Long overdue

I know that it has been a long time since I have posted. I seem to have had writer's block. 
I will now try to catch up.

First of all, we have decided that we are going to see our family in Monroe, WA., no matter the cost of fuel.
We received a lovely and heart wrenching email from Fred, our son-in-law. He made it abundantly clear to me that not seeing our family could not be an option this or any other year. He was much more diplomatic than I have made this appear.
We have not seen Gracie since she was 2 weeks old and we have missed watching her change on a daily basis. We hope not to miss her growing up as we missed Lindsay in her early years.

We will be leaving here on June 13 and taking the northern route, much as we did last year.
We will not be going into ND this year, but picking up I90 at Sioux Falls, SD.
We were hoping to get to Michigan this year, but it is just too far East to go West. As long as the kids remain in the great northwest, we will continue to go there.

We  are volunteering at Lake Sammamish State Park again this year. It is rewarding both personally and financially, as our site is without charge while we are volunteering there. It is a pleasure to be able to help the rangers maintain the park and to interact with some of the visitors using the park.

The nursery is doing pretty well this spring. We are packing and shipping up to 90 orders per week and we are not yet shipping to all temperate regions. We will begin shipping to the northern most states later on this month.
The plants in the greenhouses look really good this year and we are only a little behind on weeding, but that is an ongoing process.

There is a Naval installation here, as many of you know. It is not nearly the facility it was when I was growing up. Back in the 80's a lot of military installations were either closed or downsized and Millington was no exception.
There is still a commissary, Navy Exchange, and a personnel club (officer and enlisted together) still on the base property.
We were invited by some of the retired military people in the 'Breakfast club' to go to the club for an Easter brunch. It was enjoyable and we enjoyed the company.

We then met at Vickie's house for a gathering of her children and their families. That was a fun time as most of these gatherings are.

Adam and Chrissy had a gathering at their house for Mother's Day.
It seems as they are starting a tradition of Mother's Day celebrations at their house.
They had flowers for all of the mothers on this side of the family.
Adam surely knows his way around a BBQ grill. He fixed hamburgers and hot dogs to perfection and according to Vickie, the steak that Alan and Ann bought for Vickie was cooked just right.

I am trying to get the rig ready for the road. Yesterday, I took everything out of the basement, cleaned the bins and rearranged the load.I also got rid of somethings that we hadn't used in months of ever. We have some things inside of the coach that will be left for others to use on our way to see the kids.
On the way here, the coach didn't handle as well as I thought it should, so I decided that the load was not balanced correctly.
I had done this with the Southwind, and improved the handling remarkably.

I had asked Brian to ask his automotive mechanic friend to come look at the dash air on the coach. I am hoping that he will find the time to come look before we depart.
We can run the generator and house air, but it will save fuel if the dash air is working properly.

Ta ta for now.

Great Show

It seems that our coming early this year has paid off, for this trade show at least.
We had a good show this year, more than doubling last year's sales.
The weather was iffy on Friday, but the traffic was robust and sales were acceptable. Most of the sales were to Master Gardeners & not too many of the public were in attendance.
Saturday the weather was spectacular, sunny skies and temps in the mid 70's. The public was much more visible and spring fever made for brisk sales. It seems, from the conversations I heard, that most of the vendors had a good weekend.

There are many activities planned for this spring. The annual BBQ 5 course meal for St. Vincent DePaul Society is next Saturday. This will be our first time going, but the meat is prepared by Gil and Richard. I think that it is some of the best BBQ that I have ever eaten.

One of our Breakfast club members is part of a Barber Shop Quartet Club and they are having a show in May. We have our tickets and are anticipating a great show. We were to go last year, but the flood interrupted our plans
Valentines day, a group of the men came and serenaded us all at our weekly Sunday breakfast. They were very good and whetted our appetite for more of that old time musical fare.

If we are still here in the middle of June, we plan on attending the Parish Picnic with the Redbirds.
The Redbirds is the AAA team of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.
Bob has been trying to get us to go ever since we started coming here, but it was always in August, and we were long gone by then.
It was by request that he move it earlier in the year.

Ta ta for now.