Tonneau Cover Success

This morning we packed up and closed up—quickly and efficiently and hitched easily. When I pulled out of our site moving very slowly, I pulled to the right to help make the left hand turn while avoiding a tree near the site. Ken was watching, and he said the coach wheels dropped off the pad and into the grass. The skirting near the back caught on the grass and dirt.

When we arrived at New Horizons, Ken hopped out of the truck to monitor the very steep, abrupt change of slope as the coach entered the driveway. He saw the skirting contacting the drive while the skid rollers were still out in the street. Another issue to deal with.

We talked with Jeffrey and Phil about this problem. They agreed the rollers needed to be extended. We’re hoping that will protect the skirting—if we’re careful.

Phil and Karen set off for California, their third trip to California this year. Trailer Life will be doing another cover story on the Majestic. Their test crew will take the show model out for the weekend to evaluate and do the write-up.

Corey is doing some finish work. He found the cause of the vacuum cleaner losing suction: whoever put the unit together used paper tape—the kind they use to mask things to paint—so of course our trip caused the Y connection between the main vacuum outlet and the toe kick to come apart. Corey put it back together with aluminum tape, which he says will hold up for years. He also showed me how to adjust the mirrored sliding doors so they slide more easily.

Chris reconnected the TV and the Wii game properly. We now have the Denon on-screen prompts and menus. Chris reports our height is 13’ 7”—but we’re on our Bigfoot levelers, so we’ll need to measure our height when we’re hitched up. We expected to be 13’ 4”, already 10” taller than our Excel.

We’re planning to check the operation of the SeeLevel tank monitors. We see our black and gray water tanks filling up way faster than we would expect.

Two items needed to be ordered, the Tristar MMPT Controller and the thermostat, so we’ll be delayed in leaving here. We’ll probably be lucky if we can leave by Friday after lunch, so we’re looking at ways to shorten our travel time to St. George.

Ken installed the Truxedo Deuce tonneau cover. It looks very sharp, and it will protect the truck contents and the hitch.

We worked on reorganizing our stuff and making a pile of things we really don’t need. Life in an RV requires decluttering, and moving is a good opportunity to strip down a bit.

We walked late. I couldn't resist taking more photos of these lovely flowers. They are overgrown now, but must once have been even more spectacular.

We saw this sign along the way. Neither of us had ever heard of a "walk-in hunting area."

Today is Carol’s birthday. She went to the Chorale anniversary with a friend—50s theme. She and Dick are going to the Kilgore film festival and dinner next weekend.

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Rainy Day Blues

We're getting a bit discouraged by the continuing problems we are encountering, and new ones cropping up. It's hard to keep track of everything and remember to run through all the functions. Besides, it rained all night and was overcast and chilly all day today--not the kind of weather that makes me feel very upbeat.

Tonight something went wrong with the central vacuum cleaner. It runs, but there's no suction. We can't figure out how to get the Denon amplifier and the Samsung TV to play well together. The TV and the IR repeater apparently have some kind of conflict too. Sometimes we can't get the thermostat to switch from Zone 1 to Zone 2.

Sometimes the responsibilities of being new owners seem a bit overwhelming. We need to read and understand all the literature we've been given about our appliances. Warranties need to be registered, and often it's difficult to find model and serial numbers.

Of course we are still aware of how lucky we are and how wonderful our new home really is. We just wish that everything would settle down so we could enjoy it for a while.

The campground is nearly empty, and we had our section all to ourselves for a bit. Then an Excel pulled in next door to us, probably because we're in one of the only three pull-thrus.
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Maiden Voyage

We finally did it! We cut the umbilical cord tying us to the mother ship and headed to Lake Milford for a couple of nights. We’ve been so intensely connected to the New Horizons factory, and especially to our point person, Jeffrey, that it felt rather strange to be driving away by ourselves, towing our new home.

Today started much like every other day recently. We got up early, startled out of bed by the 7:00 a.m. whistle. We had forgotten to set our alarms for 6:30 a.m., and Jeffrey would show up at 7:30 a.m., ready to start another day. We were scheduled to go in for touch up painting of the hinges of our new compartment door, which had somehow been damaged.

After our walk, we went to the customer lounge, where we chatted with Jim and Karen, fellow Escapees and former Excel 30RSO owners. They gave us some tips on hazards to watch out for at Lake Milford. We talked about lessons learned—often the hard way. We asked them about the kinds of problems they had run into in their first year as Majestic owners.

They listed things like an electrical short in one of their awnings and some minor leaks that were fairly easy to find and repair. Nothing they mentioned seemed too serious, with one exception: one of the trailer brake pads fell off. This caused some major problems with that brake, but they were fixed. It was only later that they realized that the tire involved had also suffered some damage. Of course New Horizons took care of all these problems.

Jeffrey took us for a test drive, and he adjusted the gain on the trailer brakes. He also helped me figure out a way to load a full 40-lb. propane tank on the propane rack. The best part is that we can lower the front of the fifth wheel using the Bigfoot, which means I don't have to lift the tank very far. Another thing that helps is that the rack doesn't require you to put the base of the tank in a retaining ring, because the tanks are locked in by a mechanism at the top.

Jeffrey did some other minor touch ups. He replaced the locking latch that had been put on the propane door in error with a proper (nonlocking) twist latch. He countersunk some staples and covered them with custom matched putty, making the fix essentially invisible.

We picked up some groceries at Dillons to hold us for the weekend.

Jack returns from Fort Worth with Gary and Judy's lovely now-former home. It seems rather eerie to step into a place we had spent so much time with our friends and to see only traces of their presence--like the wall decals in the hallway I had admired so much. It was as if the heart and soul of the place had departed. Soon, I'm sure, someone else will make it home.

We finally headed out to Lake Milford and set up in a long pull-thru site. Setup was a dream, with the automatic Bigfoot levelers, the water hose reel, and the power cord reel.

Our last trip here in June of 2008 was memorable, and mostly not in a good way. We had to move because of rising flood water, and we quaked in our beds because we had seen tornado warnings on TV--just before the electricity went out and the TV died. After the storms passed, we had a pleasant visit the rest of the week, including a tour of the New Horizons factory. We picked lots of delicious ripe mulberries. This time the mulberries are all green, and we're living in our New Horizons Majestic. What a change!
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Almost!

We got up early again this morning, despite having gone to bed early this morning! We knew Jeffrey would be here by 7:30 a.m. The punchlist has been dwindling, and it looked like we might finish today and be able to go out to Lake Milford.

One of the first items on the agenda was getting into the paint booth so the damage to the fresh paint on the hinges could be dealt with. However Jack Mayer's coach was in the paint booth, and Jeffrey reported that the painter didn't expect to finish before lunchtime. After lunch Chris came with the forklift and moved us into the paint booth.

One of the units in the production line really stands out: it has a residential toilet installed. That must mean that it's destined to stay in one place rather than travel the open road.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey put up the kitchen smoke detector we bought yesterday--a special type that avoids lots of false alarms (the kind that let you know your toast is done!). He mounted the fire extinguisher and put in a cabinet light where the printer is, on the right side of the entertainment center.

A little before lunch, Ken noticed he had a large swelling on his left bicep. It was starting to turn purplish, like a bruise, but it had a hard knot, it hurt when he poked it, and it itched. He checked with the folks in the office, and they told him about a clinic for walk-ins at the local hospital, but it didn't open until 3:00 p.m.

Meanwhile, we had to go to the Ford dealer to get a paper signed to complete our applications for Texas title and registration for our new F450 and the Majestic. We then headed to the post office to send the applications by Priority Mail. We asked that the license plates and registration certificates be sent to Jeff's place, where we expect to be in a couple of weeks. Ken mailed a birthday card to his daughter, Rebec

At the clinic, after the usual line-up and wait, Ken saw a P.A. who suggested that he might have inadvertently banged something agaist his arm, like a box, and broken a small blood vessel. The other possibility he suggested was an insect bite, perhaps a brown recluse spider bite. He didn't seem to think that either one was very serious, so we came home reassured and Ken took an antihistamine.

A severe storm passed through, with pounding rain and hail. We've been in a fifth wheel in the rain before, but never with a fiberglass roof. It sounded like we were inside a popcorn popper. The storm turned out to be brief. When the sun broke through, we finally got to take a walk.
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Paint Shop

We were scheduled to be moved into the paint shop today to paint the new door on our "bonus" cargo space. The evening before, Chris had said that 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. would work fine, but the workers were knocking on our door at ten after seven. We jumped out of bed and threw on some clothes to let them in. Par for the course.

The painting of the door went well, except that the painter neglected to paint the hinge. Also the catch to hold the door open wasn't installed.

We've run into another problem. Our Watts 263A water pressure regulator has quit showing the pressure since it was moved into the new space. Jeffrey tried taking it apart (which is what Richard at the Water Filter Store suggested), but he couldn't find anything wrong. It's letting water through, and so far no pipes have burst. Another of life's little mysteries.

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Another Hectic Day

We had a non-stop day again today. As soon as we showed ourselves, just after 7:00 a.m., everyone started work. Jeffrey came by and disassembled the pantry so he could work on repositioning the water manifold. People were busily at work both inside and outside. That's a good thing, but the resultant disorganization and water and electricity cutoffs are not such a good thing.

We were in our living room at one point, and we could hear the workers in the front of the coach trying to figure out what is wrong with the solar system. My ears perked up when someone said, "Something's on fire!" I had visions of our new home burning up. Fortunately for us, the fire turned out to be a vehicle on nearby I-70. We all went to watch a car in flames. We heard that all the occupants had gotten out. Otherwise they would clearly have been toast.

Danielle and Ernie checking out the fire

Did I mention that much of the work was being done outside or actually inside our compartments and that the high today was 91 degrees? Tomorrow promises to be another scorcher.

Chris and Jeffrey stayed late to finish up. Jeffrey was finishing his work on repositioning the water manifold. He finished and headed home a couple of hours late.

Quite a bit was done today. The 3g antenna was installed on the roof. The propane quick release was moved out from under a shelf to make it accessible from the side of the kitchen island. Our new MCD shades for the center back window was installed. Corey designed and installed some panels to fit between the bottoms of the windows above the entertainment center to the counter. He's not quite done, but it's looking very good.

The vessel sink was turned so that the minute chip in the rim is back under the faucet. The wine rack was removed, which involved tearing out a cabinet. Our coffee table was delivered. The end table with a flawed finish was replaced. The fan in the toilet room was switched out to the correct model, and two of the remotes were mounted. And lots more. We couldn't keep track of everything and everyone.
We were so tired and the kitchen was so torn up that we decided to go to Long John Silver's for supper (a once in a decade indulgence).  We shared a grilled tilipia platter and added two battered fish filets.

On the way home, we spotted a Goodwill store. We had some items in the truck to donate, so we stopped. Of course after making our donation, we shopped.

We found several items, but two were especially good buys. We got a set of four wineglasses from Jacques’ Wein-Depot in Germany. They will look sharp in the new wine glass holder. They play a nice crystal tone when I run my finger around a wet rim. I hope they last a while. The mobile lifestyle isn't necessarily kind to fragile items, but the more serious danger is that we'll drop them or allow them to hit something in the sink when they're being washed.

Why would a Goodwill in Junction City have a box of wine glasses from Germany? Maybe this photo will provide a clue:

Yup, Fort Riley is adjacent to the city. Everywhere you turn, there are uniforms.

The other great buy was four nice mugs from Crate and Barrel. They look brand new--but they cost only twenty-nine cents each. What a deal! We've been looking for mugs for a while. Unfortunately, we had managed to chip or break two of our mugs.

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Yikes! No Insurance?

We filled out the paperwork at the Ford dealer to get title to the new truck on Friday afternoon. Our insurance rep at Miller Insurance had emailed us that all we had to do was give her a call with the VIN numbers when we got the new truck and coach. We decided to wait until Monday to call, figuring that we were covered under our old policies.

Wrong! If you read the fine print, our truck coverage would extend to a new passenger vehicle under 10,000 GVWR. The new truck, at 13,300 GVRW, is considered a medium duty truck, so it wasn't covered until we called and got a binder yesterday afternoon. That means that on our trips to Manhattan over the weekend, we had no insurance! We're thanking our lucky stars that we had no issues. The other bad news was that the policies will cost over $3,800 a year, about twice what we had been paying. We expected the bill to be higher, but not quite that high.

Photo of truck with hitch showing to send to the insurance company.

The New Horizons crew worked hard today and made some real progress. As you can see, they really get into their work! So did we. Ken finished lining the shelves, and we got all the cardboard  boxes out. It's beginning to look like home.

On our walk this evening, Ken couldn't resist taking a few photos. We're seeing irises in bloom everywhere, in a variety of colors.

Today was our friend Steve's birthday, so we gave him a call to wish him a great day. He said that he had gone to town to do some shopping and get a pedicure and leg massage to celebrate. The bad thing is that Jan couldn't come along. One of them has to guard the gate all the time. The really good news is that Jan is feeling much better. Steve says she's pretty much back to the old Jan, except that her ankles are still swelling. She has even gotten her voice back. Yay!
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Back to Manhattan

Well, the plan to sleep in was somewhat less than successful. A plant siren goes off at 7:00 a.m. every morning to announce the beginning of the work day, even on Sunday.

Cate called today excited to tell us about her new bike, which she used her birthday money to buy. Julie says it is large enough to fit Cate for a few years. It has both hand brakes and coaster brakes, so it should be a good transition to more adult bikes. Julie says that she is now working five days a week. Fortunately, her shift is when Cate and Sam are in school, so she only has to have day care for Jesse.

This afternoon we drove back to Manhattan, mainly to put more miles on the truck, but also to do some shopping. We stopped at a liquor store to buy some wine. In Kansas, anything stronger than 3.2 beer must be purchased in a liquor store. Besides that, the prices seemed inflated to us.

We went on to Ace Hardware and Wal-mart and then across the street to Hobby Lobby, which turned out to be closed on Sundays. We went to the Dollar Tree next door and bought a plastic salad bowl to serve temporarily until we find one we like.

We spent more time trying to get everything organized. We're actually making quite a bit of progress. We also added water to our fresh water tank using a hose from the building. It's a much easier process because we have a hose reel that automatically retracts the hose and because the valve you have to flip to divert incoming water into the fresh water tank is handily located in the utility center.

We are really enjoying our new refrigerator. Tonight we had ice cream for a snack. It's so much more satisfying when the ice cream is actually frozen instead of slushy.

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Manhattan

This morning Jeffrey said that he'd come by around 7:30 a.m. to work on our cargo area. We got up a bit before 7:00 a.m. to take our first showers in our new home. The shower is larger, and the shower head height is adjustable--all very nice, except that the pause feature doesn't work the same simple way that our previous shower head did, and it took me a bit to figure it out. Everything has a learning curve! All of our equipment manuals are being organized, so we haven't seen any of them and just have to figure out what we can.

Jeffrey actually didn't come by early. After breakfast we tried to turn the head down and found that the controls weren't working at all. Nothing we did would stop the furnace from running. Ken went over to the shop and found Jeffrey. He'd discovered that he didn't have some of the parts he needed for our job. He looked at the thermostat, popped the cover off, and removed the fuse. He waited a few seconds and then put it back. Voila! The controls worked again. He's obviously mechanically gifted and always willing to try anything.

We chatted a bit with Jack and Danielle, who were working on the electrical connections between their HDT, their Majestic, and their Jeep (which they triple tow). They've ordered a new HDT with Smart Car loader, so they'll be leaving their Jeep in Arizona or Colorado on their next trip west. We saw Debbie and Roger outside too, and Ken met Roger.

We've missed a lot of our regular walking the last few days, so we set out this morning for an hour-long walk. We visited the nearby neighborhood. Along the way we passed a farm and looked curiously at some donkeys, who in turn looked curiously at us and came to see if we had anything for them.

We apologized our lack of treats and walked on into a housing development, where we saw lots of newly built homes, some not yet occupied. Many had long black drainage hoses leading out to the street. It's clear that the builder failed to plan well for heavy rain.

When we returned from our walk, we spent some more time trying to get organized and putting things away.  I tried to reheat our leftover pizza from Pizza Hut using our shiny new oven--but I couldn't get the oven burner to stay lit, so I tried to use the convection feature of the Whirlpool Velos microwave/convection oven. It seemed to work, but not quickly enough, so I finished heating the pizza with a 30 second zapping with microwaves.  We ate the pizza with a nice salad Ken made.

Later we packed up our laundry and headed to Manhattan--Manhattan, Kansas that is. It's about 22 miles from Junction City. We need to put some miles on the truck before headed out towing a heavy trailer, and we had located a credit union ATM in Manhattan that would accept a deposit to our Northrop Grumman FCU account. Unfortunately when we finally found the ATM, Ken discovered that his ATM card was expired, so we weren't able to make the deposit.

We looked around the nearby Bed, Bath & Beyond, hoping to find some good organizing tools. Some of the drawer dividers looked good, but we weren't sure of the dimensions of our drawers. Then we went to the Speed Wash laundry to do our laundry. I got a chance to call Carol while the machines were running.
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Goodbye to Venture

[It's been hectic, and I haven't had a chance to write regular blog entries. Here are some jotted notes--with more complete entries and photos to come later.]

We got up early again and hurried to try to finish emptying the Excel and get it cleaned up in time for Kay's husband to pick it up at noon. It's harder than you would think to get everything out. Several times we found items we had overlooked--including our ice cream scoop from the Blue Bell factory tour we took on our first trip to Texas in 2008. Towards the end I spotted the two little Hummel plates we brought back from Germany for Mom. After some last minute cleaning, I took some final photos of our home of nearly five years.

Butch Wilks, Kay's husband, came by to pick up our old home and take it back to Moriarty, NM, where Kay's RV is located. Kay sells more used Excels every year than anyone else in the country. Read more!

Punch List

[It's been hectic, and I haven't had a chance to write regular blog entries. Here are some jotted notes--with more complete entries and photos to come later.]

slept in our new coach for the first time. Noisy night--the plant is very near to I-70, and the workers here start very early--Ken heard them moving forklifts around before 7:00 a.m..

typed up and printed out punch list--lots of items. Many are minor, but the shocking lack of cargo space and limited access to the little we had really disappointed us.

talked with Jack about cargo space--he suggested a possible improvement (adding an extra cargo door on the curb side where some unused space can be accessed) which Phil agreed to do, along with moving water manifold back and putting water filtration system in the outside utility cabinet.

Another issue that really concerns us is that the galley outlets and the ones behind our chairs we'll be using for our laptops are not powered by the inverter.

more moving, boxes and stuff everywhere, where will we put it all???

Pizza Hut for supper

truck now has back up camera monitor--still needs ABS controller

got most stuff out of Excel

Karen brought over lovely pillows she sewed for us.

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First Look!

[It's been hectic, and I haven't had a chance to write regular blog entries. Here are some jotted notes--with more complete entries and photos to come later.]

10:00 appointment to see our new home for the first time. Phil introduced us to Jeffrey, our "point man." He's in charge of helping us learn about all the features, and he's the go-to guy if we have any concerns.

It's amazing, it's beautiful--but there are problems.

Venture by the side of the New Horizons building.

Sofa in our new living room

Moving out

A bridge from old to new

Moving in--new kitchen

Moving in--new bedroom


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Final Leg of Our Journey

We got up early, so we could get to Junction City by noon. The first thing we noticed was that it was cold. Our furnace refused to stay on more than a few seconds, and it seemed that the burner wasn't lighting. We'll have to see if the New Horizons mechanics can find out what's wrong.

On our morning walk, we were looking for a place to deposit our little bag of trash when we came upon a dumpster with some nice broken down boxes, so we grabbed a bunch of those. Now we won't have to find a Lowe's or Home Depot to buy boxes to pack our stuff.

We noticed when we dumped at Lewisville that the black water valve was hard to move, and worse, it wouldn't close all the way. This morning the hose was full and the Pivot Ease connection was dripping. Yuk! We've had the valve replaced three times now. We checked sanidump.com and found out that the El Dorado Water Treatment plant has a public dump station, so we went there on our way out of town and dumped. Fortunately, the valve actually closed almost completely. We were down to half a tank of diesel, so we filled up, not thinking until later that we were doing a favor for the dealership that will be taking the truck as a trade-in.

We headed north of Hwy 77. It was a straight shot, and the road was well maintained, so we made good time and arrived at New Horizons at noon. After talking with some folks there, we decided to go directly to a nearby car and truck wash to get at least the top layer of bugs and dirt off the truck and trailer. We've never seen so many bug splats on Venture's front cap!

After we ate a quick lunch in the car wash parking lot, we returned to NH. We got the keys to new truck, and found out that hitch has not yet been installed, but will be installed in the morning. Our Ford salesman,Gary, delivered a dealer plate so we could drive the new truck along with our old truck to the dealership. Meanwhile, we had to transfer tons of stuff from old truck to the new truck.

On our way to Dick Edwards Auto, we stopped by the post office to pick up our General Delivery mail. When we got to the dealership, we filled out some paper work and met the finance manager, Rick. While he was working on the papers, Gary gave us a quick tour of the controls on our new F-450 Super Duty truck. It will be a steep learning curve, because it's very different from the Silverado.

We found out that because Silverado shows up in Carfax as being involved in a "minor accident, airbags did not deploy," our trade-in is worth less--but we still get the lower figure that has been promised, plus other changes which mean that our bottom line will actually be a bit lower than expected.

We waited for Rick to call us, only to learn that the computer system had crashed. After a while they realize it's a serious problem (maybe someone cut a main cable?). We'll go back Friday afternoon to finish the paperwork.

When we got back to New Horizons, it was after 5:00 p.m. Our Excel had been pulled around back and placed in a slot with water and 50 amp electric hookups. While we were setting up, we met Jim and Sue Coram. We had heard about them from Gary and Judy. They had the Champagne paint scheme modified to use a lighter gold rather than the standard bronze, and we considered ordering the same (but ended up with the standard Champagne color scheme). We got a chance to tour their new Majestic. Jim was especially proud of the 46" TV in the entertainment center, behind cabinet doors, and the 17" computer monitor that lifts from under the counter/desk.

The Corams described some issues they've found--but said all of them were mainly cosmetic. However, they asked for a three-burner stove top and got the Verona four burner.

After supper, we went for our evening walk and ran into Jack and Danielle. They're here to pick up their new Majestic. They have their old unit parked with the door facing the door of their new unit, to facilitate transferring the contents. We'll have the same sort of setup soon.

We could tell which of the brand new Majestics was ours, because we had the ladder moved from the curb side to the street side. We walked around to check out the outside of our new home. Unfortunately, we found some problems, issues, and worries right away. For example, there's no wiring or frames on the roof to install our solar panels. We're hoping that some of this will be cleared up in the morning when we get our official walk through. One issue we face is that the street side cargo door is extremely narrow.

We decided to try not to worry too much tonight (yeah, right). We're telling ourselves that we and the New Horizons folks will figure everything out somehow.

So we went back to Venture and packed up the contents of the office/entertainment center. Our home is now cluttered with boxes, so packed and some just stacked up waiting to be filled.
[photos later]
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On the Road to Junction City

The highlight (or is that "lowlight") of our trip today was an unscheduled stop at the Chevy dealer in Gainesville, OK. The check engine light was alerting us to a problem with one of the glow plugs. We could tell by the low fuel mileage we were getting that the engine wasn't running very efficiently. No wonder, since it was running on only seven cylinders.

Fortunately the service department was able to diagnose the problem and fix it quickly. The best part is that the entire repair was covered by warranty. We were back on the road in an hour and a half. It sure is nice to find friendly, efficient service.

We drove 360 miles today, much farther than our usual trips. Most of it was on I-35 N and on the Kansas turnpike, so it was relatively easy driving, except for a backup in Wichita caused by an accident involving a tanker truck and a pickup. We arrived at our destination, the Wal-mart Supercenter in El Dorado, KS, around 6:15 p.m.

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Happy Birthday, Cate Who Is Eight!

Today is our last day at Lake Park before we head north towards Junction City in the morning. Ken brought in the Qube and we unhooked the DirecTV receiver to take over to Ed and Julie's. When we have it deactivated, DirecTV will send a return box with a paid return label, and Ed and Julie will do us the favor of packing it up and sending it on its way. We're waiting until we have our new HD DVR activated later this week to call to deactivate the current receiver.

Cate had some friends come over to celebrate her birthday. We met all of them at the Cinemark Movies 8 this afternoon to see The Secret World of Arrietty. The screenplay is by Hayao Miyazaki, who also wrote and directed Spirited Away, which we saw a few years ago. The film is a Japanese anime re-imagination of The Borrowers. The relationship between the brave and spirited Arrietty and the human boy who discovers and befriends her has a powerful impact on both of them.

After the movie, we all went to the Texas Road House for dinner. Kelley and Mason also joined us. After we ate, a group of servers arrived with a saddle for Cate to sit on and announced to the entire restaurant that she was a very special guest celebrating her eighth birthday. They also brought the ice cream cake Ed had picked up at Baskin Robbins, topped with candles and a sparkler in the shape of the number eight.

We enjoyed the chance to talk with Mason and Kelley, and later we got to see their cruise pictures, which Kelley brought on a flash drive. They went to Belize and Honduras on Norwegian. Mason's sister and brother-in-law went too. They had a great time on the cruise and took some wonderful photos.

After the ice cream cake was eaten, we all went to the house to watch Cate open her presents. She got lots of wonderful things, including a zebra pillow pet to join the crowd on her bed.

We hugged everyone and said goodbye to go home and get ready for our trip tomorrow. On the way we stopped at Sprouts to stock up on produce and at a gas station to top off the tank. Unfortunately, we noticed that the check engine light was lit on the truck. The owner's manual suggests that it's probably an emissions control issue, and we're thinking that we can probably drive it to Junction City safely. Meanwhile we've emailed our Ford salesman in Junction City to ask his advice, since they're taking the truck as a trade-in.
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Lots of Fun

We spent the night at Ed and Julie's last night after babysitting. We set an early alarm so we could go to some neighborhood garage sales. Ed, Cate, Sam, Ken and I headed out with high hopes, but we didn't end up finding very many good sales.

Ed actually got two really good deals: a brand new very expensive yoga mat for Julie for a fifth of the marked price and a set of Motorola two-way radios, which the kids had great fun playing with all day. When we got back to the house, the kids got on their bikes and we all went to meet Julie and Jesse, who were out on the trail taking a walk with the dogs.

Then Ed and I went to Costco to get his new phone activated and transfer his Incredible to my account. While we were there, I decided to buy a sheet set to match the comforter we bought earlier.  I wanted to wash the sheets before using them, and while I was getting ready to put them in the washer, I checked out the labels. The flat sheet was labeled "queen," but the fitted sheet was labeled "king"!

Julie has a regular massage session on Saturdays from noon to whenever. She left for work while Ed and I were still out, leaving Grandpa Ken in charge of Sam and Jesse. Ken says that Jesse spent lots of time in his room playing, even when Sam wasn't in there playing with him. He's a pretty independent kid.

After lunch, Ed's dad came by with Marieanne and her new baby boy, John Allen. The last time I saw Marieann was when she and Kelley were flower girls for Terri and Blake's wedding, so of course she had grown up while I wasn't looking. She's still small, like her mom, Suzi. They were headed to Nacogdoches for a surprise visit to Fran and John, the proud great grandparents. The baby was asleep the whole time, but I still got a quick photo.

After they left, Ed, Cate and I went to the Lewisville Costco to exchange the sheets. While we were out, we stopped at Walmart to check out the girls' bikes, but none of them fit Cate. She has definitely outgrown her 16" bike, and the 20" bikes looked like she'd outgrow them quickly. We stopped by a bike shop, where she tried out a 24" Trek. It fit her fine, but at $299 was too expensive. Today the aim was to see what the options were, so Ed wasn't planning on buying a bike today.

Ed decided to take the training wheels off a bike they had in reserve for Sam. The one he was riding earlier in the week was definitely too small for him. This one fits him much better. After a little help from Dad, he was soon zooming around on it.

We played Ticket to Ride again after supper. Ed wanted a rematch, and this time he won, but only barely. Ken and Cate were close behind. They all left me in the dust.
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Date Night

We got an email message from our friends Gary and Judy today. It was a real bombshell--they've traded in their truck and 2011 New Horizons Majestic on a 2012 Itasca Ellipse 42QD motor home! Judy just didn't want to keep driving the chase car instead of being with Gary on the road. That's something we can understand--we wouldn't want to do that either. But it's still a shock to have our chief New Horizons mentors go over to "the dark side," as Judy quipped. We hope it works well for them.

Ed and Julie went out for a date tonight, giving us another chance to bond with the grandkids.We played outside for a while.

We fixed grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for supper. Then we played outside some more.

It was Sam's turn to pick out a game tonight. We played Chicken Cha Cha Cha. As expected, Cate won two games in a row. She has a great memory.

For a snack, we baked chocolate chip cookies in the toaster oven. Good thing they have a toaster oven, since the glass oven door on the wall oven broke last night!

When Ed and Julie came home, they reported on their adventures. They went to dinner at an all vegan restaurant called the Loving Hut. Then they went to the Arlington Music Hall to see the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band:

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, often cited as a catalyst for an entire movement in Country Rock and American Roots Music, continues to add to their legendary status. Multi-platinum and gold records, strings of top ten hits include "Fishin' In The Dark", "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" and "Mr. Bojangles.

 When they walked up to the theater, Julie said it was familiar for some reason. She asked if it used to be something else. It turned out to be the Jehovah's Witness Assembly Hall where she was baptized years ago!

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