We rolled on to Detroit, actually testing our truck and trailer springs on the pothole galore stretch of the I-75N between Toledo and Detroit. There were long lines at the Ambassador Bridge Customs and Immigration booths, but the waiting time was not too bad. I had my list of purchases prepared and we were through quickly with best wishes for a good drive home.

At 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, March 1th we happily rolled into our driveway. All is unpacked and put away and we are relaxing in our cozy home.

I noticed the daffodils and tulips are poking through the ground. Maybe in a couple of weeks at spring beginning they will show some flowers. 

Thanks for visiting again and I will be sure to keep posting what we are going to do next.